Five companies land agreement to support LOB initiatives

The General Services Administration awarded a blanket purchase agreement to five vendors to support the Office of Management and Budget’s Lines of Business consolidation initiatives.This is a new contract awarded through GSA’s Federal Supply Service IT schedule with a two-year base and three one-year options. The task order contract has a $2 million-a-year ceiling for a total of $10 million over five years, according to John Sindelar, GSA’s acting administrator in the Office of Governmentwide Policy. GSA acts as the procurement arm of OMB and helps with the administrative aspects of the LOB projects.OMB and GSA are paying for the work partly through the E-Government Fund, for which Congress allocated $3 million in 2006. GSA administers the fund for OMB. Sindelar said OMB sent a letter to Congress identifying how the money will be used.GSA will compete task orders among Booz Allen Hamilton of McLean, Va.; Grant Thorton LLP of Chicago; Performance Management Consulting Inc. of Alexandria, Va.; SiloSmashers Inc. of Vienna, Va.; and Touchstone/SRA of Washington to provide support for the three new Lines of Businesses (budget formulation, geospatial and IT infrastructure) and six existing lines (financial management, human resources, grants management, case management, federal health architecture and IT security).OMB the three news LOBs in the fiscal 2007 budget request sent to Congress earlier this month.The task orders would include development and analysis of requests for information, development of common solutions and target architecture and joint business cases for each LOB, Sindelar said.“This is an exciting project for us,” said Mike Proper, senior vice president of business development for SiloSmashers. “The Lines of Business is transformational work and this is at the core of what we do.”Sindelar said the official kickoff meeting for the new LOBs should be in March.