GSA's $50 Billion Multiple Award Schedule vs Britain's G-Cloud: Two Ways to Buy Government Technology

The General Services Administration’s Multiple Award Schedule is the federal government’s biggest catalogue of things it can buy without a full tender. GSA says it moves more than $52 billion a year in products and services. An analysis of GSA data puts fiscal 2025 sales at about $50.6 billion, with about 14,600 contract holders and roughly a third of sales going to small businesses.

It’s in the middle of a shake-up. In fiscal 2025 GSA cut about 1,600 contracts it judged unnecessary. In May 2026 it reorganised its Federal Acquisition Service, putting the schedule in one office alongside its big governmentwide IT contracts. And since March 2025, an executive order has made GSA the central buyer of common goods and services for the whole government.

Britain runs a smaller version of the same idea, and the comparison says something about where Washington is heading.

The catalogue model

A schedule is a pre-approved list. Suppliers get on it once, agree prices and terms, and agencies buy from it without running a new competition each time. It saves time and gives small firms a way in.

Britain’s G-Cloud, running since 2012, does the same for cloud software and services. G-Cloud 15 went live in August 2026 with 4,233 suppliers, about 90% of them small and medium-sized firms. It expects about £3 billion a year in spending, roughly the level of the last two years. Since 2012, £24.4 billion has gone through it, about 60% to large companies.

That last figure is the catch in both systems. A catalogue makes it easy for small firms to list. It doesn’t make buyers choose them.

Washington adds buying power

The US is now layering something else on top. Executive Order 14240, signed in March 2025, consolidated spending on common goods and services, which the order put at about $490 billion a year, under GSA. GSA set up an Office of Centralized Acquisition Services in September 2025 and planned to absorb contract vehicles covering more than $100 billion a year in IT services.

The flagship is OneGov, launched in April 2025: governmentwide deals negotiated directly with large software companies. GSA reported $1.1 billion in savings in its first year, across 20 agreements with discounts of up to 90%, with companies such as Microsoft, Adobe, Google and ServiceNow. GSA also claims more than $60 billion in contract savings governmentwide since January 2025. Those are GSA’s own figures.

Britain has centralised too. On 1 April 2026 the Crown Commercial Service merged with Cabinet Office commercial teams into a new Government Commercial Agency. It hasn’t copied the OneGov model of single governmentwide price deals with the biggest vendors.

Access or leverage

The two systems now lean different ways. G-Cloud is built for access: many sellers, easy entry. OneGov is built for leverage: one buyer, one price, the largest vendors. The Multiple Award Schedule sits between them.

Leverage brings prices down on the products government already uses most. It also concentrates spending on the companies big enough to negotiate at that scale. For a US government that says it wants both lower prices and more small-business competition, the schedule’s share going to small firms is the number to watch as consolidation proceeds.