Page 36 - FCW, September/October 2019
P. 36

CAN EIS
STAY ON
SCHEDULE?
With a deadline looming, only three awards have been made under the governmentwide Enterprise Infrastructure Solutions contract for telecom modernization
BY MARK ROCKWELL
The General Services Administration and the deadline is feeling far less firm. “I believed it when
White House have promoted the Enterprise
Infrastructure Solutions telecommunications contract as a key part of the government’s IT modern- ization effort. But as the Sept. 30 deadline looms for agencies to issue solicitations, only a handful have awarded large contracts and none have incorporated robust plans for larger-scale IT modernization.
So far, just three task orders have been awarded. NASA signed an $11 million EIS contract with Centu- ryLink in April, and the Justice Department signed a contract with AT&T in June for almost $1 billion. The Railroad Retirement Board also contracted with AT&T — for a 13-year agreement worth up to $10 million.
The Sept. 30 milestone is one of three that GSA set in 2018 when it extended the deadline for agencies to transition to EIS from 2020 to 2023 because they were slow to issue solicitations under the contract vehicle.
Dave Young, senior vice president of strategic gov- ernment at EIS vendor CenturyLink, said the Sept. 30
it was originally stated,” he said. “As time has worn on, I’ve lost faith in it.”
Allen Hill, director of the Office of Telecommunica- tions Services in GSA’s Federal Acquisition Service, acknowledged in late August that many agencies won’t make the September deadline. That’s not a cause for alarm, he said, but “more of a yellow light” that shows an agency “needs to step it up.”
Slippage at this stage won’t affect GSA’s other EIS transition target dates, he added.
Bill Zielinski, assistant commissioner for the Office of IT Category in FAS, said agencies are making prog- ress in moving to EIS and cited GSA’s transition score- card and review of agency plans.
Agencies’ migration from time-division multiplex- ing circuits to Ethernet began under GSA’s Networx contract and “is continuing and accelerating with EIS,” Zielinski told FCW.
Based on conversations about their EIS plans, he
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