GTSI Contract Award Sustained by GAO
By
Nick Wakeman
The General Accounting Office is recommending that GTSI Corp. be reinstated on the Army Maxi-Minis and Databases contract that has been the subject of dispute since August 2000.
The General Accounting Office is recommending that GTSI Corp., Chantilly, Va., be reinstated on the Army Maxi-Minis and Databases contract that has been the subject of dispute since August 2000.
The contract has a potential value of $857 million to GTSI, one of two companies that won the contract in August.
However, protests filed with the Army by losing bidders put the contract on hold. The Army Materiel Command, which heard protests filed by Litton PRC Inc., McLean, Va., and Federal Data Corp., Bethesda, Md., upheld the award of the contract to the other winning bidder, IBM Corp., Armonk, N.Y.
But the award to GTSI was called into question. The command recommended that the Army take corrective action that could include reopening for competition the award to GTSI.
GTSI filed a protest of the Army Materiel Command decision with GAO, which has ruled in the company's favor, GTSI officials said March 26.
"We are hopeful that we can now move forward with this contract," said Dendy Young, GTSI chairman and chief executive. "The contract will play to our strength in high-end Unix computing, networking and enterprise storage environments and affirms our position as a leading provider of integrated high-end products and services."
While awarded by the Army, the contract also is for the Navy and the Internal Revenue Service. The government will use the contract to acquire high-end servers, workstations, operating systems, software, networking, engineering, training and support services.