Networx RFPs delayed

Companies waiting to bid on the Networx telecommunications contracts will have to wait until the first week of May to see the final requests for proposals. General Services Administration officials said today that they will not release the RFPs April 1, as first planned, because officials are making significant changes.

John Johnson, assistant commissioner for service development and delivery at GSA's Federal Technology Service, said the changes are based on some of the 2,500 comments that FTS officials received after the October 2004 release of draft RFPs.

Specifically, he said, officials are reducing many of the required reports, metrics, billing elements and other components that company officials had complained were too onerous.

“We’ve worked closely trying to entertain all the draft RFP comments that we received," he said. "We have been working on them for some months, and we have adopted about 40 percent of all the comments that were submitted to us.”

Government and industry officials have been wrangling over the details of the contracts for more than a year. Rep. Tom Davis (R-Va.), chairman of the Government Reform Committee, has held several hearings on it.

Networx will be split into two contracts. Agencies will use Networx Universal to purchase wide-ranging services, while Networx Enterprise will provide more localized services. The contracts will replace FTS 2001.