Josh Gruenbaum, commissioner of the General Services Administration’s Federal Acquisition Service and a 2025 Wash100 awardee, said his team’s Department of Government Efficiency-inspired cost-cutting approach to government contracts with software providers and consulting firms will continue for the duration of the Trump administration, the Financial Times reported Tuesday.
Gruenbaum told FT in an interview on Friday that FAS continues to review multibillion-dollar contracts against cheaper alternatives.
“We have shrewd business folks around us, we do run market comparisons,” the head of FAS said. “We have typically other vendors who are like, ‘we could create proper market tension.'”
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GSA Procurement Review
Gruenbaum has been leading a review of multibillion-dollar government contracts with software firms and consultancies for months and has urged such companies to offer the government steep discounts on the services they provide.
According to GSA, the procurement review has led to more than $52 billion in savings, with consulting contracts accounting for about $12 billion of that savings.
The former investment banker defended the approach of FAS.
“We are tough, but fair, and we take our jobs safeguarding American taxpayer money extremely seriously — we make no apologies for that. We stand by our record of success,” Gruenbaum said in a statement on Tuesday.
GSA Asks Consultancies to Explain Contracts in Plain Language
In June, Gruenbaum called on the leaders of McKinsey, BCG and four other consulting firms to justify and explain their federal contracts in plain language and recommend ways to save costs.
“Our objective is to critically evaluate which engagements deliver genuine value,” Gruenbaum wrote in a letter sent to firms in late June. “In keeping with this Administration’s laser focus on fiscal responsibility, our baseline presumption is that most, if not all, of these contracted services are not core to agency missions.”
