Do you want to have an IT
staff and a CIO
shop that has some visibility into managing the contractor? Or is it
simply a contract and every month an SLA meeting occurs and if they are
meeting that SLA, who cares how the job is getting is done?
As an agency, you can buy your equipment and manage it through a
contractor on site. Or you can award a performance-based contract where
the provider is going to manage all of your services. You write strict,
precise and measurable Service Level Agreements (SLAs) telling the
provider what you want to do and let the vendor decide how to actually
do the work and you stay out of it.
As networks become more complex, there is a certain advantage to having
somebody who manages the overall network. Then you have a single
contractor the agency can hold responsible for the delivery of
services.
GSA’s new Networx contract offers two managed services:
Managed Network Solution (MNS): This
allows
agencies to meet requirements through contractor support. Under MNS,
the contractor provides overall management of an agency’s
network
infrastructure and is the single point of accountability.
Managed Tiered Security Service (MTSS):
This
provides agencies with 4 combinations of security services individually
customized based on information sensitivity.
“Agencies can tailor their requirements however they
choose,” explains Karl Krumbholz, Networx Program Manager.
“If you buy connectivity of some kind, if you buy T1 or IP
services, you get certain levels of security as a part of the service
itself.”
In addition, GSA has a
whole menu of security services that you can buy
either individually or as a package. “For the convenience of
the
agencies we’ve defined them in four levels,” says
Krumbholz, “from just basic service to the very sensitive
services required by DOD; any level of security that an agency wants
they can find listed and purchase on the contract.”
Networx
In Transition
Using GSA’s new Networx contract, government is poised to
build a
single, secure interoperable infrastructure; one that will transform
the communications and computing landscape.
“The way I would describe the transition is that
it’s
moving forward steadily. We now consider our transition baseline
inventory to be 100% validated,” says Krumbholz.
GSA has bridge contracts in place until June 2010. A Help Desk has been
established and there are Transition Coordinating Centers where, with
contractor support, GSA is putting in place the processes and
procedures to move the transition along quickly once agencies make
their Fair Opportunity decisions.
“In looking at our overall challenge, this Fair Opportunity
process is the first thing to get accomplished,” explains
Krumbholz. “Then they have a vendor they can work with and
somebody to whom they can submit orders. Our target date for completing
that is the end of September of ’08.”
According to Krumbholz, GSA has put taxonomy in place making clear how
agencies will be reimbursed for non recurring costs associated with
transition. There are templates for site surveys, transition plans and
cut over plans; they detail processes that monitor the actual cut over
and keep data records of how the transition is going.
“GSA built the contract with assistance from the agencies,” notes Krumbholz, “but now we are at the
point
where we’ve got to help the agencies reach their goals. Their
goals are our goals. We are in this together.”
In addition, GSA has a
whole menu of security services that you can buy
either individually or as a package. “For the convenience of
the
agencies we’ve defined them in four levels,” says
Krumbholz, “from just basic service to the very sensitive
services required by DOD; any level of security that an agency wants
they can find listed and purchase on the contract.” 
