Treasury CIO sees future in 'bundling'

Jim Flyzik has an idea for better managing information technology at the Treasury Department, and the chief information officer plans to discuss it when the department's new CXO Council meets this month.

Flyzik wants to consolidate contracts into several big prime contracts and bundle others to reduce costs and increase competition. That will enable the department to operate more efficiently, he said recently.

"We've got new stuff, new ideas," said Flyzik, who is also Treasury's acting assistant secretary for management. "I think you are going to see a lot of changes."

Flyzik said he would like to model the contract idea on the way the Naval Sea Systems Command manages more than 130 acquisition programs. Navsea is the Navy's central command for designing, engineering, integrating, building and procuring Navy ships and shipboard weapons. It has a $20 billion yearly budget — nearly one-fifth of the entire Navy's budget.

Flyzik's idea is likely to provoke opposition from the small-business community because it would put such businesses at a competitive disadvantage, said Larry Allen, executive director of the Coalition for Government Procurement, a nonprofit association of more than 350 companies that sell commercial services and products to the government.

"This initiative might make management sense, but it probably will face political rumblings from the small- business community," Allen said.

"There is a group of small businesses that feel the federal government has [already] consolidated its needs into large buys that make it difficult if not impossible for small businesses to compete for federal dollars," he said.