GSA dips toe in PC outsourcing with PRC award
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Just before year's end, the General Services Administration selected Litton PRC Inc. as the lead contractor under the Seat Management Program to take over PC operations for GSA employees. It is the first contract under the program, which GSA set up last year and for which it awarded contracts to eight vendors [GCN, July 13, 1998, Page 1]. To promote the outsourcing of PC work, GSA stepped up as the first customer.
Just before years end, the General Services Administration selected Litton PRC
Inc. as the lead contractor under the Seat Management Program to take over PC operations
for GSA employees.
It is the first contract under the program, which GSA set up last year and for which it
awarded contracts to eight vendors [GCN, July 13, 1998, Page 1]. To promote the outsourcing of PC work, GSA stepped up as the first
customer.
The 10-year, $114 million contract will support 2,500 employees at GSAs
Washington headquarters as well as Federal Technology Service offices in Fairfax and Falls
Church, Va., and the Federal Computer Acquisition Center office in Lexington, Mass. If the
agency opts to extend the task order to all GSA offices, it would be worth more than $600
million and cover all of GSAs 14,000 employees.
Although there have been other seat management projects, including contracts at the
Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and at NASA, the GSA project is seen as a test
case for the concepts potential governmentwide.
It is essential that GSA be a pioneer in this program, said Dennis Fischer,
commissioner of GSAs Federal Technology Service. Not only will this ensure its
success, but GSA will become the model for other federal government agencies to
follow.
Litton PRC was selected primarily because of its willingness to work with GSA, agency
officials said. As part of the cooperative effort, company officials will sit on the
monthly meetings of GSAs Architecture Planning Committee.
One concern about desktop PC outsourcing has been whether an agency would lose control
of an integral resource. But GSA chief information officer Shereen G. Remez said it is not
a question of losing control but of gaining expertise.
The task order establishes service-level agreements that Litton PRC must meet, and it
provides for one-, two- and three-year PC replacement rates.