GovWorks enters federal telecom business

GovWorks, the fee-for-service acquisition shop at the Interior Department's Minerals Management Service, fired the opening shot Thursday in what industry insiders and experts believe will be a war for the government's telecommunications business. Speaking at a federal telecom conference in Reston, Va., GovWorks chief David Sutfin laid out the agency's plan to create an open-ended contract that would rely on companies to craft tailor-made service agreements with individual agencies, rather than relying on the traditional procurement approach in which numerous specific requirements are spelled out by the agency. GovWorks would oversee and manage those contracts. GovWorks will use a "statement of objectives" approach to create task orders on its broad contract. Companies would be allowed into agencies to assess the organizations' assets and future needs. They then would help write orders for services, drawing from a menu of choices that could bundle together voice, data and wireless services in one package. "The process [for buying telecom services] is broken," Sutfin said. "We think that this model will reform the way we are buying telecommunications services within the government." Services are currently "bought in a vacuum," he added, saying that bringing vendors in before orders are written would let the private sector create more flexible contracts that take advantage of industry expertise. GovWorks officials have been meeting for the past several months with members of the telecom industry, Hill staffers and senior executives at Interior. Sutfin said GovWorks hopes to put a formal solicitation out sometime in March, and that the first contracts would be awarded 30 to 45 days after that. The GovWorks contract puts the agency in competition with the General Services Administration's Federal Technology Service for agencies' local, long-distance, wireless and data transmissions services, observers have said. FTS, also a fee-for-service organization, operates a series of telecom contracts and agencies pay FTS fees to manage delivery and billing. The agency has come under fire from members of Congress for charging fees as high as 80 percent on its local telephone service agreements. FTS officials justify those fees, saying the complicated task of compiling invoices for local service requires the agency to recoup some of its operating costs. Sutfin challenged that notion, saying the GovWorks contract would promise agencies a 50 percent to 500 percent reduction in FTS' fee structure. GovWorks is in final negotiations with TeleBright Corp., a telecom billing services provider in Rockville, Md., to allow the firm to analyze agencies' current invoices free of charge to find overpayments and show how the GovWorks contract could save them money, according to Kristie Hughes, the company's vice president of marketing. GSA spokesman Bill Bearden, speaking on behalf of FTS, said, "We feel confident that we are adding value at extremely competitive prices with the best industry partners. We will continue to maintain our customer focus so that we remain the provider of choice." Sutfin said that GovWorks would evaluate contractors heavily on their past work performance and would craft performance goals on which they would be measured and rewarded on a commensurate basis. Acquisition Solutions Inc., a consulting firm in Chantilly, Va., will help draft future contracts, Sutfin said. The firm is a strong advocate of allowing industry to craft solutions to government's needs. Bob Welch, a partner with ASI, said of the inter-agency rivalry that could ensue: "Competition is a good thing...and competition in procurement offices is a good thing, as well." The GovWorks proposal has been discussed throughout federal telecom circles for the past year and has received wide support from Congress and industry. Natasha Haubold, a spokeswoman for WorldCom, an FTS long-distance contractor, said the company is looking forward to working with GovWorks. At the conference Thursday, other telecom industry officials also expressed interest in becoming GovWorks vendors.