Who’s Getting Federal Tech Dollars
- And Who’s Getting Left Out?
In the world of tech acquisition, a persistent challenge remains: It is increasingly difficult for new vendors to break into the federal market. Recent efforts to modernize the acquisition process still yield high barriers to entry for new vendors. Risk aversion, strict requirements processes, and, lengthy award timelines often lead to increased utilization for a select group of trusted contractors. This multi-part analysis, powered by Leadership Connect’s industry leading platform, examines this problem in the following areas:
1) Funding Office’s propensity to contract with known vendors
2) Value Added Resellers (VARs) effect on obligations
3) Contracting Officer backgrounds
4) Potential policy implications.
The first section of this study analyzes Leadership Connect’s Top 100 Federal Tech Buyers Matrix, assessing Funding Office’s spend on tech and their inclination, or lack thereof, to work with known vendors. Key takeaways include:
- A majority (58%) of Funding Offices experienced a a decline in the number of vendors they work with
- DoD and DHS lead the way with 37% and 22% of the offices with positive new vendor growth respectively
- Vendor diversification is generally not drive by total obligations
The Top 100 Federal Tech Buyers Matrix ranks Funding Offices buying tech by their likelihood of working with new vendors, based on historical precedence. Offices are sorted into following quadrants:
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Leaders– Consistently works with new vendors
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Contenders– Often works with new vendors
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Slow Adopters– Sometimes works with new vendors
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Under-performers– Rarely works with new vendors
The color scale is representative of an Office’s willingness to work with new vendors, while bubble size is representative of total $ obligated by said Office.
Click into each quadrant below to access details for each Funding Office:
Leadership Connect used the following data methodology for this study:
In order to establish the base dataset of “tech spend”, Leadership Connect used the following prominent NAICS codes:
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511210- Software Publishers
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518210- Computing Infrastructure Providers, Data Processing, Web Hosting, and Related Services
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541511- Custom Computer Programming Services
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541512- Computer Systems Design Services
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541519- Other Computer Related Services
From there, the top 100 Funding Offices, by total $ obligated, from FY23-FY24, were captured. We then analyzed the difference in vendor counts between the two fiscal years. It should be noted that vendor is defined at the UEI level, meaning multiple UEIs within the same organization represent one variable each. Vendor counts are bifurcated into by total vendors, which looks at the raw vendor count, and new vendors, which looks at vendors previously unawarded by a specific funding office.
This dataset removes the top 25 Value Added Resellers (VARs), by total $ obligated. A list of those removed VARs are as follows:
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NEW TECH SOLUTIONS, INC. – XK11LLUL61A7
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FCN, INC. – JEANDJTZ8HJ3
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CARAHSOFT TECHNOLOGY CORP. – DT8KJHZXVJH5
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GOVERNMENT ACQUISITIONS, INC. – R98MW4ZKUUK3
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THUNDERCAT TECHNOLOGY, LLC – UER4AJLUB8D5
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SOFTWARE INFORMATION RESOURCE CORP. – EJJMMJHYDFH6
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CDW GOVERNMENT LLC – PHZDZ8SJ5CM1
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BLUE TECH INC. – MDC5LDZKQAM4
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ADVANCED COMPUTER CONCEPTS, INC. – CGE8ABMZLZN9
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GOVSMART, INC. – DJACUETFQUL8
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ENTERPRISE TECHNOLOGY SOLUTIONS, INC. – FBRMCGPMN963
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FOUR POINTS TECHNOLOGY, L.L.C. – H1KHJPJH9R51
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CSP ENTERPRISES LLC – GJJRGECWBFK9
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DLT SOLUTIONS, LLC – F1N2KDGBDTU8
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STERLING COMPUTERS CORPORATION – YZTLALWM4UC7
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FOUR LLC – X1JJYEW4HAN9
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DH TECHNOLOGIES, LLC – NKC2AB3ESFP5
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COLOSSAL CONTRACTING, LLC – F4M9NB1HD785
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LYME COMPUTER SYSTEMS, INC. – F1UZPBD1VBH9
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ALVAREZ LLC – Y928UVG75CT6
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MINBURN TECHNOLOGY GROUP, LLC – WN8JFVZTBCA5
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V3GATE, LLC – J4KHM5JY79E3
Stay tuned for the next piece of this series, where we analyze the effect that VARs have on tech spend across these Funding Offices.
