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GCN Home > 08/25/03 issue

HUD awards contract for $860m IT makeover

By Mary Mosquera, GCN Staff

The Housing and Urban Development Department put its IT makeover in the hands of EDS Corp. this month with the award of a 10-year, $860 million contract.

EDS’ information service group will revamp the department’s nationwide infrastructure under the HUD IT Service contract. The contract has a one-year base period worth $15 million and nine one-year options.

“EDS will immediately upgrade HUD’s Unisys and IBM mainframe environment,” said Paul Bize, EDS client sales executive. During the contract’s base year, EDS will take over help desk and support services across the department and put in place a disaster recovery capability, he said.

HITS’ list

The company will furnish personnel, hardware and software, telecommunications, facilities and services needed to deliver HUD’s basic IT functions. Through HITS, EDS will upgrade desktop systems and servers for 18,000 HUD users in more than 80 locations throughout the United States and its territories.

The services also cover enterprise data processing and management, information security, LAN and WAN services, and Web administration.

“This is a performance-based contract that will increase vendor accountability, which is part of President Bush’s management agenda for federal agencies,” Vickers Meadows, HUD’s assistant secretary for administration and CIO, said in a statement. The department will set performance standards and pay EDS according to how well those standards are met, he said.

EDS will install Unisys products that support the department’s use of multiple operating systems and EDS software that improves workflow. Web program management software will let EDS and HUD managers track and collaborate on program performance.

Sweeping efforts

HITS is a follow-on to the HUD Integrated Information Processing Service contract, awarded in 1990 to Lockheed Martin Corp. The Lockheed contract expires this year. HUD officials had hoped to award its replacement last year but took longer than originally planned to issue the final solicitation.

Although the department has always planned for HITS to be more sweeping than its predecessor and for the new vendor to take over more of the department’s systems management, some efforts will remain separate. In its procurement brief, the department noted, for instance, that any application software currently being developed under HIIPS will be bought separately from the new contract.

The EDS team has more than 30 subcontractors, including AT&T Corp., Dell Inc., IBM Corp., Sprint Corp. and Sun Microsystems Inc.

More news on related topics: IT Infrastructure



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