Whole Lot of IT Spending Coming

Yesterday market research firm INPUT released their list of the Top 20 Federal Contracting Opportunities for 2010 and the company's senior vice president of research and analysis services, Kevin Plexico, was kind enough to give us a preview of the list ahead of a Tuesday webinar introducing the list.

Plexico said the biggest trend he's noticed is the increase in contracting at civilian agencies. Eight of the top 20 procurements are civilian contracts and represent a significant chunk of the list's 50 percent increase in value from $120 billion in 2009 to $180 billion for 2010. As for IT procurements, he said next year the focus will be on recompeting existing multiple-award contracts rather than building new systems.

"There are really no large systems integration contracts to build something new, most of the contracts are recompetes of existing contracts that are really task order-based vehicles," he said. The vehicles include governmentwide contracts as well as agency-specific vehicles.

Among the IT projects that make the list is DHS' EAGLE II, a followup to the EAGLE contract for IT services. The contract includes both an unrestricted portion open to all IT vendors as well as a set-aside for small businesses.

"EAGLE II is probably the biggest and most notable, it's an example of a contract recompeting early, well before its expiration," he said. "[DHS is] not exercising two option periods and appear to be intent on issuing the contracts early."

Plexico said the emerging technologies like cloud computing or social media that have dominated headlines recently are receiving attention at the policy and strategic levels, but he has yet to see their impact yet on the procurement cycle.

"You talk about brass tacks and where dollars are spent, relatively few dollars are spent on those technologies," he said. "Most are on routine services contracts that keep the government's wheels moving."