As GSA turns 75, one of its leading technologists reflects on the agency's mission

The General Services Administration came into being on July 1, 1949 under the Truman administration, authorized by legislation designed to streamline administrative tasks across various existing federal agencies. 

In the 75 years since, the agency’s mission has evolved to feature technology in its three-pronged mission, alongside government real estate and acquisition. 

The agency’s Technology Transformation Services helps drive that work by offering “people, platforms and products,” said Lewis.

Among the efforts that fall under the TTS purview are GSA’s digital consulting office, 18F, as well as a range of products and services, such as USA.gov, a central repository for finding government services online.

The challenge and opportunity for the future of TTS is “helping people understand how to do implementation management a little more effectively,” TTS director Ann Lewis, told Nextgov/FCW in a recent interview.

“Major projects and major policy initiatives live or die by implementation, and almost all implementation work these days depends on tech,” she said. But “I think there’s a lack of a fundamental understanding across government of how to successfully implement a program.”

GSA’s technology work has a role to play in that space, she says, and the goal is to grow that impact moving forward. 

“It's important for us to lean into shared services models and grow them, because agencies do the same kind of tech capacity-building and implementation management work over and over and over again,” said Lewis, pointing to the potential for TTS to spread industry best practices — like agile software management based on clear goals and user feedback — across government to improve implementation.

“Whether [agencies] need people, or products, or building blocks, or information, or training or different kinds of services, we’re offering that right now,” said Lewis. “I think we can and should scale it up in the future to be able to meet whole-of-government needs as opposed to a subset of government needs, so that’s what I’m really excited about.”

As for what TTS is prioritizing in the runup to a potential change in administration, Lewis said a major focus is artificial intelligence. 

That includes both hiring up — TTS is planning to bring on over 100 technologists this year — as well as training existing federal employees. 

The TTS Centers of Excellence houses an AI-focused community of practice that already offered technical AI training for feds with the Office of Management and Budget and in partnership with Stanford University this year. Over 4,800 feds attended.

They are planning on offering more training this fall, including an acquisition track with George Washington University and a leadership track with Princeton University. 

As Lewis is pursuing her goals of expanding the impact of TTS, she is also navigating its funding, and how it’s perceived by the lawmakers that dole out that money.

In recent years, TTS has spent $150 million Congress invested in the Federal Citizen Services Fund as part of the American Rescue Plan Act to both rehab digital services and fund new ventures, according to the 2025 GSA budget request. That money expires at the end of this fiscal year. 

TTS has used it to deploy tech experts across agencies where needed, said Lewis. That funding provided the seed money for the launch of GSA’s early career tech fellowship program, U.S. Digital Corps, according to the agency's budget request. The request also lists work to automate and clear backlogs at FedRAMP, improve search.gov and more.

“Post-ARP, all of these programs exist and have sustainable funding sources, but the ARP money was used to focus those surge efforts specific to agency goals,” said Lewis.

Lewis is also working with a relatively new transfer authority TTS received as part of the fiscal 2023 appropriations bill, meant “to grow and expand the capabilities of shared digital services that are used across the federal enterprise,” as GSA’s most recent budget request states.

“We're thinking about that as a place to fund programs that have agency-wide benefit but don't fit as neatly into traditional agency contribution models, which typically are more contributed to by the bigger, more well funded agencies,” said Lewis, who pointed to the U.S. Web Design System as an example of a program being funded out of that vehicle.

“We believe these things have whole-of-government benefit, independent of how much the agency's paying for it,” she said.

The agency is using the new mechanism as a “sustainable funding source on which these widely adopted shared services can use to increase their capacity to support growing demand, while also spreading the cost of those services across the Federal enterprise,” its budget request states, noting that this will “lessen the dependence on constrained annual appropriations.”

How TTS is spending its funding is likely of keen interest to at least some appropriators.

The House passed a bipartisan, transparency-focused bill aimed at the Federal Citizen Services Fund and Acquisition Services Fund in May in response to a bombshell watchdog report about GSA’s Login.gov in 2023. 

Asked about the proposal, Lewis noted that “transparency will help especially non-technical decision-makers across government understand how to do implementation management better.”

“Any opportunity to amplify things like — we need product managers to help with vendor management; we need people to know about enterprise architecture to help with acquisition strategy; we need to bring all of our tech talent, and there's just not enough of it in government, but we need to bring all of our tech talent to the table to make sure that our major policy priorities and major benefits programs can actually be successful —  I'll take any opportunity to talk about that,” said Lewis. “Including talking to Congress.”