GSA seeks enterprisewide management of IT assets

The General Services Administration has released a highly anticipated draft solicitation for small businesses to help the agency streamline and support its IT infrastructure across the agency.

In a notice, GSA said that because it is in the midst of a major reorganization?merging the Federal Supply and Federal Technology services into the Federal Acquisition Service?it must rethink how it manages its IT assets.

Currently, GSA lets its different services?FSS, FTS and the Public Building Service?maintain and manage their assets separately. But because of the creation of FAS and other changes, the agency wants to centralize its IT operations, starting this year.

"A major component to making GSA's information technology operation more efficient is centrally managed infrastructure operations," the notice said. "In addition to standardizing our operations across geographic and organizational boundaries, GSA expects to transform the operational dynamics of the existing organization. ? A goal of transformation is streamlining operations to eliminate functional/organizational stovepipes, while improving the reliability of operations or levels of service."

The award will fall under the 8(a) STARS governmentwide acquisition contract set-aside program for small businesses.

The winning bidder will provide IT services such as help desk support, end user self-support, remote support, asset management and report generation. The contractor will support the existing IT management functions while also helping the agency move to a single, enterprisewide resource management framework.

Comments on the draft are due Oct. 12, and GSA officials have said they hope to issue the final solicitation in October.

GSA will take questions on the draft and provide an overview of the program at a presolicitation conference Oct. 5 in Arlington, Va.