There is more to your GSA Contract than just Federal government sales. You can expand your access to stimulus money by following the grant money being given to the State and local governments.

There are over 88,000 governments in the United States, counting the Federal government as one and each state as one. State and local governments will be receiving ¾ of the stimulus money through grants released under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). Some of them include:

• Energy Department: $4.5 billion for smart grid technologies
• Education Department: $1 billion for computers in schools
• Health and Human Services: $3+ billion for IT enhancements
• Rural Utilities Service: $2+ billion for broadband development
• $19 billion in new spending and tax incentives to encourage doctors and hospitals to switch to digital records

Congress has not yet passed the legislation that would authorize State and local governments to use all GSA Schedules for Recovery Act funds (ARRA). Watch for this possible change this summer. As of now, the only GSA Schedules they could use for ARRA would be for IT products and services (Schedule 70) and for Security or First Responder supplies and services (Schedule 84) under the Cooperative Purchasing Program. The IT Schedule alone has seen an over 35% increase in State and local sales under the IT Schedule, with sales totaling almost $400 million so far this year.

For example, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) released application guidance for more than $500 million in Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) preparedness grants for fire station construction, port and transit security -funded by ARRA. While much of the grant money focuses on building infrastructure, the Transit Security Grant Program has many components requiring technology products.

The Transit Security Grant Program provides $150 million to hire transit law enforcement officers, mobile explosive detection screening teams, and anti-terrorism teams; shovel-ready anti-terrorism security enhancements that must begin within 90 days of the release of funds and be completed within two years; and other security projects. These funds are in addition to the $388.6 million in DHS transit security grants announced in April 2009. Most of these products and services are covered under GSA Schedule 84.

A major barrier to States using GSA has been the fact that the States did not consider the GSA contract to be competitively awarded. To help State and local governments meet their State laws requiring competition, GSA just announced that State and local governments can now access GSA E-Buy to make their competitive purchase and fulfill their State competition rules. E-buy makes every RFP available to all the schedule holders in the Special Item Number covering the desired supplies or services. Therefore, offers received are competitive. State and local government agencies that have been reluctant to use the GSA contracts should be encouraged to go to www.gsa.gov/ebuy to register. The GSA contracts still represent one of the fastest ways the State and local government grantees can access a full array of IT and security supplies and services in support of the ARRA funding.

Things to Do Now:
• Make sure you have a GSA Schedule contract.
• Sign the modifications indicating you want to participate in the programs.
• Develop a process to properly qualify the grant funding and separate GSA orders from other state and local government orders.
• Establish the proper reporting process for the ARRA funding.
• Develop a process to review state terms, quote and process orders to state and local government, and report and pay the fees on GSA orders.
• Make sure your GSA contract has the products or services in demand for State and local government customers.
• If you do not want to do all of this yourself:
  • Locate partners now such as Technical Communities who already have GSA Schedule 70 IT and 84 contracts and will act for you in the market.
  • Make sure they have full access to the products or services that are in demand for the State and local governments.