During planning meetings for the new system, an idea emerged that played off the 1996 telecom act. The group decided that in FTS 2001 the two contract winners would compete against one another for agencies' business, as opposed to GSA assigning agencies like it did with FTS 2000. One result was very low voice rates. In FTS 2001's beginning stages, federal customers are paying 4 cents per minute for long-distance calls. By the end of the eight-year contract, that figure will drop to less than 1 cent per minute.
Competition is difficult sometimes.
But the best thing to do is to inject it whenever you can. GSA put competition at the core of its telecom strategy for both long-distance and local service. The agency also decided to make a wider array of services available through the new program. Through outsourcing, he says, the government can harvest the innovation of the private sector. Bubniak heads the Interagency Management Council, which advises FTS from a customer perspective.