VETS GWAC due in December

The Veterans Technology Services Governmentwide Acquisition Contract will be released by early next month at the latest, months after its original deadline, Lurita Doan, administrator of the General Services Administration, said today.The VETS GWAC is a five-year information technology procurement contract with a $5 billion spending ceiling that is exclusively for small businesses owned by service-disabled veterans. Solicitations came out more than a year ago.GSA has missed numerous deadlines and release dates for the contract, frustrating many in the veteran-owned business community as well as agency officials.Doan said she is irritated that the GWAC has yet to hit the street. “Actually, my usual word for that is ‘vexed,’ but I think I have moved up from being vexed to irritated,” she told a GSA-sponsored conference for the veterans and service-disabled veterans small-business community.Bureaucratic and legal hurdles and businesses’ protests against the GWAC still are impeding its release, Doan said. The audience applauded when she said the contract has cleared most of the necessary hurdles.In July, Doan traveled to a Department of Veterans Affairs conference in Las Vegas to tell business owners that GSA had missed the June deadline but would meet its next deadline in October.Doan said she foresees GSA spending $720 million with veteran-owned companies in fiscal 2007, a figure that is too small, she said.“It’s not even close to what you can expect from the GSA in the future,” she said.