GSA adds security services to schedules

The General Services Administration added four new services to its schedules contracts Jan. 16 as the agency pushes ahead with efforts to meet agencies’ security convergence needs, officials said today. The additions to the Schedule 84 contract deal with aspects of building and maintaining different security systems. One service will help agencies design and integrate security systems to ensure that the infrastructure elements work together. Agencies can order maintenance and support services for their security systems. The service offers agencies best practices and technologies to build systems. GSA also points out that agencies can buy only what they need instead of the entire package. Under another new contract, agencies can buy services to handle systems’ upkeep for their life cycle. Agencies can also buy products that support the systems, such as training manuals and hardware and software. In addition, GSA plans to launch a new contract in March to help agencies manage health care data, said Jeff Koses, director of acquisition operations for GSA’s General Supplies and Services Office. Data breaches, such as the one the Veterans Affairs Department faced in 2006, brought GSA into a new field, and it’s growing. He said GSA must offer agencies more to protect health care and personal information. He gave few other details.Security convergence is an effort to make complex purchasing through GSA schedules easier by linking usually unrelated products. These new services are a response to agencies’ needs, Koses said. However, the four new services are a short-term fix. Larry Mathias, chief at the Security Solutions Section and Marine Craft Section for GSA’s Schedule 84, said these four new services fill immediately recognizable gaps in GSA's schedules, and GSA is working to expand the services.They agreed that GSA has a lot of work to do to make the services match what agencies need. “Agencies are looking for a governmentwide solution first,” Koses said. “We see security convergence as core to our mission.”