Unisys to help DOD with financial processes

Unisys Corp. has won a General Services Administration task order potentially worth $92 million to provide managed desktop solutions to the Defense Department’s Defense Finance and Accounting Service.

DFAS, the DOD’s accounting arm, is the largest accounting and finance agency in the world processing nearly $2 billion in payments daily, Unisys officials said.

Under the Desktop Management Initiative II task order, Unisys will continue to provide DFAS with desktop support and end-user services, including engineering support, centralized software distribution, asset management, patch management and malware protection, the officials said.

The work also involves a full range of security and protection services to support DFAS’ mission-critical applications as well as initiatives to improve the overall effectiveness of DOD financial management through consolidation, standardization and integration of finance and accounting procedures, the officials said.

In addition, Unisys will operate the agency’s enterprise help desk, which supports DFAS system users across 13 locations in the United States and abroad.

Unisys will continue to create flexible help-desk staffing models based on call patterns to ensure higher service levels, increase cost savings and improve productivity. The contractor also will use new technologies to support virtualization to reduce costs and still ensure a secure infrastructure.

DMI II is a cost-plus-award-fee task order that provides a full suite of managed desktop and help-desk services for more than 14,000 DFAS desktop and laptop computers.

The task order is a recompete of the DMI I task order Unisys has held since March 2004, company officials said.

The new agreement has a one-year base award valued at an estimated $16 million and four one-year options.

Unisys, of Blue Bell, Pa., ranks No. 26 on Washington Technology’s 2008 Top 100 list of the largest federal government prime contractors.