GSA to provide help choosing between contracts

Technology specialists at the General Services Administration plan to roll out a Web-based tool to help government users navigate the increasingly dense forest of federal IT contracts.

This summer, GSA will formally unveil its IT Solutions Navigator Tool, said Kevin Richman, a communications specialist at GSA's Federal Acquisition Service. The tool will help federal data center and technology managers winnow down their product and service choices in the growing forest of large federal IT contracts.

The Solutions Navigator Tool sorts the offerings into seven broad categories: cloud computing, communications, networking, data center, hardware, security, and software.

Richman, who was speaking May 14 at the FOSE conference in Washington, D.C., declined to providea specific date for the tool's official rollout but said it has been in beta testing since last fall and is nearing completion.

The tool searches among governmentwide acquisition contracts, Schedule 70 and network service contracts. It tailors its results based on the user's level of government (federal, state or local), IT needs and acquisition requirements. It comes up with a specific GWAC or other large contract that would best fit the need, as well as a few other options.

The decision-support tool walks customers through what has become a complex acquisition process with sometimes bewildering contracting options, said Lillian Miller, an IT specialist at GSA's FAS.

"The large group of government contracting options is making it harder to find information on acquisitions," Miller said. Buying on the open market only adds to the confusion because agencies might not fully grasp how to use the contracts, she said.

The tool can help bring some order and logic to the process because it focuses agencies’ efforts, she added. GSA has been putting some finishing touches on the tool based on users’ comments during the beta testing, Miller said. One addition is a live-chat feature that allows users to talk with a GSA specialist about specific needs or questions, she said.