The General Services Administration will stop accepting new vendors on its professional services schedule in the coming months. The decision to temporarily close down the seven schedule contracts for services to new companies is part of how GSA is giving its entire program a facelift.

Tiffany Hixson, the GSA's Federal Acquisition Service's professional services category executive, said the suspension of new vendors getting on the schedules could last between three and six months.

"The other challenge for us is going to be if there is a federal agency that needs a contractor to get on schedule, we will have to accommodate that," Hixson said in an exclusive interview with Federal News Radio.

She said the decision to suspend new entrants on services schedules, including MOBIS, professional engineering and financial services, will not impact the current 3,500 schedule holders, nor how agencies use the schedules to buy services. Agencies spent about $11 billion on these seven schedules in 2013, with MOBIS and the financial service schedule leading the way.

Hixson is leading an effort to change how GSA provides services under the schedules program. She said the goal over the next 18 months is to make it easier for agencies to purchase integrated services and reduce the costs for GSA to administer these schedule contracts. Read full Article.