Transportation Is Consolidating Its IT Contracts into a Single Vehicle

As part of the DestintationsDIGITAL modernization program, the Transportation Department is putting together an enterprise IT contract vehicle for use across the agency.

The department released the final requests for proposal for its Enterprise IT Shared Services, or EITSS, contract, which will be split into three parts: end-user support, infrastructure operations, and program management and integration support, the latter being set aside for small businesses. The solicitation will result in two contracts, one unrestricted and one for small businesses.

The new vehicle will support Transportation’s Common Operating Environment—which manages IT services across the department—and will consolidate several IT contracts under a single vehicle.

EITSS will be available to all Transportation components, however, for a period after the initial awards, all task order requests will be routed through the Office of the Chief Information Officer. This strategy fits into the DestinationsDIGITAL plan “to ensure DOT is maximizing its investments and planning for continued growth and success,” according to the solicitation.

Vendors bidding on the performance management and integration support portion of the contract will be expected to provide oversight—monitoring, testing and reporting on performance—of the other aspects covered by EITSS.

The end-user operations portion covers “innovative and practical end-to-end IT operations services,” including three tiers of help desk support:

• Tier 0 Services: Customer service portal, self-service portal and knowledge management.
• Tier 1 Services: Service desk, incident management, customer service operations, directory database administration, conference call services and telephone service request.
• Tier 2 Services: Deskside support, installs, moves, adds and changes, wireless and cellular support, refresh, remote access and field support.

The third portion—infrastructure operations—provides the meat of the contract, in which vendors will have to suggest innovative solutions and then help the department acquire and integrate those technologies into the enterprise. The contract includes several focal areas, including endpoints, infrastructure, data centers and application hosting.

The contract will have a two-year base period with five one-year add-on options, for a total of seven years if all options are exercised.

The department will only be accepting bids in person. Interested vendors must submit their bids at Transportation headquarters in D.C. between 10 a.m. and 3 p.m. Jan. 8. Submissions must be in the form of 20 thumb drives—10 for the technical side of the proposal and 10 for the business side.