In a letter last week to Karen Evans, the administrator of E-Government and Information Technology at the OMB, Rep. Tom Davis, (R-Va.), asked Evans to "intercede in this particular issue" to help persuade the Treasury Department to join the federal Networx contract instead of making its own separate deal and continuing to "stovepipe" its older and diverse telecommunications systems.
The controversy between Davis and the Treasury Department has been going on since early last year, after the agency approved the three-year, US$1 billion Treasury Communications Enterprise (TCE) contract for telecommunications services from AT&T Corp. That deal also included seven one-year extension options. The agency canceled the contract last May after other bidders protested and the Government Accountability Office. The agency rebid the contract last September and a new bid award is pending.
Davis wants the Treasury Department to join Networx, the telecommunications procurement program set up by the General Services Administration (GSA) to replace the existing telecommunications contract, known as FTS2001. Among the federal agencies using FTS2001 are the departments of Defense, Homeland Security, Agriculture, and Health and Human Services, as well as NASA and the Social Security Administration. Those agencies will move to the Networx contract when it is completed.
The Networx program is designed to provide legacy and leading-edge voice, data and video services to all U.S. government agencies. Although the Networx program could be worth as much as $20 billion, the government has so far committed to spend only $575 million on the program.
A spokeswoman for Evans said she had no comment on Davis' letter because the contract procurement process is still ongoing.
Brookly McLaughlin, a Treasury Department spokeswoman, said the agency had no comment on Davis' letter or on the status of the telecommunications deal.
Davis argues that participation in Networx is a better strategy because the government can save money, streamline the number of vendors used, improve security and interoperability and avoid a duplication of efforts by staying with one major contract.
In his letter to Evans, Davis assailed the Treasury Department's solo efforts to sign a deal, saying the agency "did not have an adequate business case for moving forward with TCE and has performed no coherent cost analysis comparing TCE with GSA telecommunications vehicles." The GAO's report last year was also critical of the agency's direction on TCE, he said. The report stated that "it is difficult -- based on the extent and quality of the documentation provided -- to understand why Treasury still intends to proceed with TCE."
"Notwithstanding these difficulties, Treasury has insisted on plowing forward with the acquisition yet another time," he wrote in his letter.
Davis pointed out that Homeland Security, which has more complex telecommunications needs than the Treasury Department because of its mission, has agreed to use Networx for its ongoing communications systems. Davis said the DHS decision to use Networx essentially negates the Treasury argument that its needs are too complex and diverse for it to join Networx.
In January, Davis also criticized the Treasury's plan to sign a deal outside of the Networx contract and threatened to work to cut funding for the AT&T deal.