GSA: Frequently Asked Questions

The General Services Administration is one of those federal agencies that almost nobody outside government can describe in a single sentence, even though most Americans interact with its work several times a week without noticing. The questions below are the ones that come up most often — from contractors, from travelers, from federal employees on their first week, and from curious citizens who have noticed that the office building down the street has a small plaque mentioning GSA on it. Answers reference primary sources where possible.

What is GSA?

The General Services Administration is a federal agency established in 1949 to handle the government's housekeeping. According to GSA's own description of its mission, the agency manages buildings, buys goods and services on behalf of other agencies, and runs a number of shared technology and travel programs. It is, in effect, the part of the federal government that exists to support the rest of the federal government — a sort of internal logistics company with about a dozen distinct lines of business.

Three big jobs sit at the center of it. GSA leases and manages office space for federal agencies through the Public Buildings Service. It runs procurement vehicles — most famously the Multiple Award Schedule — through the Federal Acquisition Service. And it runs digital services and identity infrastructure through the Technology Transformation Services. Everything else, and there is a lot of else, hangs off those three pillars. The full org chart is published on GSA's organizational structure page and is more interesting than it sounds, mostly because it explains who answers for what.

Does GSA make rules contractors and agencies have to follow?

Yes, though the question is a little tangled. GSA does not write the Federal Acquisition Regulation by itself — the FAR is jointly maintained by GSA, the Department of Defense, and NASA, and lives in full at acquisition.gov. But GSA does issue acquisition policy that fills in around the FAR, and it publishes that material on its policy and regulations page.

There are also two flavors of statute behind all of this. Title 40 of the U.S. Code covers public buildings, property, and works, and is the legal source for most of GSA's real estate authority. Title 41 covers public contracts. Then 41 CFR — the Federal Property Management Regulations — is where a lot of the day-to-day operating detail lives. Most contractors will never read any of it directly, which is fine; the people who do read it for a living tend to have strong opinions about commas.

What is a Schedule?

A GSA Schedule, formally the Multiple Award Schedule or MAS, is a long-term, government-wide contract that lets federal buyers purchase commercial products and services at pre-negotiated terms. Rather than running a fresh competition every time the Department of Whatever needs laptops or cybersecurity services or office chairs, the buyer can order from a vendor that already holds a Schedule contract.

There is one consolidated MAS now, organized into Large Categories and then Subcategories — IT, professional services, furniture, security, and so on. The overview page on gsa.gov is the official starting point. From a vendor's point of view, holding a Schedule means committing to ceiling prices, terms and conditions, and ongoing reporting. From a buyer's point of view, it means a faster path to award. Both sides occasionally complain about the other, which is generally a sign that the system is working as designed.

How does a company get on a Schedule?

The short answer is: by submitting an offer that GSA accepts. The longer answer involves a process GSA publishes as the MAS Roadmap, which walks vendors through readiness, registration, the offer itself, negotiation, and award.

A few practical notes. SAM.gov registration is required before anything else can happen. The vendor needs to identify the right Special Item Numbers — categories within MAS — that match what the company actually sells. Pricing has to be defensible, with Commercial Sales Practices disclosure. After award, the vendor has obligations around reporting sales, paying the Industrial Funding Fee, and keeping the catalog current on GSA Advantage and eBuy. Awards are not a one-time event so much as the start of a relationship, and the relationship has paperwork. Specific procedural advice on whether and how to pursue a Schedule should come from a qualified contracting professional; the Roadmap is a reference, not a substitute for counsel.

What is per diem?

Per diem is the daily allowance a federal employee receives for lodging, meals, and incidental expenses while traveling on government business. GSA sets the rates for the continental United States, publishes them on its Per Diem Rates page, and updates them annually for the federal fiscal year, which begins October 1.

The structure is straightforward in principle. There is a lodging rate and a meals-and-incidentals rate, both pegged to the destination. Most counties get the standard rate; certain higher-cost cities and seasonal destinations get specific rates that can be substantially higher. The Department of State sets foreign per diem and the Department of Defense sets non-foreign rates for places like Alaska, Hawaii, and Guam, which is the kind of jurisdictional split that makes more sense the longer one stares at it. Private-sector employers sometimes use the GSA rates as a convenient benchmark, though they are under no obligation to.

Does GSA actually own federal buildings?

Sometimes. GSA's Public Buildings Service manages a portfolio that includes both government-owned buildings and leased space. The owned inventory includes courthouses, federal office buildings, border stations, and a number of historic structures. The leased inventory is, in square footage terms, larger than many people expect, because leasing gives agencies more flexibility than constructing.

The technical standards GSA uses for its owned construction and major renovations are published as the P100 Facilities Standards, a document that is genuinely interesting if you have an interest in how the federal government thinks about, say, the acoustic separation between offices or the seismic performance of a curtain wall. The Leasing program runs on a separate track, with its own solicitations and lease forms. When agencies no longer need a property, GSA handles disposal — sale, transfer, or demolition — through its property disposal site.

What is SAM.gov, and is it the same as GSA?

SAM.gov, the System for Award Management, is the official U.S. government website for entities doing business with the federal government. It is operated by GSA but functions as a government-wide utility. Any organization that wants to receive a federal contract or most kinds of federal financial assistance has to register there.

Registration assigns a Unique Entity ID, captures legal and banking information, requires representations and certifications, and has to be renewed annually. SAM.gov also publishes contract opportunities and a number of public-facing data sets, including federal hierarchy information and exclusion records — the list of entities barred from receiving federal awards. The interface has been redesigned several times, which is the kind of thing that happens to any website old enough to have outlived three administrations.

Does GSA pay for federal travel directly?

Not exactly. GSA sets the rules and runs the programs; the traveler's home agency pays the bill. There are a few moving parts.

The City Pair Program negotiates discounted, fully refundable airfares between major U.S. city pairs and many international ones, available to federal travelers on official business. SmartPay is the government's charge card program — travel cards, purchase cards, and fleet cards — operated by GSA in partnership with commercial banks. SmartPay is genuinely large; it processes a substantial portion of federal small-dollar spending. The Federal Fleet program handles vehicles, both leased and owned, used by federal agencies. And the per diem rates already mentioned set the reimbursement ceiling for lodging and meals.

The traveler interacts with all of this through their agency's travel system. The agency, in turn, settles up through interagency agreements. Money does change hands, but rarely between GSA and the traveler.

What is TTS?

TTS is the Technology Transformation Services, a part of GSA's Federal Acquisition Service that builds and operates digital products used across the federal government. It is the home of several services that have escaped into general public awareness even when the parent agency has not.

18F is the in-house digital consultancy, which works with other agencies on civic technology projects. Cloud.gov is a FedRAMP-authorized cloud platform-as-a-service. USA.gov is the public-facing front door for federal information, available in English and Spanish. And Login.gov, which deserves its own answer below, is the shared identity service. TTS also runs a number of smaller programs and tools, and its scope shifts over time depending on which problems the federal government decides are worth solving once instead of fifty times.

What does Login.gov actually do?

Login.gov is a single sign-on service that lets a person use one account, with one set of credentials, to access participating federal agency websites. According to Login.gov's own description, it is operated by GSA and is intended to reduce the number of separate usernames and passwords a member of the public needs in order to interact with the federal government.

It also handles identity verification for services that require it, using a combination of document checks and other signals. Not every federal site uses Login.gov — agencies adopt it on their own timeline — but the list has been growing, and includes a number of high-volume services. For the public, it is one of the more visible pieces of GSA's work, even though most users never notice that GSA is behind it. Which is, on reflection, the whole point of plumbing.

A note on what GSA does not do

A surprising number of questions sent to GSA are actually about other agencies. GSA does not run the IRS, does not issue passports, does not handle Social Security, and does not, despite the name, sell anything directly to the general public — with the partial exception of GSA Auctions, where surplus federal property is sold to whoever wants to bid on a forklift or a decommissioned ferry. The line between "support function for federal agencies" and "service to the public" is fuzzier than the org chart suggests, but the agency's center of gravity is firmly on the internal-services side.