Lockheed Martin, CSC win PTO pact

Lockheed Martin Corp. and Computer Sciences Corp. last week captured the largest IT contract ever awarded at the Patent and Trademark Office - the $541 million System Development and Maintenance (SDM) program which will provide system development and maintenance support services for the agency's mission-critical systems.

Under the eight-year program Lockheed Martin and CSC will develop modify maintain re-engineer and enhance information system projects agencywide.

Lockheed Martin's contract potentially is worth $254 million CSC's $287 million.

PTO plans to compete some but not all of the SDM task orders. SDM is open to Commerce Department agencies and PTO will take steps to open it up to the rest of government the agency said.

"SDM is for system development and maintenance but it will support all PTO business functions " said Dennis Shaw PTO's chief information officer "so the scope of the business functions is not limited."

These include patent trademark information dissemination and administrative systems. Some of the work PTO will require includes system design and analysis programming testing training project management and related services.

Work under the contract will begin June 1. Shaw said he expects that the first task orders will address migrating desktop workstation software to Windows NT and replace the aging Trademark Reporting and Monitoring (TRAM) system. "We had an analysis done and it said to throw [TRAM] away " Shaw said. "That's one way to solve our Year 2000 problem."

The acquisition is an Office of Federal Procurement Policy pilot project that used past performance as a major evaluation factor. PTO will award task orders based on the vendors' performance.

Program Consolidation

SDM consolidates about 14 separate support services contracts and will serve as PTO's primary vehicle for system development and maintenance support services.

For example SDM replaces the Automated Patent System contract held by PRC Inc. to support the various subsystems of the APS.

"It's a win that's of major importance for us and the information technology community " said Judy Burke vice president of business development at Lockheed Martin. "The PTO has complex IT goals to accomplish over the next eight years."

Tom Oles capture manager for SDM at Lockheed Martin said PTO wanted to establish a "partnership" with vendors on SDM. "It's a long contract. The PTO looked for broad information technology capabilities from the contractors " Oles said. Lockheed Martin's subcontractors are Electronic Data Systems Corp. TRW Inc. Dynamic Resources Inc. and Garcia Consulting Inc.

PTO is a new customer for CSC said John Meyer the company's program manager for SDM but CSC has done similar work on the Joint Computer-Aided Acquisition and Logistics Support (JCALS) contract for the Defense Department. "They are similar in their uses of document management in a shared work environment " Meyer said. CSC teamed with Anstec Inc. and Signal Corp.

Unsuccessful bidders on the contract are believed to include PRC Unisys Corp. and BDM International Inc.

Although PTO still has an ambitious IT strategy the agency is not sure it will reach the $541 million ceiling according to Shaw. He said $60 million in budget cuts over the past two years will affect the amount of money PTO will spend on implementation and improvements to systems which is why PTO wants to open the contract govermentwide.

"Our end goal is the same but it will take us a lot longer to get there " Shaw said. "Programs like electronic processing of applications and the classification data system which is similar to a library system for classifying patents and prior art have been deferred.