Partnership offers gov e-procurement

International company Healy Hudson AG this week announced a partnership with Omen Inc., a certified 8(a) government contractor, to bring its e-government sourcing and procurement software to U.S. federal agencies.

In the agreement with Omen, a software development and enterprise application integration firm, Healy Hudson will incorporate U.S. public spending regulations into the e-government version of its software. The software previously has been adopted by governments in Bavaria and Hamburg, Germany, said Larry Fournier, vice president of marketing for Healy Hudson.

Healy Hudson's software supports an agency's entire procurement process during the purchase of IT-related goods and services.

The e-government application is designed to speed IT procurement programs throughout the federal government, but the system can also be used in local and state government and in the private sector, Fournier said.

The first project with Omen is supporting a multiyear, multibillion-dollar government IT outsourcing contract with the National Security Agency, said Dave Giunta, vice president of operations at Healy Hudson. If the company's bid with Omen and Computer Sciences Corp. is successful, the agency will use Healy Hudson's software to outsource services and products. A decision is expected in June, he said.

"It's a [60-company] consortium of suppliers, and we would manage all activities, services and products negotiated out of that contract," Giunta said.

Omen's primary federal customer is NSA, but it has also done business with other agencies in the intelligence community, said Leo Knapp, vice president of business development for Omen. The company chose to partner with Healy Hudson rather than other e-procurement providers because of its proven track record in Europe and the flexibility of its solutions, he said.

"Healy Hudson has the ability to provide sourcing documents for various different vendors, and there's a lot of flexibility for writing customer requirements" into their solutions, Knapp said. "That's helpful because we needed something to support product [orders] and technical task orders that include requests for people."