Unfazed by Alliant Ruling

In case you missed the story yesterday, the U.S. Court of Federal Claims came down this week on the side of the companies protesting the awards of the General Services Administration's Alliant contract. The contract, estimated to be worth $50 billion over 10 years, provides agencies a way to buy information technology services.

Of course the big question now is: What's next? GSA is keeping mum for the moment and none of the parties involved in the case have been eager to comment on the decision's implications. However, Kelly Fleury, federal sales manager, with MTC Technologies in Dayton, Ohio, one of the original Alliant awardees, contacted me this morning to discuss her company's outlook following the decision.

During our phone conversation, discussion of the court's ruling and GSA's plans were off-limits, but I did get the impression that MTC remains confident that this program will move forward eventually and without radical changes.

"We have no reason to believe that we need to change our business plan," Fleury said. "We are moving forward with our business plan very aggressively." She went on to talk about the marketing efforts her company is planning for April. "It's a big push towards educating end users about what Alliant is and how it can be of benefit to them," she said.

Fleury also talked at length about the importance of informing all those involved in the procurement process -- from chief information officers and program managers on down -- about the advantages of Alliant.

Noticeably missing from our conversation was any mention of a definitive date for the Alliant kick-off. "We're in no position to comment on GSA's kick-off date," Fleury said. But she added, "As of now, GSA has not announced any date, but we believe we're in the home stretch."

When asked whether the company's educational outreach efforts were in violation of the judge's ruling that prohibits further work by contractors or GSA on Alliant, Fleury again declined to comment.

So it looks like there's more to come, especially regarding the GSA's reaction to the decision, which so far has amounted to the canned two-sentence response at the end of the article. While there is widespread speculation on what the GSA is planning, the two most likely options seem to be either negotiating with the eight protesting companies in hopes of finding a mutually satisfactory solution or revamping the entire awards process and starting over. Obviously the former would be much more palatable than the latter.