Verizon protests lost Coast Guard task order
Verizon is pushing back on the Coast Guard s award of a $181 million task order to AT&T.
The Coast Guard used the Enterprise Infrastructure Solutions vehicle for the award and Verizon is complaining the evaluation was not done properly.
The Defense Information Systems Agency ran the procurement for the Coast Guard and the task order is known as the Coast Guard Operational Enterprise Network Transport.
Verizon filed its protest on Jan. 14. A decision is expected by April 26.
There was much angst at one time about the transition from the Networx telecommunications contract to its successor in EIS. But EIS competitions seem to be active if the volume of bid protests we’ve seen is any indication.
No Failures in Latest FITARA Scorecard But 5 Agencies Slip Lucky-photographer/Shutterstock.com
email December 22, 2020
In a first, every agency got an A on at least one metric. But a new column on telecom transition brought several agencies down.
Taking the long view, federal agencies have been making progress on IT modernization goals since the House began tracking them in 2015 through a biannual scorecard. But the latest report card shows some slippage, mostly due to a new metric.
Since the passage of the Federal IT Acquisition Reform Act, or FITARA, the House Committee on Oversight and Reform has commissioned two scorecards each year measuring agencies progress in a host of IT reform areas.
Although most agencies held steady or advanced their grades in the latest Federal Information Technology Acquisition Reform Act (FITARA) scorecard, a new telecommunications transition metric was giving some of them headaches.
On Dec. 22, the House Oversight Committee s Subcommittee on Government Operations released its 11th FITARA scorecard tallying how 24 large federal agencies have managed their IT over the last several months.
The latest scorecard shows 16 of the two dozen agencies responding held steady overall grades, with the majority in the B and C range. The General Services Administration and the U.S. Agency for International Development notably dropped from A-plus and A respectively to B-plus and B. At the bottom of the list with C-minus grades were the Departments of Justice and State, and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
By Mark Rockwell
The General Services Administration is continuing to develop a civilian version of the Pentagon s Defense Enterprise Office Solutions (DEOS) blanket purchase agreement for cloud-based productivity tools. The Defense Department s contact vehicle supplies Microsoft 365 cloud-based email, productivity and communications apps. A GSA official explained in a Dec. 9 virtual event hosted by AFFIRM that a Civilian Enterprise Office Solutions (CEOS) contract requires a different approach. Agencies are much different in how they’re federated compared to the DOD, Allen Hill, acting deputy assistant commissioner for category management in the Federal Acquisition Service s Office of Information Technology Category, said. That takes more planning. You can t just put in an acquisition vehicle and everybody gets in line. We’re taking a more strategic approach of what types of services to include in CEOS.
DISA Nearing Completion on Certain EIS Task Orders greenbutterfly/Shutterstock
email December 9, 2020
The Defense Information Systems Agency, which is leading the move to EIS for the Defense Department, reported the pandemic has not slowed transition progress.
The Defense Department is making progress in the transition to the General Services Administration s $50 billion Enterprise Infrastructure Solutions telecommunications contracting vehicle despite the time it took to develop an “entirely new business strategy,” according to the Defense Information Systems Agency.
DISA, which is leading the move off Networx to EIS for DOD via its Defense Information Technology Contract Organization, said issuance of 52 task orders is “nearing completion” in a press release Tuesday. The coronavirus pandemic has neither stopped nor slowed the transition effort, according to DISA’s press release.