GSA works with industry on NS2020 acquisition strategy

Still years out from the launch of Network Services 2020, the General Services Administration is focusing on continuous government-industry collaboration to make the telecom acquisition vehicle a success.

NS2020’s main component, Enterprise Infrastructure Solutions, is being built as the replacement to the current GSA Networx telecom and IT infrastructure vehicle. In anticipation of agencies beginning the transition to EIS in 2017, GSA recently introduced a series of collaborative efforts to spark communication between potential contractors and agency telecom buyers on the new system.

Mary Davie, assistant commissioner for GSA’s Office of Integrated Technology Services, detailed the new efforts in a blog post. After a comment period for the EIS draft request for proposals that brought in more than 1,500 responses, she said GSA hopes to continue the productive talks with several “information exchange” days.

The first of the three meetings took place April 27, with the others scheduled May 28 and June 30. While the meetings are only open to industry and government, GSA did publish its presentation from the first session online.

Davie notes in her blog post that GSA has also started an online community on the GSA Interact website for discussion involving EIS. This hub will be central to the system’s planning, development and execution.

“The EIS transition planning process, for example, has started,” she wrote. “In order to be successful, we need to share insights and lessons learned. On the Interact community, we can jointly share transition insights and lessons to add value for every agency and make government-wide transitioning smoother overall.”

The value of this community, like the greater success of EIS, “depends on the value of member contributions,” Davie said. That’s why GSA is putting a premium on collaboration in the initial stages of NS2020 and EIS.

“Government and industry working together has been part of the EIS acquisition effort from day one,” the post says. “This is vital to ensure federal agency needs are met and industry partners have input early into the contract.”