The US Food and Drug Administration has awarded an IT
services contract potentially worth $111m (£62m) over five years to
an IT consulting business under a small business federal set-aside
programme.
Under a deal announced last week, ITSolutions will provide IT
consolidation services to help streamline operations for eight FDA
branches, including the Center for Food Safety and Applied
Nutrition, the Center for Veterinary Medicine, the Center for
Devices and Radiological Health and the Center for Biologics
Evaluation and Research.
Mike Dietz, vice-president of operations at ITSolutions, said
the contract is for one base year, plus four option years. The deal
will cover the consolidation of the FDA's entire IT infrastructure,
including the network operations centre, server administration,
network security and engineering.
"We're seeing across the federal government a move to streamline
organisational infrastructures," Dietz said. "This is not a new
idea."
By bringing the IT infrastructures together for the eight FDA
branches, the FDA will be able to save money and use its overall IT
systems across agency levels better, he said.
"This contract was put in place to support that," he added.
About 75 of ITSolutions' 200 employees will work on the FDA
contract, Dietz said.
IT staff from the FDA and from three subcontractor companies
will also help with the work, which will involve about 135 people
in the first year. The subcontractors are Unisys, consultancy Booz
Allen Hamilton and Apptis, an IT services supplier.
Todd R Weiss writes for Computerworld