VA to Buy 600,000 PCs

I don't know about the rest of you, but I either start or end my day by having some real fun scrolling through planned federal procurements on the Federal Business Opportunities website.

But, sometimes I miss a day. That included Oct. 22, when the Veterans Affairs Department put out an RFP to buy 600,000 PCs, a solicitation that was amended yesterday, and caught my attention.

This is twice the number of PCs VA ordered under its last big computer contract, a $248.4 million lease deal awarded to Dell in 2007 that expired in August. Based on that pricing, the new contract could be worth $500 million.

The VA said it needs more hardware today than three years ago due to the increase in the number of health clinics it operates and the overall requirement for more PCs to support its mission. The contract will run for eight years, with hardware orders in the first four years and support only in the last four.

The VA said in its performance work statement that it reserves the option to either purchase or lease the 600,000 PCs, but I bet that it will not be the same kind of single-source contract like the deal with Dell.

The VA inspector general said in a June 2008 report that an award "to a single vendor for leased PCs and related services was not necessary to achieve the stated objectives of the acquisition."

The fact that the VA has decided to go ahead with such a massive PC buy takes care of the question of whether or not it had a serious plan to move to thin client architecture. The agency has a planned test of 20,000 thin clients later this year.

It's hard to give up that heavy iron.