DLA seat management succeeding

When Defense Logistics Agency began its headquarters seat management contract about a year ago, town hall meetings were packed with employees airing their gripes, according to Mae De Vincentis, DLA's chief information officer.

"At first, it was standing-room only," she said.

Now, with contractor Getronics Government Solutions LLC meeting "all but two" customer satisfaction measures, fewer people are coming to the Fort Belvoir, Va., meetings to complain, De Vincentis said. "With the other two measures, we are working on changing them" to better reflect DLA needs, she said.

"We are very, very satisfied" because Getronics has been consistently meeting customer satisfaction measures during the past few months, she said. She said she's within weeks of declaring success on the contract, pending the results of an independent validation and verification test.

"I was probably one of the people who was very skeptical" at the contract's start, De Vincentis admitted. "I don't think they realized what a complex organization this was," she said of Getronics—formerly Wang Government Services Inc.

Getronics is responsible for the maintenance and operations of the unclassified network servers at DLA headquarters, and the company also provides e-mail and Microsoft Corp. desktop software service for several thousand users.

Although Getronics' help-desk service for DLA is in Texas, De Vincentis reported no difficulties with it. Linton Wells II, the acting chief information officer for the Defense Department, said that the Pentagon's chief information office had to halt its desktop outsourcing contract with Lockheed Martin Corp. because of a lack of security clearances.

DLA's desktop outsourcing does not cover classified network usage, De Vincentis said.

Unlike the Navy Marine Corps Intranet procurement and some other desktop outsourcing contracts, a DLA "seat" is defined not as each individual user but as the individual components of each user's computer, such as a monitor, notebook PC, desktop PC and printer.