NASA steps out on seat
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With two orders totalling almost $175 million, NASA last month became the first agency to use one of the government's two new multiple-award seat management buys. NASA late last month awarded a $154.9 million task order under its Outsourcing the Desktop Initiative for NASA program to OAO Corp. of Greenbelt, Md. Earlier in the month, it awarded a $19.6 million ODIN order to RMS Information Systems Inc. of Vienna, Va.
With two orders totalling almost $175 million, NASA last month became the first agency
to use one of the governments two new multiple-award seat management buys.
NASA late last month awarded a $154.9 million task order under its Outsourcing the
Desktop Initiative for NASA program to OAO Corp. of Greenbelt, Md. Earlier in the month,
it awarded a $19.6 million ODIN order to RMS Information Systems Inc. of Vienna, Va.
Rather than wait for the General Services Administration to get its governmentwide Seat
Management Program in place, NASA decided last year to define its own PC outsourcing
requirements and run a multiple-award procurement. It awarded seven vendors contracts in
June.
Meanwhile, GSA awarded eight contracts under Seat Management in July. The agency plans
to be the first to test the program and is finalizing a task order now. GSA officials
expect the first work under Seat Management will begin in January when it will start the
process of outsourcing its own PC operations.
Under its four-year NASA contract, OAO will provide desktop PC, server and
communications services to the space agencys Johnson, Kennedy and Stennis space
centers and the Marshall Space Flight Center. The outsourcing work will begin next month.
NASA chose OAO based on its competitive pricing and excellent technical
proposal, said Mark Hagerty, NASAs ODIN program manager.
NASA broke the task order into four fixed-priced delivery orders, one for each center:
It was a significant win for us, said Emmett Paige, OAOs president
and chief executive officer. We want to make desktop computer services for NASA as
easy to use as the telephone. The OAO contract will account for 60 percent of the PC
seats NASA expects to outsource through the ODIN program.
The RMS contract will run three years and cover PC operations at NASAs Goddard
Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.
The order includes services for 3,200 desktop PCs and Unix workstations, said Tor
Opsahl, vice president of NASA programs for RMS. The order also includes support for the
Center Network Environment, a campus backbone serving Goddard and the nearby Wallops
Flight Facility.
Understanding Goddards scientific and research-oriented environment allowed
us to cater to their specific needs and objectives, resulting in a strategic solution
rather than a rote tactical one, said Michael A. Berta, president and CEO of
RMS parent company, the Intellisource Group.
NASA plans to negotiate two more contracts under ODIN, one for headquarters services
and another for services at other NASA facilities, Hagerty said.
Besides OAO and RMS, the other ODIN vendors are Boeing Information Services Inc. of
Vienna, Va.; Computer Sciences Corp.; Dyncorp of Reston, Va.; FDC Technologies of
Bethesda, Md.; and Wang Government Systems Inc. of McLean, Va.