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The General Services Administration might want to consider installing a revolving door in its administrator's office. For the fifth time in less than eight years, the Bush administration has made a change atop the government's main contracting agency.

On June 25, the White House announced that it had nominated James Williams, the commissioner of GSA's Federal Acquisition Service, to head the agency, at least until a new administration takes over next year. The announcement came just hours after David Bibb, GSA's acting administrator, said he would retire on September 1 after nearly 37 years with the agency. Bibb is taking a position in the private sector with a new real estate firm that he declined to identify.

His retirement is a difficult blow for an agency that has been through its share of turmoil in recent years. Bibb first served as acting administrator after the rocky tenure of Stephen Perry, who had been buffeted by repeated legal scandals, came to an abrupt end in 2005. Bibb filled that same interim role again this year when the White House pulled the plug on Perry's replacement, Lurita Doan. A lightning rod for controversy, Doan was dismissed in late April because of an ugly public feud with GSA's Inspector General Brian Miller.

Turnover at the top isn't unusual in the last year of an administration. In the past few months, new leaders have been appointed at the departments of Justice, and Housing and Urban Development, and at the Small Business Administration.

"No one wants to be part of the group that cuts out the lights," says Robert Woods, a former commissioner of GSA's now-defunct Federal Technology Service, who runs a consulting group in Vienna, Va. "If you are going to leave, you want to go early, while the pickings are still good." In 2006, the Federal Technology Service merged with the Federal Supply Service to form the Federal Acquisition Service.

Constant management overhauls can take a toll on a GSA workforce that by most accounts is understaffed and overburdened with an escalating number of contracts.

"There is a little bit of angst, I would say, with the leadership changes," Bibb said last Friday in a conference call with reporters. "Had we had two people coming in who were start-ups and knew nothing about GSA ... then it would have really upset our workforce. But I think our workforce is really comfortable with me, and I think they will be really comfortable with Jim."

Woods says that career GSA employees are used to change at the top and have learned to roll with the punches, no matter who is in charge. "You need to be agnostic to the situation," he says. "They don't view it as bad or as good; just different."

Williams--who has declined media interviews until after his confirmation hearing with the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee--would be the first GSA administrator in recent memory nominated from the career ranks to permanently run the agency. In the past, career staffers such as Bibb have tended to inherit the administrator position only in an interim role.

Bibb said that his retirement has been in the works for several months and may have expedited the White House's search for a permanent agency chief.

Early in his career, Williams served as director of a telecommunications procurement division at GSA. He later served in several executive positions with the Internal Revenue Service and then as the director of the US-VISIT program, the Homela nd Security Department's much-maligned immigration and border management system.

Committee members are likely to quiz Williams about US-VISIT's exit-tracking system, which DHS has promised to implement by June 2009 but which congressional investigators have criticized as ill-defined and poorly managed. Committee aides did not return calls for comment, and a confirmation hearing date has not been scheduled.

Williams could also face questions about his role in a number of the controversies that tailed Doan during her tenure. Doan brought Williams back to the agency in June 2006 to run GSA's main purchasing unit, and the two were reportedly close allies.

Doan told Government Executive that Williams is "a wonderful choice" to assume her old office. "He has firsthand experience with the challenges at GSA," she said, "and is well prepared to meet them."