The General Services Administration, or the GSA, is a massive program that supplies various services, items, vehicles, and information to any and all federal government agencies that need them, and the GSA and its services are neatly divided by many categories. Every year, many billions of dollars are spent to make sure that office buildings, historical buildings, natural environments, police agencies, military squads, and firefighters receive the equipment, vehicles, and information that they need to keep their agencies running smoothly. For many federal agents, this can be described simply as the GSA providing a tailored logistics support program for agencies such as U.S. Army platoons, police departments, and firefighters, for anything from C4ISR systems to defense contractors to firearm optics and firefighting equipment. Emergency services of all kinds, such as search and rescue, may also make use of a tailored logistics support program from the GSA. How does this work?
GSA Basics
Overall, the GSA has a Schedules program that is divided into about 30 Schedules, which are contracts categorized by various industries. Further, the GSA’s Security Schedule is divided into over 100 subcategories, and these subcategories are known as Special Item Numbers, or SINs. Often, a tailored logistics support program for police or firefighters will come from any and all relevant Schedules or SINs like these. As one example, the GSA’s Buildings and Building Materials Schedule 56 will provide the American federal government with sources of high-quality industrial services and supplies, and even prefabricated structures if needed. And for more general goods and services, the GSA can stock office buildings with mundane items such as work computers, filing cabinets, desks and chairs and more. Vehicles, too, are a responsibility of the GSA; every year, it will procure just over 65,000 vehicles, and this reaches a total of $1 billion in high-quality vehicles and other automotive services that are needed.
The GSA can also take care of the preservation of historical buildings across the United States, and it can make sure that productive work is being done in them and that they are torn down whenever needed. And for any ongoing government program, the GSA will also handle environmental protection, ensuring that government programs and buildings do not pollute or otherwise damage natural ecosystems.
A Tailored Logistics Support Program
For the police and military branches of the federal government, having a tailored logistics support program is a route to success in any endeavor, and this may include providing C4ISR services as needed. What is that? According to Novel Engineering, C4ISR is Command, Control, Communications, Computer, Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance, and each part of C4ISR is vital. Command and Control, to start with, is a general term for describing the exercise of authority in a given environment in the pursuit of a mission, and put another way, this is how orders are given and where decisions are made. Generally, governments and militaries around the world accept this definition fairly closely.
The third “C” in C4ISR is Communications, which is another broad, general term for the transmission of information by one means or another (usually digital in today’s world), and the fourth “C” is Computer, simply describing how computers are central to C4iSR work by any agency today. Without them, such work would be impossible, and various C4ISR agencies around the world will need powerful computers to stay competitive with each other, and the GSA is no exception; a tailored logistics support program is bound to include up to date, effective computers for any agency that needs them.
Intelligence, meanwhile, is any information that pertains to the mission and the goals or objectives of that mission. Surveillance is the act of monitoring and observing the behavior of others so that intelligence can be gathered, and this can be done by means such as intercepting electronic communications, monitoring video and audio, and human intelligence gathering. Finally, “R” is Reconnaissance, which is not to be confused with Surveillance. In this case, Reconnaissance means using personnel and/or remotely operated drones to gather intelligence outside of the C4ISR team’s zone of control. In short, it is the act of scouting and gathering intelligence in hostile or unknown territory.
