SAIC cornering NASA headquarters biz

A $54 million contract awarded to Science Applications International Corp.

for information technology services gives the company all the IT business

at NASA's Washington, D.C., headquarters.

The award of the Information Technology Systems, Engineering and Management

(ISEM) contract complements an earlier award to SAIC to provide desktop

maintenance and services at NASA headquarters, said Brian Dunbar, an agency

spokesman. NASA announced the award Monday.

SAIC previously held the Information Resources Management and Services contract

at NASA, which is now split into the Outsourcing Desktop Initiative for

NASA and ISEM contracts, Dunbar said. SAIC was awarded the ODIN contract

for NASA headquarters in January.

Under ISEM, the company also will provide Internet support, applications

development, user services, information management, systems engineering

and integration, telecommunication services, and security for all NASA headquarters

offices. SAIC will be responsible for NASA's home page, the NASA headquarters

home page and NASA's strategic enterprises' home pages.

ODIN is a contract vehicle administered by NASA that offers any agency the

opportunity to choose from seven preselected vendors. In another move to

streamline the contracting process, NASA chose the ISEM vendor by placing

a task order through an existing Transportation Department contract. Vendors

that had already been qualified at DOT were allowed to make competitive

bids on the NASA task order.

SAIC's contract is initially for one year, with options for four more years.

Opportunities to add services to the task order could mean an extra $36

million to $46 million for SAIC.