GSA reworks strategy for technology services contract

The General Services Administration is touting what it calls an innovative rethink of its still-in-development $65 billion solicitation for information technology services, called Alliant.

In an online video posted Tuesday, Alliant Project Manager Jim Ghiloni detailed the results of GSA's effort to reshape the procurement. The agency released a draft request for proposals last March, but later decided to halt the process until it had time to reconsider the contract vehicle's terms.

A second draft RFP is set for release by June. Among the changes will be a mechanism to certify and decertify vendors working on the indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity contract. That will entail periodic assessments of vendors' performance and ability to meet the contract's requirements.

The latter is a particularly important factor for firms on the small business set-aside portion of Alliant. Recurring reviews of vendors also will allow GSA to replace companies merged or acquired into other companies.

"They're giving themselves some flexibility in being able to open [Alliant] back up and entertain some offers in the middle of the contract term," said Steve Charles, executive vice president of immixGroup, a McLean, Va.-based government procurement consulting company.

Keeping long-term contracts fresh is a challenge, Charles added. Alliant has a five-year base with a five-year option for extension. Opening up the procurement vehicle for additional competitions during this span "is a new concept; I guess it's appropriate for a multiple-award environment," he said.

GSA also said it will change Alliant's statement of work to align with the federal enterprise architecture, an Office of Management and Budget effort to classify and control government IT expenditures.

This avoids over-stipulation of specific technologies and allows agencies to shop for services based on their functional needs, Ghiloni said. A typical federal statement of work resembles a grocery list, when it should resemble a directory of food categories, he said. Rather than specify a particular cereal brand, Alliant will allow bidders to provide their best cereal possible.

GSA's other major procurement, Networx, also defines itself using federal enterprise architecture classifications.

Growing inclusion of such classifications in government contracts indicates a trend toward modular, reusable solutions, said Mike Tiemann, a longtime enterprise architecture proponent, now a senior associate at Booz Allen Hamilton. Governmentwide adoption of the federal enterprise architecture's hierarchical classification system allows agencies to know when others have bought similar IT services, making it more likely that an existing solution can be used elsewhere.

Categorizing IT services that way also means that agencies could become less dependent on end-to-end solutions offered by the private sector and attain greater ability to pick and choose specific components. Services offered by different companies would begin to have common interfaces, making them able to snap together like Lego blocks.

"The government's strategy is to leverage across contracts and get reusable stuff out of the contracts," Tiemann said.