The General Services Administration (GSA) is urging federal agencies to begin preparing now for the next major governmentwide telecommunications transition, warning that waiting until the Enterprise Infrastructure Solutions (EIS) contract nears its 2032 expiration could leave agencies without enough time to modernize legacy networks.
“With EIS expiring in less than six years, we should be modernizing before we start transitioning,” Deborah Hren, program director of the Business Management Division within GSA’s Enterprise Technology Solutions (ETS), said Sept. 17 at the Federal Networks 2026 conference.
Hren said agencies should begin moving away from outdated technologies before shifting services onto whatever acquisition vehicles ultimately replace their current EIS services.
“These old technologies, this old kind of equipment, needs to be transformed before we move onto whatever the next vehicle is or the next option for replacing services that are on the expiring contracts,” she said.
The push to start early reflects lessons learned from the transition to EIS, which Hren said took 11 years. Agencies struggled to understand their telecommunications inventories, while the fair opportunity acquisition process took an average of 3.5 years. One agency took nine years to make a decision, she said.
“That doesn’t leave you a lot of time for the actual transition,” Hren said. “So, we need to get ahead of that inventory.”
According to Hren, agencies need a comprehensive picture of their existing telecommunications services before determining what should be modernized, eliminated, or moved to another acquisition vehicle.
“If you hear only one thing I said today … let it be that the agencies and their service providers need to start now to develop the inventory, the requirements, and the strategy that’s achievable in the next five to six years,” Hren said.
Hren also cautioned against simply replacing existing services with like-for-like technologies. Hren said complications involving older time-division multiplexing services contributed to significant delays during the EIS transition, while the pandemic and supply chain shortages pushed some agencies and contractors toward moving technologies they already knew instead of adopting newer alternatives.
“We need not to repeat that as we look to start moving off the EIS contracts,” Hren said.