CSC, Stanley share $2.8B State Department contract

Computer Sciences Corp. and Stanley Inc. each have one prime contract to run non-immigrant visa application processing for the State Department.

The Global Services Strategy contract is worth $2.8 billion over 10 years and the two companies will compete for task orders for work around the world.

The contract builds off a pilot program CSC ran in Mexico to process non-immigrant visa applications. Non-immigrant visas are for tourists, business visitors, students and others who wish to come to the United States, but aren’t planning to become immigrants.

During 2008, 8 million visa applications were processed, according to an industry source close to the competition.

The State Department informed CSC and Stanley officials on Friday that their companies were selected for the lucrative contract.

But the companies have little time to celebrate, as the first three task orders for processing centers in Canada, Mexico and six English-speaking countries in West Africa will be out next week, the source said.

After that, the State Department expects to release one task order a month for 21 months. The agency has divided the globe into blocks and each block will have a task order for processing services. The work will cover 147 countries, the source said. CSC and Stanley will have between 80 and 120 days to respond to each task order.

The contract is an outsourcing project for which the contractors will collect and process applicant documents that will create an applicant file for State Department personnel to use to decide whether a visa should be issued.

In some cases, biometric information will be collected by the contractors.

The contracting of this work is not new, the source said, but before the Global Services Strategy contract, each embassy hired its own contractors.

CSC and Stanley also will collect visa fees, which will be turned over to the State Department. The contractors will bid and be paid on a per application basis, the source said.

CSC is ranked No. 9 on Washington Technology’s 2009 Top 100 list of the largest government contractors. Stanley is ranked No. 45.