VA launches massive contract to buy IT equipment and services

The Veterans Affairs Department kicked off this month what some technology executives estimate to be a huge, multibillion-dollar contract that will provide all the department's information technology needs.

The Transformation Twenty-One Total Technology (t4) program, or T4 for short, likely will replace VA's Global Information Technology Support Services contract, which was valued at $3 billion when it was awarded to 10 vendors in 2003, said Harold Gracey, a consultant with Topside Consulting who served as VA chief of staff from 1994 to 1998.

The statement of work for the contract says VA wants to buy a range of hardware and IT services, from desktop computers to network development.

The T4 contract will provide an array of IT services, including program management and strategy planning, systems and software engineering, enterprise networks, cybersecurity, operation and maintenance, and IT facilities.

Department officials did not provide a specific dollar value for the procurement. VA's Technology Acquisition Center in Eatontown, N.J., described the T4 contract as a "large dollar award multiple award" contract in a briefing to industry last month. Joaquin Martinez de Pinillos, director of software engineering at VA, said in a presentation at the briefing that the department will upgrade its technology using the T4 contract.

Gracey said Roger Baker, chief information officer at VA, said earlier this year that 75 percent of the department's fiscal 2010 IT budget of $3.3 billion will be awarded to contractors. Baker could not be reached for comment.

A contractor who declined to be identified compared the scale and scope of the contract to the General Service Administration's large governmentwide Alliant pact.

Comments on the T4 request for information are due Dec. 14.