Carriers await multi-million dollar award of data services after secretive legal delay
The Social Security Administration says it will announce in September a new award for data networking services following Qwest’s successful — but secretive — legal protest of the original awards to Verizon and AT&T.
The Social Security Administration says it will announce in September a new award for data networking services, jumpstarting a critical IT project that has been delayed for more than a year following a successful — but secretive — legal protest of the original awards.
VA disconnects Sprint voice, data services
In June 2009, SSA awarded two data networking services contracts through the U.S. government telecommunications program known as Networx Universal. SSA chose Verizon Business as its primary data services provider and AT&T as its secondary carrier. A month later, failed bidder Qwest Government Services protested these awards to the General Accounting Office, which sustained the protest in October 2009.
For more than a year, SSA has been quiet about its WAN plans. Now SSA says it is proceeding with its efforts to migrate its data services to the Networx program.
“Social Security is in the process of complying with GAO’s corrective action request and expects an announcement of a new award determination by the end of FY 2010,” an agency spokeswoman said in a written response to questions from Network World.
SSA has a massive network that links its headquarters outside of Baltimore, Md., with 10 regional offices and 1,300 field offices located in all 50 states, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands and Guam. The agency also operates 37 call centers and six payment processing centers. It has approximately 62,000 employees.
SSA’s new data networking services deal is expected to include MPLS), Frame Relay, ATM , IP, VPN and fixed satellite services.
How SSA will move forward with its data networking services has prompted curiosity across the federal IT market. The General Accounting Office never released a public version of its decision to uphold the Qwest protest, so industry observers aren’t sure what problems existed with the original awards.
Ray Bjorklund, a senior vice president with consulting firm FedSources, of McLean, Va., says he was “scratching my head why I couldn’t find the full text of the GAO bid protest decision…For whatever reason, there was never a public version of the decision and…it remains under protective order.” Bjorklund referred to the SSA WAN deal as an “intrigue.”
SSA, meanwhile, says it needs to transition both its wide area network and toll-free voice services to the Networx contract from the predecessor program, FTS 2001, which expires in June 2011. “We are 87% complete with the transition from FTS 2001 to Networx,” according to the SSA spokeswoman.
SSA chooses Level 3 for wavelength services
SSA has shown that it is willing to be innovative in its approach to networking, purchasing leading-edge services from smaller carriers.
Last week, SSA awarded a three-year $3.8 million contract to Level 3 Communications to provide 10 gigabit/sec wavelength solutions between its data center in Baltimore and a back-up facility in Durham, N.C. SSA awarded the Level 3 contract through the Networx Enterprise program, which is a companion to Networx Universal.
“Each 10 gigabit connection will provide four times the speed of the current provisioning,” SSA’s spokeswoman said. “The connectivity is specified to be 99.999% reliable/available.”
Level 3 will replace Verizon Business and AT&T, which currently provide connectivity between the agency’s data centers. Level 3 says the SSA deal is not the largest one that it has been awarded through Networx Enterprise, but it is a strategic win because it involves high-speed, low-latency circuits.”This was an engineered offering,” explains Ed Morche, senior vice president of Level 3’s Federal Markets. “What SSA did is say these are my engineering requirements, and then they looked at each provider’s ability to meet their needs….It involves much higher availability requirements, and SSA had a very aggressive desire to decrease costs.”
Morche says Level 3 built a completely redundant, resilient network solution on its own fiber backbone with multiple backbone routes and no single point of failure.
“We are providing complete network diversity on our own backbone,” Morche says. “This is the poster child for what we want to do on Networx.”
The fact that SSA is moving ahead with its data networking deal is good news for the carriers involved in the Networx program, which has been slower to take off than originally expected.
Networx is a multibillion dollar program that will provide telecom services to all U.S. federal agencies until 2017. The Networx Universal contracts are held by AT&T, Qwest and Verizon Business. A companion program known as Networx Enterprise is held by these three carriers along with Level 3 and Sprint.
Federal agencies have come under fire on Capitol Hill for being slow at transitioning to the Networx program from the predecessor, which is known as FTS 2001. GSA said in June that more than 40% of FTS 2001 circuits had yet to be disconnected.
SSA isn’t the only federal agency that has run into legal trouble trying to migrate its telecom services from FTS 2001 to Networx. The U.S. Department of Agriculture recently selected AT&T for a $350 million data networking deal that the carrier had won two years prior but was stripped of due to a protest.
Agencies like USDA and SSA are not only running up legal bills when their Networx awards get protested. They are also paying more expensive monthly telecom bills on the soon-to-be-expired FTS 2001 contract. The General Services Administration, which runs the Networx program, says prices on the FTS 2001 contract are anywhere from 5% to 15% higher than those available through Networx.
