Networx deadline missed by many

By Dorothy Ramienski
Internet Editor
FederalNewsRadio

GSA’s Networx telecommunications contracts were awarded about a year and a half ago, but how have they fared since then?

On Friday’s Daily Debrief, hosts Christopher Dorobek and Max Cacas got an update from Karl Krumbholz, director of GSA’s Network Services Programs.

Krumbholz says many federal agencies missed the Sept. 30 deadline.

What’s significant to understand about that is that we communicate pretty closely with the larger agencies, while there’s a great many agencies that are small and we don’t communicate so frequently with. . . . Roughly two-thirds of all of the agencies have requested additional time to complete their fair opportunity decisions, but about a third have not and have made those decisions.

Krumbholz says gathering these numbers was a bit complicated because there are different offices within each larger agency and each has to make its own fair opportunity decisions.

While two-thirds overall have asked for more time, about 20 percent of smaller agencies have made their fair opportunity decision or have given the GSA a hard deadline as to when that decision will be made.

About 80 percent we don’t have that information on and many of those — the decision is not quite as complex. They may not have much in the way of telecom except maybe some computers and some phones, so they might not even be worried about it too much and just expect that they’ll simply order from their current carriers.

There are a variety of reasons why agencies didn’t make the deadline, Krumbholz says.

Some may have become more focused on how they’re going to integrate the TIC solution, for example. . . . They may be wanting to implement their Networx transition solution as part of that Trusted Internet Solution while others have said I’m just going to go ahead and make the decision. And others have said, “I’m not even going to try to implement this myself. I’m going to buy it as a solution from GSA,” so they can proceed without having this as an obstacle.

Another milestone is approaching. Krumbholz says after agencies decide on a carrier, they need to start writing transition orders. These orders have to be done in accordance with agency agreements already in place. The deadline for that is April, 2010.

As it stands, things are slow-going.

Clearly we had anticipated the transition would move forward much more quickly and based on the last transition, we would have expected it to have certainly been well under way by this time. It appears, from our perspective, that agencies been engaged in a number of priorities. They’ve had to deal with the requirement for IPv6. They have had to decide how they’re going to address the Trusted Internet Connections requirements.

Krumbholz also notes that he thinks agencies realize the importance of the the Networx program and believes they’re moving as quickly as they can.

—
On the Web:

GSA – Networx

(Copyright 2008 by FederalNewsRadio.com. All Rights Reserved.)

Copyright © 2024 Federal News Network. All rights reserved. This website is not intended for users located within the European Economic Area.