What consumers call “buying in bulk” the U.S. government calls “strategic sourcing.”

 

Beginning this week, some of Washington’s largest agencies and departments will join together to buy office printers, copiers and scanners with the intention of saving $600 million over the next four years. The deal involves the departments of Commerce, Defense, Homeland Security and Treasury, as well as the Social Security Administration and other agencies.

 

The effort to reduce expenditures has forced government offices to review their inventories, and that has produced some eye-opening moments.

 

“One of the things we’ve discovered is that agencies don’t have a clue what they have,” Dan Gordon, the Obama administration’s top federal contracting official, told The Washington Post. “They don’t realize how many cell phones and BlackBerrys they have”—which might help to explain why the federal government’s collective cell phone bill is $1.2 billion.

-Noel Brinkerhoff

 

To Save Money, Federal Agencies to Start Buying in Bulk (by Ed O’Keefe, Washington Post)