Sizzling With Sales

A handful of agencies controls most of the business. The General Services Administration's Federal Supply Service schedules for technology, a set of more than 2,800 prenegotiated contracts with technology products and services vendors, accounted for the biggest slice of the GWAC pie, amassing nearly $8.1 billion in sales in fiscal 2000. FSS charges agencies a 1 percent usage fee, so the contracts earned the agency $81 million. GSA manages five of the 10 most lucrative contracts.

GSA also runs the second and third most valuable GWACs among the 60 FSI studied. The Satellite Services contract sold $1 billion in broadband and satellite based wireless communications services in fiscal 2000, or 7.5 percent of the total analyzed, and the Management, Organizational and Business Improvement Services (MOBIS) contract for management, consulting and training services, came in third with $879 million in sales, or 6.6 percent of the total.

Defense agencies are the other major GWAC players. The Navy, the Army, the Air Force, the Defense Information Systems Agency and GSA accounted for 71 percent of GWAC business in fiscal 2000. Defense is the largest user of the technology schedules.

On the vendor side, technology management adviser EDS of Plano, Texas, was the largest single GWAC contractor with $726 million in goods and services sold, a 5.4 percent market share. Los Angeles-based defense contracting giant Northrop Grumman, which has acquired technology firms Logicon and Litton Industries, came in second at $657 million, or 4.9 percent. And technology firm SAIC, headquartered in San Diego, rounded out the top three, tallying $655 million in sales to put it nearly even with Northrop Grumman for market share. According to FSI, the 10 most successful GWAC vendors in fiscal 2000 controlled more than one-third of the GWAC market, worth about $4.6 billion. Six of those firms were also among the Top 10 federal technology contractors overall that year.