Firm sets up on-linetracking service

A Reston Va.-based information technology procurement consulting firm last month began marketing an on-line service that allows vendors to track the status of federal procurements.

The Federal Capture Group's service called ITFedStrat 2000 initially will track up to 1 000 opportunities said Joe Cooper president of The Federal Capture Group.

The database will provide information on estimated contract value points of contact scopes of work and possible competitors. The database will be installed initially on a client's workstation and then updated via the Internet.

Cooper is hoping vendors in search of opportunities will come to his company which is planning to offer its service at less than $10 000 a year. Although a young company The Federal Capture Group already is finding big-name clients for its consulting business including GTE Government Systems DynCorp and Digital Equipment Corp. according to information posted on the company's World Wide Web site (www.fedcapture.com).

Services similar to what The Federal Capture Group is offering already exist. Federal Sources Inc. McLean Va. for example has been building its Fedmark procurement-tracking database for about 10 years said Thomas L. Hewitt president of Federal Sources. The company offers Fedmark to subscribers who pay anywhere from $15 000 to $20 000 a year for the service he said.

"It took us a lot of years to build our database " Hewitt said. He was unable to say how many federal contracting opportunities are included in the database which offers information ranging from program history to contracting officers' names to changes in procurement strategy on hundreds of contracts.

Many vendors rely heavily on procurement databases to help weed through the hundreds of procurements that crop up each year.