GSA awards VETS contract to Information Innovators

Editor's note: This story was updated at 10:30 a.m. Jan. 16, 2007. Please go to Corrections & Clarifications to see what has changed.

The General Services Administration has awarded a Veterans Technology for Services Governmentwide Acquisition Contract to Information Innovators, a service-disabled, veteran-owned small business that provides information technology to the federal government.

According to a statement from Information Innovators today, the company now will compete for government procurements under this contract set-aside, which has a five-year option period and a potential overall value of $5 billion.

The Washington, D.C.-based company said it was one of 44 service-disabled, veteran-owned contractors that have been awarded the contract and will compete in the systems operation and maintenance functional area of the program.

Executive Order 13360 of Oct. 20, 2004, established VETS to strengthen federal contracting opportunities for service-disabled, veteran-owned small businesses.

However, release of the GWAC was delayed for months, which frustrated many in the veteran-owned business community as well as agency officials. GSA Administrator Lurita Doan told a gathering in November, "My usual word for that is ‘vexed,’ but I think I have moved up from being vexed to irritated.”

Doan blamed the delay on bureaucratic and legal hurdles and businesses’ protests against the GWAC.

Doan has forecast GSA spending $720 million with veteran-owned companies in fiscal 2007, a figure that she said is too low.