The Government Accountability Office has called on the Federal Technology Service and its customer agencies to fully adopt sound transition planning practices as they plan to transition to new telecom contracts.
Government-wide telecom contracts are about to expire and FTS and its customers are preparing to transition to Networx — a multiple award contract — but the previous federal telecom services transition proved to be a large, complex task, according to GAO-06-476.
It said the Department of the Interior, Bureau of Land Management, Department of Energy, Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation, and GSA were all generally planning to employ sound transition planning practices.
However, DoJ officials indicated they would not need additional funding for the transition, even though they could not provide an analytical basis for their decision, and DoE officials believed their transition planning efforts would not require the identification of human capital needs, the report said. DoE said it didn’t feel that was necessary though.
According to the report, not addressing all sound practices risks entering into a complex transition unprepared.
While FTS has addressed the majority of the lessons learned from the previous transition, it still needs to fully address the need to secure incumbent contractor cooperation and establish guidance on inventory management and validation processes, GAO said.
