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Neal Fox | IT and telecom: Converging opportunities

IT Contracting—commentary

By Neal Fox, Special to GCN

The long-awaited marketplace convergence of IT and telecom technologies, symbolized by the advent of IP-based telecom, arrived with more of whimper than a big bang. This should be good news to the government, which is short on funds, since a major benefit of this convergence is greater efficiency and cost reductions. But has government procurement of these technologies kept pace?

Not so far, at least; but there are glimmers of hope.

The disruptive nature of IP technology has fundamentally changed both IT and telecom, tying them together as intertwined technologies. Sure, you can find all that legacy telecom out there that will be around for years. But data and voice can now travel the same IP-based highways regardless of whether the call those transmissions IT or telecom. The real point here is that convergence is upon us, and that is good news.

Government contracting for these technologies, however, is stuck in the old contracting molds, generally trying to buy IT and telecom separately. So what’s a government CIO to do?

Many government agencies still separate their IT and telecom organizations, which is at the heart of the problem. This creates the inevitable “us vs. them” approach, resulting in failure to coordinate requirements and the subsequent missed opportunities that wastes scarce resources.

How many times have the IT guys put together requirements that ignore the impact on telecom, and vice versa? The result is wasted resources, conflicting requirements, and non-interoperable systems. In this age of convergence, continuation of old habits could have a compounding effect. And I don’t mean on the positive side.

Empires are not built in a day, nor do they dissolve easily. But the first item on the agenda is to break down the organizational barriers so the efficiencies of convergence can be realized inside the government. Often, these empires exist on separated funding. Eliminate the separate funding, and the various parts of the organization will be forced to come together to figure out how to integrate the requirements.

The failure to adapt to convergence is especially true in the contracting offices of federal agencies, which have perpetuated the myth that IT and telecom can still be purchased as separate technologies. One of the first things the contracting officer asks when the CIO presents either IT or telecom requirements is “what is the NAICS code?” You see, the Small Business Administration (SBA) has separated businesses into not-so-neat categories, such as pest control, security guard services, IT, and telecom. Bingo. IT and telecom are very different SBA NAICS codes. Without going into all the reasons why this is the way it is, it is a fact of life.

More news on related topics: Communications / Networks, Data Management, Hardware



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