Eight companies qualify to chase San Diego IT outsourcing deal

San Diego County has qualified eight major systems integrators to compete as prime contractors for the renewal of its enterprisewide IT outsourcing project, the county confirmed this week. An RFP is expected May 19.

The companies are Accenture Ltd., Affiliated Computer Services Inc., CGI Group Inc., Computer Sciences Corp., EDS Corp., IBM Corp., Northrop Grumman Corp. and Unisys Corp.

Not all of the companies are expected to bid on the project as primes. The county ultimately expects to receive bids from five teams, said San Diego County Chief Information Officer Michael Moore.

"Some of the companies may elect not to bid [as primes] and join other teams," he said. "They don't have to declare their team until they submit their bid." In addition, there is "a next layer of contractors that can join into the fray" as subcontractors, Moore added.

CSC is the incumbent prime contractor and Science Applications International Corp. is a key subcontractor on the seven-year project scheduled to expire next year.

The new contract is valued at more than $800 million over seven years.

To qualify as primes, the companies had to have more than $1 billion in annual sales and certify that neither the company nor its officers had been criminally charged or indicted in the last three years, nor had the company defaulted on a government contract in the same period.

They also had to have an active state and local IT outsourcing contract worth $20 million over the past three years and experience in two of five IT outsourcing "frameworks," such as desktop, network, applications, help desk and data center support services.

The winning team is scheduled to be selected Dec. 5, and the contract signed Jan. 6, 2006, in conjunction with the County Board of Supervisors first meeting of the year, Moore said.