HUD Narrows Outsourcing Field to Four

The Department of Housing and Urban Development is getting closer to releasing a request for proposal on its HUD Information Technology Service contract, and has tapped four companies it wants to bid on the work.


The HITS program will be a 10-year, $530 million, seat-management contract for between 10,000 and 14,000 departmental users.

The four companies HUD has declared "viable" competitors for the deal are:

*Electronic Data Systems Corp., Plano, Texas;

*IBM Corp., Armonk, N.Y.;

*Affiliated Computer Services Inc., Dallas;

*Lockheed Martin Corp., Bethesda, Md., the incumbent contractor.


On its Web site, the department says the determination of viability does not preclude other prospective contractors from bidding.


"They wanted to inform the industry" which companies could meet the department's needs, said Paul Bize, EDS' client sales executive for HUD. "This was really a message to say, 'You can go ahead and bid on this ... but HUD has determined [who is] really qualified to perform this task.' "


The current contract, which covers facilities management and maintenance, was awarded to Lockheed Martin in November 1990. According to HUD, there are some 12,000 users on multiple local-area networks in 85 cities in the United States.

The system processes more than 350,000 transactions a day, including some 3.5 million pages of printed material each month in support of federal housing issues, fair housing opportunities and improvement and development of the nation's communities.