A new government-wide strategic plan on Category Management covering FY18-FY20 and released in late April aligns with the President’s Management Agenda and declares the Enterprise Infrastructure Solutions contracting vehicle one of its key IT components.
One of the 14 Cross-Agency Priority Goals outlined in the President’s Management Agenda, Category Management aims to reduce duplicate contracts by simply making better purchasing decisions. The PMA says $18 billion of savings is on the table through 2020, across ten purchasing categories.
The new strategic plan officially sets cost avoidance benchmarks for each category, by quarter, to comply with the PMA’s quarterly oversight requirements.
Information Technology is one of those ten categories where procurement redundancies represent a significant drain on government spending. To tackle that problem, the General Services Administration awarded the 15-year, $50 billion EIS contract last year to ten telecommunications companies.
The Office of Management and Budget has just granted EIS its Best-in-Class designation, following a thorough evaluation. The badge of honor means EIS is government’s preferred contracting vehicle for all telecommunications purchases, to include: voice, video, and data transport, hosting, and cloud services, as well as call centers, associated labor services, cable and wiring, and network and cybersecurity equipment.
Agencies have until 2020 to migrate to EIS for telecommunications purchases before the previous telecom contracting vehicles expire.
