Application of GSA Policies to the CBCA

Since its inception on January 20, 2025, the Trump administration has emphasized the need for executive agencies to carefully review their structures and missions with an eye to reducing costs, streamlining operations, and simplifying organizations to increase efficiency and effectiveness. In response, senior leadership at GSA has been taking a close look at every facet of the agency identifying best practices and areas for improvement. All of the services and staff offices have now been reviewed and their operations fine tuned with personnel and resources reallocated accordingly. The review also highlighted a disconnect between the Civilian Board of Contract Appeals (CBCA) and the rest of the GSA organization with the CBCA functioning more like an independent agency than a component of greater GSA. The disconnect has led to reduced efficiency due to CBCA having duplicative staff to perform support functions and inconsistency resulting from the CBCA establishing its own policies rather than following those of GSA. In order to fully comply with the directives from the Trump administration and ensure GSA is operating at peak efficiency and effectiveness, it is necessary to recalibrate the relationship.

Effective immediately, language in any GSA internal policy, order, or directive exempting the CBCA from coverage or from complying with the policy, order, or directive is null and void. The CBCA is an organization within GSA, not a statutorily independent entity and, therefore, in order to promote consistency and efficiency, shall be subject to the same internal policies, orders, and directives as the other GSA services and staff offices. If the CBCA seeks to have a specific exemption to a policy, the Chair may make a request in writing to the Administrator or the HSSO who issued the internal policy, order, or directive.

The Executive Secretariat and Agency Liaison Services Division shall implement this memorandum through administrative edits to all existing policies.