Unisys wins $65M HHS outsourcing contract

Unisys said it won a three-year, $65 million contract from the Department of Health and Human Services to provide computer support for eight HHS agencies, including the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality and the Health Resources and Services Administration.

“This is a fairly unique contract for the government,” said Tim Kelleher, vice president and general manager of civilian agency infrastructure services at HHS. “We are going to purchase all the network and computer assets [that the eight agencies use] and then bill HHS for service.”

Kelleher added that this is a standard practice in the commercial arena, “but government agencies rarely do this.” He said the contract includes a two-year option valued at $35 million.

The other six HHS agencies that will receive computing and network services from Unisys under the contract are the Administration for Children and Families, the Administration on Aging, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, the Office of the Inspector General, the Office of the Secretary and the Program Support Center.

Unisys said it will provide and refresh desktop PC and computing assets regularly. The company will also provide managed services, including desktop PC and server support, a service desk, server consolidation, continuity of operations/disaster recovery, training, application and server hosting, security operations, system and network monitoring, and database and application administration..

“Our vision for this program is one in which [information technology] services are provided so reliably, users can take them for granted and instead concentrate on their agencies’ strategic issues and missions,” said Greg Baroni, vice president of the company’s Global Public Sector.