GSA Moves to Speed Transition to Networx

GSA has developed follow-on contracts to ensure continuity of FTS2001 services, Krumbholz told us. The agency continues to work with the vendors and agencies by providing support for planning and implementation of the transition, he said. Monthly meetings are being coordinated with vendors and ramp-up plans are in place with vendors to help process the backlog of orders, he said. On the Networx vendors’ side, delays are caused by modification rework, increased backlog of orders to process and implement and inability to meet on-time provisioning service level agreements, he said. Level 3 meets regularly with GSA staff and hasn’t experienced these kinds of issues, said Edward Morche, a senior vice president. The company has completed and implemented all awards it was given, he said. Another cause of delay is that several large agencies failed to complete the fair opportunity process to include data networks, Krumbholz said.

The Networx transition is more than 88 percent complete, Krumbholz said, saying five agencies are now 100 percent complete and three are 99 percent complete. Overall, 17 of 26 are 90 percent or more complete, he said. Five agencies are between 88 and 89 percent complete, and the two remaining agencies are 63 percent and 47 percent complete, he said. The more complex and expensive transitions are typically the services remaining, as evidenced by the value of contracts transitioned, he said. Voice services have largely been transitioned across agencies, but more-complicated transitions like data networks are requiring longer transition times, he said. Smaller agencies are expected to be completed before the end of the year, he said. An additional option will be provided for those agencies that can’t complete the transition by year-end, he said.

While Level 3, a vendor under Networx Enterprise program, has been growing its business in the federal market substantially, the overall performance of the Enterprise contract has been disappointing, Morche said. The vast majority of awards have been on the Networx Universal program, which has AT&T, Verizon and CenturyLink as vendors, he said. The Enterprise program has the three providers plus Level 3 and Sprint Nextel. Measures to speed up the transition include: Parsing out the legacy service inventories into smaller pieces, making Enterprise the default contract or issuing all requirements on both contracts simultaneously; Using carriers’ expertise to translate legacy service information into Networx; Issuing all requirements as request for quotes -- vendors are already prequalified under Networx and conform to the requirements of the services on the contract, so an RFQ should be sufficient information to determine the best-value response from vendors, he said.

Morche also said the Fair Opportunity process could work against the adoption of Networx because it’s “far too cumbersome and agencies go out of their way to avoid it.” Many agencies are employing the “logical follow-on” rationale from the Federal Acquisition Regulations to avoid competing new business as agencies see this approach as a less-onerous method to handle their requirements, he said. This ensures that agencies do not avail themselves of the latest technologies available to meet their needs nor the most competitive solution, he said.

Networx Enterprise contractor Sprint also wants to see more opportunities on Enterprise, said Bill White, a vice president. There’s no level playing between the two contracts, he said. Sprint has urged GSA to simplify the transition process as the agency started to gather data for its next contract. White said the transition has never been moving more efficiently than it is now. Sprint’s relationship with GSA “has never been better,” he said. Sprint’s work on transitioning voice lines has been smooth. What’s left is the complicated services, he said.