GSA to take over COMMITS, sources say

The General Services Administration is taking over the Commerce Department’s Commerce Information Technology Solutions (COMMITS) contract, a governmentwide services contract focused on small and disadvantaged businesses, according to several knowledgeable sources.

GSA would not comment, and Commerce officials could not be reached for comment today.

Commerce awarded the original COMMITS contract in 1999 to provide agencies with quick access to small businesses. The first contract hit its $1.5 billion limit in December 2004. In January 2005, Commerce selected 55 vendors for COMMITS NexGen, a 10-year contract with an $8 billion ceiling. As of April, the department had awarded 19 task orders, worth $419 million, according to a June report by the Government Accountability Office.

Lurita Doan, GSA’s administrator, has emphasized the importance of small and disadvantaged businesses during her few months in office. She has offered a $500 million set-aside contract to centralize GSA’s IT infrastructure for 8(a) companies on its Streamlined Technology Acquisition Resources for Services GWAC.

Doan has also criticized the proliferation of GWACs in recent speeches. She said too many GWACs create duplicative work and steal attention from agencies’ core missions.

She has said that GSA should take control of NASA’s Scientific and Engineering Workstation Procurement, which she has criticized as unnecessarily duplicative.