GSA chief says huge telecom contract to be awarded soon

The head of the General Services Administration said Thursday that awards for the largest portion of the much-anticipated governmentwide telecommunications contract Networx will be issued in the "next few days."

The process for awarding the contract is on schedule and is nearly finished, said Lurita Doan, GSA's administrator, at the annual FOSE conference in downtown Washington. Analysts have estimated the deal ranges in value from $20 billion to $50 billion, over what could be as long as 10 years.

GSA officials repeatedly have said that the largest part of the acquisition, known as Networx Universal, will be awarded in March. The second, smaller portion of the procurement, called Networx Enterprise, is on track for award in May, GSA officials have said.

The four big companies bidding on Networx Universal are AT&T, Sprint, Qwest and Verizon.

"A lot of skeptics thought that GSA would delay the award again and again, but we are going to get it out on time," Doan said. "I know GSA … pretty frequently missed its deadlines and that contract awards were routinely delayed, but now we have a management team in place that fully understands that time is money and that if we delay awards, we better have a pretty good reason."

Doan said Networx is a complete telecommunications solution available to the entire federal government. The Treasury and Homeland Security departments will be some of GSA's biggest customers for the telecom contract, thanks to the work of Federal Acquisition Service Commissioner Jim Williams, and John Johnson, assistant commissioner for integrated technology services at the agency's procurement arm.

In December, Treasury agreed to kill its in-house telecommunication services acquisition in favor of Networx. Critics of Treasury's solo effort said the department's inclusion in Networx would help create greater economies of scale, translating to cheaper prices for the entire government. But GSA officials have said that the move would not likely affect governmentwide rates.

Treasury's decision to use Networx has not come without controversy for GSA. Treasury negotiated a 50 percent reduction in Networx fees for services it now buys through GSA's existing telecom contract, FTS 2001.

In related news, GSA's governmentwide acquisition contracts Alliant and Alliant Small Business are on target for awards in June and August, respectively, Doan said. These cover information technology systems and services. GSA also is aiming to award its satellite services contract SATCOM-II this spring and the WITS 3 contract, which will provides local telecommunications services to agencies in the Washington, D.C., region, in the fall.

Doan said Williams and Johnson told her Wednesday morning that they are "absolutely" sure that she could make the statements on the contracts because "these procurements are running on time or ahead of schedule."