Six contractors picked for share-in-savings deal

The General Services Administration today awarded six companies blanket purchase agreements worth up to $500 million to help agencies develop share-in-savings contracts.

Ken Buck, director of GSA's share-in-savings program office, said 23 agencies are authorized to use the contract for a broad range of IT services, including the e-government initiatives, systems consolidation and business process re-engineering.

The contract runs through Sept. 30, 2005, which is when the congressional mandate ends.

Agencies are not required to use the BPAs, but the contract provides agencies with a starting point to enter into these somewhat complicated agreements. The contract also streamlines the contract process to save agencies time.

The BPAs standardize the terms used in share-in-savings contracts and identify a group of vendors that have performed well on other government contracts.

The BPAs are based on the terms and conditions outlined on the vendors' GSA Federal Supply Service IT schedule contracts.

Buck said agencies could work through FSS or administer the contract on its own.

GSA chose Accenture LLP, CGI Group Inc. of Montreal, Computer Sciences Corp., IBM Corp., Science Applications International Corp. of San Diego and SRA International Inc. of Fairfax, Va.

"This adds legitimacy to the concept of share-in-savings for agencies and vendors," said one industry source, who requested anonymity.

GSA looked at the vendors past performance, financial stability and corporate culture when making the award decisions. Buck said each of the vendors demonstrated success with share-in-savings contracts at the state, local, federal or commercial level.

The award comes two weeks after the Federal Acquisition Regulations Councils published a proposed rule in the Federal Register outlining the process to develop and award share-in-savings contracts.

"The procedures in the BPA bring to life the FAR rule," Buck said. "It references the business case tool on our Web site, which gives a clear definition of how to capture baseline costs."

GSA is adding information about the BPA to its share-in-savings training, which is open to all federal agencies, Buck said.

"Right now we consider having the FAR rule published a major accomplishment, and this is another one that gives agencies the tools they need to contract using share-in-savings," Buck said.