Networx transition passes milestone: Pay up

Agencies that didn’t get their Networx transition orders in by Aug. 31 will have to pay the freight themselves. After having already extended the offer to some agencies by a year, the General Services Administration has put its foot down.

“This is a reminder that the U.S. General Services Administration will reimburse all transition orders submitted up to Aug. 31, 2011, and any orders submitted after that may not be reimbursed,” wrote Karl Krumbholz, director of GSA’s Network Services Programs, in a blog post published July 29.

The transition to Networx, a comprehensive network services contract, has been years in the making. GSA awarded the multiple-award contracts — Networx Universal for broad services, Networx Enterprise for niche and localized services — in 2007, and although many agencies have made the transition, a few still have important steps to take, Krumbholz said in an interview in late August.

While GSA tries to finish moving agencies to the new contract, it’s already starting to work on the next one, tentatively named Network Services 2020. Networx expires in 2017, although it’s likely that GSA will keep it alive a little longer with temporary extensions.

That’s what the agency has been doing with FTS 2001, Networx’s predecessor. At Fierce Government IT, reporter David Perera described agencies as languid in their efforts to switch from FTS 2001 to Networx.

In fact, much of the coverage of Networx since the contracts were awarded has focused on the transition. When she was an unconfirmed nominee, GSA Administrator Martha Johnson also made much of the sluggish pace, Gautham Nagesh reports at Nextgov.

Nagesh wrote that Johnson highlighted the transition during her Senate confirmation hearing and expressed doubt that the process would be completed before the next iteration was awarded.