GSA moves to consolidate IT infrastructure

With the award of a $200 million contract earlier this month, the General Services Administration started moving toward a centralized information technology infrastructure that will save money, but could introduce risks.

GSA awarded the contract, which has one base year and four one-year options, to Catapult Technology Ltd., a Bethesda, Md., 8(a) small business owned by a service-disabled veteran. Starting April 10, Catapult will begin consolidating GSA's 40 contracts for desktop computing, networking, voice and video service, BlackBerry technology and instant messaging under one governmentwide acquisition contract.

GSA Administrator Lurita Doan, a former small business owner, said the award shows small companies are able to take on bigger challenges.

Agency officials are estimating the contract will save $15 million a year.

Catapult's annual revenue will increase 80 percent as a result of the contract and the company plans to hire 175 new employees, said Randy J. Slager, the firm's founder and chief executive officer.

Computer Sciences Corp. and Comtech LLC will offer support as subcontractors. Overall, the three companies will dedicate 300 full-time employees to implementing the agreement.

GSA's effort follows several other major government IT consolidations.

One of the largest to date took place at the Navy Department, which streamlined its IT infrastructure with help from Texas-based Electronic Data Systems in a project dubbed the Navy Marine Corps Intranet. Navy personnel have complained about slow service, poor connections and missed delivery dates. But user surveys conducted by the contractor have shown that service has improved.

The Housing and Urban Development Department consolidated its back-end IT systems two years ago under performance-based IT services contracts with Electronic Data Systems and Lockheed Martin Corp., worth $400 million each. The contractors cut 20 percent of the agency's IT costs and the number of federal employees on the department's IT staff dropped from 385 to 280.

An Office of Management and Budget-led initiative known as the IT Infrastructure Optimization line of business is aimed at reducing governmentwide investments in technology infrastructure by 15 to 27 percent annually.

Ray Bjorklund, senior vice president at Federal Sources Inc., a technology research firm, said consolidation can make an IT infrastructure more effective and give agencies fewer contractors to manage, but savings often are overestimated. Also, if multiple contractors support an agency's infrastructure, consolidation could lock smaller companies out of work unless they subcontract with a larger firm, he said.

From an IT administrator's viewpoint, a consolidated infrastructure may make it harder to manage the deeper levels of the agency's organizational structure, Bjorklund said.

"In a complex environment, you have to be able to see what's really happening inside," Bjorklund said. "You may end up with failures. The bigger they are, the more complex they are, and you may not know what's going on."

Slager of Catapult said his company has learned from the lessons of the Navy's NMCI project, which is a much larger technology effort than GSA's. He said EDS tried to bring in existing Navy contractors under one umbrella, resulting in conflicts within the organization.

Slager said his firm and the two subcontractors will work as a cohesive unit. He also said his company will avoid rolling out a standard blueprint across the organization regardless of the needs of the agency's various units.