It’s a Comparison. It's not a Competition.

(*This article was published on LinkedIn October 6, 2025.)

There is a tradition in NASA’s SEWP program that the team brings in and out the Fiscal New Year together as team members are approving technology refreshes and processing orders up 12:00am EST.  What this means is that by morning on October 1st the program knows exactly what has occurred through its vehicle.  I make the following comparisons annually, so I can anticipate what we will see from the other vehicles once FPDS is caught up to the FY close.

So here is what NASA’s program saw in FY 2025:

• NASA’s SEWP program processed 41,961 orders for federal agencies.  This was down from the 50,660 orders processed in FY 2024.  The biggest difference was in the number of credit card orders – there were over 6,000 fewer credit card transactions as compared to FY24, and not a surprise as the administration restricted their use for better controls over spending.

• The federal government leveraged NASA’s SEWP program to transact $12,072,269,529.07 in IT products, services, and solutions in FY 2025.  This is an increase of $285,642,780.39 as compared to FY 2024, and just short of the record established in FY2023 ($12.222B).

• War Department (Armed Services + 4th Estate) were the largest users of NASA’s program.  They processed 14,609 orders for $993,619,047.67 in obligations for IT products, solutions, and services.

• The Top 10 Agencies who place the most orders through NASA’s SEWP are (in order): Department of War, Department of Energy, Department of Interior, Department of Commerce, Department of State, NASA, Department of Justice, Veterans Administration, Department of Homeland Security, and Department of Treasury.

• The Top 10 Agencies who issued the most obligations are (in order): Department of War, Veterans Administration, Department of Homeland Security, Department of Treasury, Department of Justice, Department of Energy, Department of State, Department of Health and Human Services, Department of Commerce, NASA.

These were some of the annual results, and that they can report out precisely what occurred under their program, and a testament to the efficiency and effectiveness this program has embodied.

No let’s get to the comparisons:

Annual Obligations

In the table above you can see why GSA interests are driving for the program’s removal.  In FY 2020 NASA’s program overtook GSA’s program in terms of dollars that federal agencies were applying for IT products, solutions, and services. 

Although it will be another few months before the final numbers are reflected in FPDS, but as of today (10/06/2025) the IT portion of GSA’s schedules program is showing only $6.7B in dollars obligated.  Although this number will go up as agencies report their spend, at this time last year they were above $7B, so spend under GSA’s program will be down as compared to FY2024.

(*People love to toss out and obfuscate numbers. You may hear that IT under schedules is $20B.  These are unsubstantiated and unsupported claims because they cannot be shown.  What can be shown answers the question “Which vehicles does the federal government use to execute their IT mission?”.  Federal use and adoption are all that matter).

The orange line represents GSA’s Alliant program.  The Alliant vehicles don’t have the same end-of-year adoption that NASA’s SEWP program and GSA’s schedules program have.  Their number tends to be stable as the spending occurs throughout the year, and we see that the Alliant program also has fewer dollars obligated through their program this year ($9.3B) as compared to last year ($10.2B).  As with Schedules this may go up, but not to what it did the previous fiscal year.

But here is where things get interesting when you look at the data.  What if we backed out vehicle ‘self-use’.  In other words what if we backed out how much GSA uses its own vehicle to see what the federal adoption of that vehicle really is.  And this is what we see:

Annual Obligations - Adjusted

Wow!  It turns out if you remove GSA’s FEDSIM’s use of the Alliant vehicle, the federal adoption of Alliant is not nearly as robust as one would think.  52%, more than half, of the obligations that go through GSA’s Alliant vehicle is self-use, meaning that the federal adoption of Alliant becomes skewed in the numbers.

“But Jon, what about NASA’s self-use of their vehicle?  How would their vehicle numbers change?”  Well, I did.  It turns out that NASA accounts for 2% of the vehicle’s use. Not a lot at all, and evidence of the federal government's broad adoption. 

So, there you go and now you know. Again, this isn’t a competition…it’s a comparison, and all that matters is federal adoption.

Which gets us to our last comparison that pertains to order volume.  Here the distinction between NASA and GSA could not be more stark:

Number of Orders - Annually

What do you conclude when you see this?  To me the conclusion is clear: the Common-Sense of the federal government has determined that NASA’s vehicle and approach are what they value and rely upon to meet their mission needs. 

Numbers don’t lie, but liars love numbers.  The nice thing about my approach is that it is transparent.  You know exactly where I get my numbers from.  NASA knows their numbers, and the program sends them to OMB quarterly.  They are accurate, and more complete than any of the other programs.  FPDS is accessible to many if not all.  You can run the numbers yourself (I use BGov for these purposes but use what you have).

The Architects of Inefficiency and their Coalition of Self-Interests will have you believe that the Schedules program is the answer for the government’s IT needs.  They’ll say 1949 blah, blah, blah.  The fact of the matter is neither OMB (nor GSA themselves!!!) thought Schedules was the answer in the early 1990’s, and there is nothing in the numbers, practices, promises, or press releases that would give you the indication that they are government's answer today.