The Office of Management and Budget has issued a policy that aims to facilitate the procurement and management of mobile devices and related services by federal agencies through category management.
OMB’s Category Management Policy 16-3 seeks to reduce duplicate mobile contracts and help agencies manage their mobile service inventories, Federal Chief Acquisition Officer Anne Rung and Federal Chief Information Officer Tony Scott wrote in a memorandum published Thursday.
The policy will require agencies to build up their demand management practices and report pricing and usage data on mobile services to the Integrated Data Collection authority on a quarterly basis starting Nov. 30, wrote Rung and Scott, both inductees into Executive Mosaic’s Wash100 for 2016.
The memo also calls for agencies to use a government-wide strategy on mobile services acquisition by Sept. 30, 2018 in an effort to consolidate their data requirements into a single contract per carrier and requires the mobile services category team to create a strategic plan by Oct. 31 for a government-wide procurement vehicle to be awarded before May 31, 2018.
The policy will also require agency CIOs to develop and submit transition plans for the adoption of a government-wide acquisition strategy to OMB by Nov. 30 and will designate the General Services Administration as agencies’ broker in the procurement of mobile platforms and services.
Scott and Rung also wrote in a White House blog published Thursday that the federal government has recorded more than $2.1 billion in savings since 2009 as a result of the implementation of category management practices and has begun to eliminate over 700 duplicative contracts for professional services.
