The General Services Administration’s OneGov Strategy is a laudable step toward streamlining and modernizing federal procurement. Its vision of consolidating contracts and improving efficiency is timely, necessary, and appreciated. The speed of these changes is also welcome. However, that zeal to “get it right, right now” must still protect the embedded Value-Added Reseller (VAR) ecosystem.
By prioritizing direct engagement with Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs), OneGov may inadvertently marginalize thousands of VARs who have long served as trusted, mission-critical intermediaries between government buyers and the tech solutions upon which they depend. Such marginalization would present a structural shift with potentially far-reaching economic, operational, and strategic consequences.
I salute President Trump and DOGE's efforts; however, losing VARs will adversely affect small business owners. We last balanced the budget in 1994, when I was a congressman, and we helped create thousands of jobs for small business owners—the backbone of our economy and an essential part of balancing the budget. We can't forget that small business owners helped support us then and continue to support us now.
The U.S. IT channel has powered innovation, job creation, and economic stability for over 70 years. Today, it supports between 500,000 and 1,000,000 jobs across every state, many through small and medium-sized VARs deeply embedded in local communities.
Major employers like Ingram Micro, TD SYNNEX, CDW, and World Wide Technology represent the industrial backbone of regional economies from Buffalo, NY, to Greenville, SC, to St. Louis, MO. The loss of the VAR ecosystem would be diminishing the essential role of these businesses in federal procurement by: 1) triggering job losses across rural and underserved regions, where federal contracts sustain small business viability; 2) Collapsing a critical sector during a period of inflation, tight capital and tech market instability; and, 3) Accelerating market consolidation thus empowering a handful of OEMs while eroding necessary regional economic diversity.
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At a time of economic uncertainty, the federal government should protect (not destabilize) vital domestic industries.
Beyond economic impacts, VARs provide essential services that go far beyond product resale. They simplify complex, multi-vendor procurements. They offer integration, cybersecurity, deployment, and lifecycle support. They also serve as vendor-neutral advisors, thus helping program managers successfully navigate a vast and rapidly evolving tech landscape.
Without the VAR ecosystem, federal agencies will be forced to juggle relationships with hundreds of OEMs, each with different systems, contracts, and support models. This will increase costs, risk, and administrative complexity, making government systems vulnerable to mission failure.
OEMs may build the technology but often lack the capacity (or incentive) to support integration, implementation, or long-term service. Cutting out the VARs would leave agencies without the critical glue that binds federal IT systems.
An OEM-centric procurement model may appear more efficient on paper, but it introduces serious risks in practice. A few of these risks are: 1) Reduced competition and greater potential for vendor lock-in; 2) Exclusion of small and emerging tech firms, which rely on VARs to access federal markets; and 3) Assignment of critical services like logistics, security, and support to OEMs that may be unequipped to handle them.
These risks are magnified in today’s rising hardware costs, global supply chain disruptions, and constrained federal budgets. A rigid OEM-only strategy would be a step backward in resilience, innovation, and responsiveness.
GSA should reconsider and rebalance its approach. Specifically, it should:1) Conduct a formal economic impact assessment to evaluate the regional and national implications of sidelining VARs; 2) Retain VAR participation withinOneGov through performance-based or certified models that align with accountability and modernization goals; 3) Adopt a hybrid procurement framework that allows for both OEM and VAR engagement thus ensuring flexibility and competition; and, 4) Establish a GSA-industry task force to guide implementation, to prevent vendor lock-in and to protect small businesses and mission outcomes.
OneGov presents a valuable opportunity to modernize federal procurement, but modernization should not come at the cost of resilience, economic diversity, and operational effectiveness. The VAR community is not a relic of the past. It is a dynamic enabler of the future. Such a strong and inclusive channel is essential to building an agile, innovative, mission-ready federal IT infrastructure.
GSA should chart a balanced course that embraces the strengths of OEMs and the indispensable value of the IT channel ecosystem. The stakes are too high for anything less.
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