There are approximately 90 small agencies. Some are larger and well-known (FCC, SEC) while some are very tiny with only a handful of employees (American Battle Monuments Commission, Christopher Columbus Foundation). The problem is that the smaller agencies have very little buying power. They often pay much higher rates than the large agencies. Or, in some cases, small agencies don't buy at all because they can't afford to.

With this in mind, in 2001, the Small Agency CIO Council embarked on what we're now calling SACC-SPI (Special Pricing Initiative). The first agreement we put in place was with Microsoft. Since then, we've put several more agreements in place. In the meantime, GSA has launched the SmartBuy program which, like SPI, is designed to negotiate discounted prices on software and hardware — but for the entire government, not just small agencies. The SACC communicates regularly with the SmartBuy team to ensure we are working together.

How the program works:

1. The vendor offers special volume discount pricing to any of the 90 member agencies (same price to everyone).
2. The volume discount is calculated using the size of the entire Small Agency CIO Council membership (approximately 125,000 desktops) rather that the size of each member agency. This enables the tiny agency to get the same price as a larger one. In essence, the vendor is treating us like a single agency of 125,000 desktops.
3. The discount is offered by the vendor's GSA resellers (or other appropriate resellers). For example, Adobe allows any of our member agencies to get an enrollment number that allows them to go to their Adobe GSA Reseller of choice and get the discounted pricing. We do it this way so that we aren't favoring just one reseller over another.

How the program benefits both vendor and agency

1. It benefits the vendor because, from a marketing perspective, they are able to reach out to 90 agencies very efficiently and effectively.  It gives them a competitive advantage over other vendors that don't cater to the small agency community.  They are also able to make sales that probably wouldn't have happened otherwise. 
2. It benefits the agency because they are able to afford technology they couldn't afford before and it allows them to save valuable resources. 

SPI Agreements currently in place

1. Meta Security Group — Covers their FISMA compliance software.
2. Department of the Treasury — American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) software for measuring and improving the quality of their websites
3. Scalable Software — Covers discounted software inventory/IPv6 compliance tools.
4. Planet Technologies — Covers discounted training seminars for Federal Enterprise Architecture (FEA), Certification and Accreditation, and IP v6 Transition Planning.