Category Management and GSA OneGov for Software Companies
By Philip Luca — Founder of GovExpress; prior domain experience at Bloomberg Government and GovWin IQ.
A software company new to federal sales usually pictures its first deal as one agency, one buyer, one contract. Increasingly the government doesn’t buy software that way. It buys through a small number of preferred, government-wide routes, and it negotiates more of its software terms centrally. The policy behind that shift is called category management, and its most visible recent form for software is GSA’s OneGov strategy.
This guide explains what category management is, what Best-in-Class vehicles are, how OneGov changes the conversation for software publishers, and how to plan your route in with all of that in mind.
What category management is
Category management is the government’s practice of buying common goods and services the way a large company does. Instead of thousands of offices each running their own purchases, spending is grouped into categories, such as IT, professional services and facilities, and each category is managed to steer buyers toward a smaller set of well-run contracts.
The policy foundation is OMB Memorandum M-19-13, Category Management: Making Smart Decisions When Buying Common Goods and Services, issued in 2019. It asks agencies to bring their spending under management, to reduce duplicate contracts, and to favour government-wide solutions that have already been vetted.
For a software company, the practical effect is simple: an agency contracting officer is under pressure to buy through an existing, approved route before creating a new one.
Best-in-Class vehicles
The clearest output of category management is the Best-in-Class (BIC) designation. OMB designates certain government-wide contracts as BIC solutions because they meet standards for pricing, terms, management and data. Agencies are encouraged to use them first.
For software, the routes that matter most are the ones you’ll already hear about:
| Route | What it is |
|---|---|
| GSA Multiple Award Schedule | GSA’s long-running government-wide schedule, including IT software and SaaS |
| GWACs | Government-wide acquisition contracts for IT, held by a fixed group of primes |
| SEWP | NASA’s government-wide contract for IT products, widely used for software |
| Enterprise software agreements | Agreements negotiated for many buyers at once, such as the Department of War’s Enterprise Software Initiative (ESI) |
Which contracts carry the BIC designation changes over time, so check the current list on the GSA Acquisition Gateway rather than relying on a list you remember. See federal contract vehicles for software companies for how these vehicles work.
What OneGov changes
On March 20, 2025, Executive Order 14240, Eliminating Waste and Saving Taxpayer Dollars by Consolidating Procurement, directed agencies to consolidate procurement of common goods and services, including IT, through GSA. GSA’s answer for software is its OneGov strategy, launched later in 2025. Under OneGov, GSA negotiates government-wide terms directly with software publishers, rather than leaving every agency, reseller and prime to negotiate their own.
Three things follow for a software company:
- The publisher is in the room. OneGov deals are negotiated with the company that makes the software, not only with the resellers who sell it. A publisher can engage GSA directly.
- Terms set once, used widely. Pricing and license terms agreed through GSA can apply across agencies, which favours products that can be offered on consistent, government-wide terms.
- Agencies are steered toward the deal. Where a government-wide agreement exists for a product category, an agency buying something similar outside it has more to justify.
None of this replaces the vehicles above. Purchases still have to be placed through a contract, usually a Schedule or another existing route, and resellers still fulfil much of the volume. What changes is where the terms are decided.
What it means for an early-stage software company
Category management cuts both ways for a company without a federal footprint yet.
It raises the bar for a standalone contract. An agency that wants your product may still need to buy it through an approved route. A first deal that requires the agency to set up a brand-new contract is harder to justify than one placed on a vehicle it already uses.
It rewards being on the right route early. Getting your product onto a reseller’s Schedule or SEWP contract, or holding your own GSA Schedule, puts you where buyers are told to look first.
It favours readiness that’s easy to check. A government-wide deal or BIC vehicle carries terms and documentation that every buyer can rely on. That includes license terms an agency can sign, accessibility documentation and, for cloud products, an authorization path such as FedRAMP. Claims you make about yourself are self-attested until someone verifies them, and centrally negotiated deals tend to ask for evidence. See verified vs. self-attested: what federal buyers actually check.
A practical plan
- Find out how agencies buy products like yours today. Look at whether comparable software is bought on the Schedule, SEWP, a GWAC or an enterprise agreement. Public award data shows which vehicles carry the orders. See federal TAM sizing for ISVs.
- Pick a route buyers are already told to use. For most early companies that means a reseller on a Schedule or SEWP contract before your own vehicle.
- Make your terms government-ready. Have a federal version of your license terms and a price list you can hold consistently across buyers.
- Watch for a government-wide agreement in your category. If GSA has struck a OneGov deal with a competitor, plan for agencies to measure you against those terms.
- Settle the basics first. An active SAM.gov registration and a clear country-of-origin answer come up on every one of these routes.
Where it fits in your federal readiness
Category management decides which doors are easiest to walk through. It doesn’t decide whether you’re ready to walk through them. To see where your company stands across the categories federal buyers check, score your company’s federal readiness.
Related reading
The CMMC brief
What the Phase 2 suspension changed and what it did not — the obligations that still bind, the assessment path a contract puts you on, the scoping decision that drives the cost, and the sequence that fits inside a pipeline. Sourced from the primary record.