Key Points:
- IGSAs Cut Procurement Time from Months to Days: Intergovernmental Support Agreements streamline purchasing, reducing timelines from 14–18 months to less than a week.
- Significant Cost and Efficiency Gains: IGSAs deliver 20–25% cost savings and free up hundreds of staff hours, allowing teams to focus on mission-critical priorities.
- Direct Impact on Readiness and Responsiveness: Faster procurement ensures installations can address urgent needs — like repairs and maintenance — without delays, strengthening operational readiness.
How Much Time Savings Can IGSA Provide?
When it comes to government procurement, time is often the most precious resource. Traditional contracting processes can stretch across 14–18 months, requiring hundreds of staff hours and multiple layers of review. For installations under pressure to maintain readiness and deliver services quickly, that timeline is a major obstacle.
Enter Intergovernmental Support Agreements (IGSAs) — a game-changing approach that dramatically accelerates procurement.
From Months to Days: The IGSA Advantage
As Dave Leinberger, Chief of Army Community Partnerships, explained during our recent webinar, exercising an option under a standard FAR-based contract involves contracting officers, legal reviews and extensive paperwork. The cumulative effort can easily reach hundreds of hours spread over many weeks.
By contrast, an IGSA streamlines the process into a government-to-government agreement that bypasses traditional competitive bidding. The result? Renewals and task orders that once took months can now be completed within a single week.
“With an IGSA, we typically take about three days to validate requirements and exercise the option — literally in less than a week — versus hundreds of hours combined under the traditional process.” — Dave Leinberger
Missed the Webinar? Watch IGSAs in Action: Accelerating Government Procurement — Now On-Demand
Why Speed Matters
Faster procurement isn’t just about convenience. It directly impacts:
- Mission Readiness: Installations get critical services — like maintenance, construction or emergency repairs — without delays.
- Cost Efficiency: IGSA agreements often deliver 20–25% savings compared to traditional contracts.
- Administrative Relief: Procurement teams reclaim time for strategic priorities instead of drowning in paperwork.
How It Works
An IGSA is a contract agreement between the military and a cooperative purchasing organization. The agreement gives installations purchasing access to a wide swath of products and services available through that cooperative organization, like office supplies, IT services, base operations equipment and even contractors for construction and maintenance projects.
Because the agreement has already been signed by military leadership, purchases made through IGSAs don’t need to go through a standard procurement cycle. Think of it like going to a restaurant instead of home-cooking a meal. Rather than buying all the ingredients yourself, prepping them and waiting for them to cook, you can simply order off the menu and have your meal ready in a fraction of the time.
Real-World Impact
Consider this: Under a FAR-based process, a project might take a year to award. With IGSA, installations can issue task orders immediately under pre-negotiated agreements. That speed proved vital for emergency rail repairs at Fort Sill and chiller replacement at Fort Hood — projects completed in weeks, not months.
The Bottom Line
IGSAs aren’t just a procurement shortcut — they’re a force multiplier for government efficiency. By reducing timelines from months to days, they help agencies meet readiness goals, save taxpayer dollars and strengthen partnerships with local communities.
Ready to learn more? Explore how IGSA can transform your procurement strategy and deliver faster, smarter results.
