EIS at GSA
Enterprise Infrastructure solutions (EIS) is a comprehensive solution-based vehicle to address all aspects of federal agency IT telecommunications, and infrastructure requirements. GSA announced the award of EIS on July 31, 2017.The EIS program is at present being carried out at the General Services Administration. GSA’s acting deputy assistant commissioner in the federal acquisition service Allen Hill said it is “like a locomotive that you throw coal on and it gets faster”.
Additionally, Hill also told Federal News Network’s Jason Miller on Federal Monthly Insights-EIS that “We have 208 solicitations that are expected right now”, And nearly 22% of the plan task orders. “That’s 45 out of 208 Fair Opportunities, of which 29 have had task orders by large agencies, 14 of those by medium agencies, and two of them are small agencies.” And “Agencies are being very deliberate in making their awards. So, they’re taking the extra time,” Hill said on Federal Drive with Tom Temin, to make sure everything is in order, which might also be why there are fewer protests. “But also, the vendors are doing a great job in responding and providing the type of value that is needed for these agencies to make those decisions on what vendor gets selected for that award.”
Meanwhile, vendors waited for the solicitations to come out and for more and more awards to be made over the past several months. The fair opportunity solicitations are being put out to the industry, and the industry is responding. Competition is also present in the market leading to broader base of contractors and so some awards might go to non-incumbents. Creating competition between vendors can result in innovative and better solutions in the services being offered. Hill said “We here at GSA are taking a different approach. We do not want to get into the reactive mode of waiting for the agencies to tell us what they need. We want to be proactive and working with the vendor community and offer those technologies out there. And so, we’re constantly meeting with the vendors to find out what’s new out there to be able to offer.”
“So, we’re trying to be the enablers for them, to not have to be concerned about what those technologies are and making sure that EIS is continuously able to deliver modernized capabilities for the agencies,” Hill said. “And that’s why it’s structured the way it is. It allows us to bring on those technologies so that agents can leverage them, unlike its predecessor, which is a little bit more legacy type approach. It is the old school approach of doing telecommunications. EIS is more of the new way of how telecommunications should be done.”
Author: Chandni Mandaviya
