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What's happening in the federal IT community
By Tuesday, August 28, 2007 | 5:36 PM
One of the biggest challenges that the Homeland Security Department has always faced is creating a "DHS identity" among the thousands of employees working at the disparate 22 agencies that make up the department. If DHS' top management can pull that off, they will encourage agencies to work together and share information, which will lead to more efficiencies in IT.
One way to develop that "oneness" is to create a contract from which all DHS components can buy information technology. The Enterprise Acquisition Gateway for Leading Edge Solutions (EAGLE) contract is supposed to be that contract. Consolidating IT contracts departmentwide into EAGLE (which has a $48 billion spending ceiling) is designed to create a "one DHS view," says Jeremy Potter, a senior analyst with the federal marketing research firm INPUT.
Whether DHS can pull that off using EAGLE is still up for debate, although early indications show the contract is attracting large task orders, according to an INPUT analysis. In a webinar for IT vendors held today, Potter said the EAGLE contract has attracted 49 task orders worth $575 million from DHS agencies. Another $1 billion worth of IT task orders are expected to be submitted to EAGLE in the next 12 months, according to INPUT.
But one webinar attendee asked whether DHS may create a new agencywide contract because the attendee had heard that EAGLE was not popular among DHS contracting officers because its fees were too costly and it didn’t provide enough choices. Potter responded that it was still too early to draw any conclusions on EAGLE's success and added that he had not heard any "rumblings" of a new acquisition vehicle at DHS.
Comments
22 agencies or 15 directorates, it doesn't matter as long as Congress continues to appropriate funds to the individual entities as before; as long as the individual entities develop their own IT requirements without regard for what other entitites are doing; and as long as the same pre-award reviews are required under EAGLE as under a full and open competition, DHS unity is and will remain an elusive dream.
Reader | Tuesday, September 11, 2007 | 9:04 AMAnonymous has the right of it, but not the complete story. The DHS IT vehicle is not as successful as the agency likes to paint. I have heard apocryphal stories of greatly increased costs combined with greatly decreased levels of service. It is not unusual for an employee to wait two hours to talk to a LIVE person on the help-desk. In some components the existing contract IT support staff have fled to other contracts. Delays in acquisition are often NOT remediated as a result- because the same people who support the infrastructure are the ones agencies are supposed to use to buy it.
Concerned citizen | Wednesday, September 5, 2007 | 7:32 AMDHS is not made up of 22 agencies. DHS is organized into about 15 directorates now.
Employees transfered into DHS from about eight different agencies-- the number 22 is widely repeated-- by DHS, and mainly so they can do the "oh poor me" thing. Other than the eight or so main agencies, the number 22 reflects a few small laboratories and DOJ sub-components, most with fewer than 100 employees, and many of those agencies have seen their budgets slashed and their missions overlooked.
Almost half of all DHS employees are at TSA, which transfered from DOT. More than 10% of the DHS workforce was at Treasury as part of the US Cutoms Service-- another 20% plus came from INS including the Border Patrol, and another large chunk includes the Secret Service. The remaining 1o% or so comes mostly from Coast Guard, FEMA, FLETC and FPS as well as a group from USDA and a smattering of small groups, like DOE labs.
Anonymous | Wednesday, August 29, 2007 | 9:40 AM