GSA Administrator Emily Murphy Selected to 2020 Wash100 for Transforming Federal Marketplace, Modernizing Government Service Leadership

Executive Mosaic is honored to announce Emily Murphy, administrator of the General Services Administration, as an inductee into the 2020 edition of the Wash100 Award for guiding the administration through its efforts to simplify the federal buying and selling processes.

This marks Murphy’s third Wash100 Award. She secured her 2019 award for innovation in federal contracting and program management. 

In 2018, Murphy revealed that GSA will transform acquisitions through the implementation of shared services, e-commerce portals and innovation identification. The department began implementation of a 10-year plan to establish a framework for its office of shared solutions and performance improvement.

Murphy has continued to drive performance and transform the federal marketplace throughout 2019 and into 2020. On Oct. 1, the beginning of the fiscal year 2020 for the federal government, she helped complete Phase 1 of GSA’s Multiple Award Schedules consolidation initiative and released a single solicitation for 24 MAS contracts that agencies have used to procure goods and services from industry. 

“This is an important first step toward our goal of simplifying the experience for customers, suppliers and GSA’s acquisition workforce,” Murphy said at the time.

Murphy continuously advanced GSA’s policy and trading platforms. In addition to completing Phase 1 of the Multiple Award Schedules, she also led GSA through its proposal for government transactions in Jan. 2020. 

GSA issued its first request for proposals for commercial e-marketplace platforms that can support business-to-business transactions with the government purchase card. The administration also updated its RFP earlier this month to clarify the program requirements.

Murphy told Federal News Network in a September interview that GSA has saved nearly $2B through an agency-wide modernization initiative that covers elimination, optimization and automation approaches.

“We are trying to take data in, look at problems, analyze those and see if we can do something first to eliminate the problem. Is it a process we need? If so, can we optimize the process, or can we automate it,” she said.

She added that the administration has also tried to alleviate concerns about the move of NCR into the central office building by talking to employees and hosting town halls.

“Hopefully, the promise that we will give them nice, clean, modern space in central office [will alleviate any concerns]. We are working on making some improvements to that space so that we can all better utilize it,” she said. 

Murphy noted that the utilization data was giving GSA more reason to talk to other agencies about whether they can move into federally-owned space, which she said is almost always cheaper.

Not only has Murphy provided a modernized central office to improve efficiency, but she has continued to drive new initiatives within the administration by modernizing federal payroll services through the issuance of initial task orders under the NewPay blanket purchase agreement.

GSA said that NewPay aims to implement a standardized Software as a Service platform that will consolidate government payroll functions in accordance with the President’s Management Agenda for 2019. “NewPay task orders are an important step in modernizing our federal payroll system as we move forward in providing quality shared services,” said Murphy.

Also in 2019, the Department of Defense partnered with GSA to help the DoD Joint Artificial Intelligence Center to accelerate the development and delivery of artificial intelligence platforms to the military.

“We are excited that JAIC will be leveraging GSA’s CoE expertise to strategically implement AI within DoD,” noted Murphy. 

Other agencies partnering with GSA to support IT modernization efforts through the CoE model are the departments of Agriculture and Housing and Urban Development, Office of Personnel Management and the Consumer Product Safety Commission.

Executive Mosaic congratulates Murphy and the GSA team on their selection to receive the 2020 Wash100 Award. Her commitment to transform federal acquisition and customer experience will be influential to the GovCon sector.

About The Wash100

The Wash100 Award, now in its seventh year, recognizes the most influential executives in the GovCon industry as selected by the Executive Mosaic team in tandem with online nominations from the GovCon community. Representing the best of the private and public sector, the winners demonstrate superior leadership, innovation, reliability, achievement and vision.

Visit the Wash100 site to learn about the other 99 winners of the 2020 Wash100 Award. On the site, you can submit your 10 votes for the GovCon executives of consequence that you believe will have the most significant impact in 2020.