GSA is responsible for ensuring that federal agencies have access to the telecommunications services and solutions that they need to meet mission requirements. The organization responsible for carrying out these duties is the Integrated Technology Services Office within GSA’s Federal Acquisition Service. Within the Integrated Technology Services Office, the Office of Network Services Programs develops and manages programs for federal civilian and military agencies that are intended to deliver cost- effective administrative and technical support for telecommunications and network services. To provide cost savings to agencies, GSA aggregates requirements and develops government-wide contracts. Networx is the latest in a series of programs GSA has offered to agencies to provide telecommunications services. It is the successor to the FTS2001 program, which began in the late 1990s. FTS2001 was composed of two large contracts, one awarded to Sprint in December 1998 and one awarded to MCI in January 1999. The program also included contracts that had been awarded to local telecommunications contractors for selected metropolitan areas. GSA allowed the local telecommunications contractors to also offer long distance services on the FTS2001 contracts. These contracts were termed “crossover contracts,” and were with AT&T and Qwest, among others. In 2003, GSA, in conjunction with a group of senior federal information technology officials known as the Interagency Management Council, developed a successor program—Networx—to replace the FTS2001 contracts. Networx was to provide agencies with traditional and emerging services to meet current and future requirements. GSA identified several goals for the program, including several that were specific to the transition from FTS2001 to Networx. The goals for the transition included minimizing service impact, transitioning telecommunications services before the FTS2001 contracts expired, expediting the availability of new services, and minimizing transition expenses. GSA’s, the Interagency Management Council’s, and other key participants’ roles and responsibilities in carrying out the transition from FTS2001 to Networx are described in table 1. In 2007, GSA made multiple awards of task- and delivery-order contractsto five vendors under this program as vehicles for agencies to procure telecommunications services. These contract vehicles are known as Networx Universal and Networx Enterprise. Networx Universal contracts were awarded to AT&T, Verizon Business Services, and CenturyLink in March 2007. In May 2007, Networx Enterprise contracts were awarded to these three vendors as well as to Level 3 Communications and Sprint Nextel Corporation.contracts. Several factors contributed to delays in transitioning from FTS2001 to Networx. In particular, the complex Networx acquisition process compounded by a reported lack of telecommunications and contracting expertise within the agencies contributed to delays. Weaknesses in project management also contributed to the delays. As a result of the delays, GSA experienced increased costs, and agencies missed savings. The complexity of the acquisition process was related to duplicative and overlapping contract vehicles, the large number of potential service options for a given requirement, and challenges related to implementing the fair opportunity process, among others. The complexity was compounded by limited contract and technical expertise at some agencies. Duplicative and overlapping contract vehicles. According to GSA’s analysis, the establishment of two Networx contract vehicles—Universal and Enterprise—created confusion with customer agencies and added administrative cost for GSA. The two-contract-vehicle strategy was intended to address Networx program goals to provide all services that were available under FTS2001, as well as to provide access to a greater number of competing vendors that would provide new, enhanced services and emerging technologies. The Universal vehicle was intended to focus on the first of these goals, while the Enterprise vehicle was to focus more on the second. However, because of industry consolidation by the time the contracts were awarded, the strategy was not as effective as had been envisioned. Specifically, three of the five contractors awarded Enterprise contracts were also awarded Universal contracts, and most services are provided on both contracts. Having two vehicles essentially doubled GSA’s management and support responsibilities, and significant overlap existed with the two contracts. GSA agreed that the Universal/Enterprise construct should not be repeated in the follow-on NS2020 program. Decoupled contract services. According to GSA and some service providers, another key factor that contributed to delays was that agencies could not purchase multiple services bundled into a single item on the Networx contracts. Specifically, Networx contracts did not permit this type of bundling, as the FTS2001 contracts had. Instead, the Networx contracts offered services by detailed contract line items in order to allow agencies to more accurately identify and maintain inventories of the services they were purchasing. Agencies were expected to map their existing FTS2001 services to the individual services on Networx, using a tool called the Networx Unit Pricer. To facilitate this, agencies were expected to use the Networx Unit Pricer to compare unit prices at the line- item level across the Networx Universal and Enterprise contractors and, where available, the FTS2001 contracts. However, the growth in the number of services offered (54 on Networx compared with 26 on FTS2001) and the number of contract line items (about 5,100 in the original contracts), including some that vary by location and bandwidth, led to a number of different potential service options for any given requirement. To address this challenge, many agencies developed statements of work to request proposals from the contractors instead of using the Networx Unit Pricer. However, GSA had expected that the vast majority of orders would be placed using the Networx Unit Pricer and would not require the development of statements of work. Thus, this process added to GSA’s planned workload, requiring GSA to review the statements of work to determine if the requirements were within the scope of the Networx contracts and assist in ordering them. If the requirements were not in the scope of the contracts, additional time was required to modify the contracts. (This extra work, for example, resulted in the number of contract line items increasing from 5,100 to 13,400 as of June 2011.) Challenges related to the fair opportunity process. Finally, according to GSA, agencies experienced challenges in implementing the fair opportunity process because of a lack of clear guidance on changes that were made to the process after GSA awarded the contract vehicles. At the time the Networx contracts were awarded, potential contractors could protest (i.e., contest) the issuance of an order only when an order increased the scope, period, or maximum value of the contract under which the order was issued. However, soon after the Networx transition was under way, changes were made to the procurement statutes that resulted in agencies needing to take more measures than in the past. Specifically, the statutes were modified to allow protests of the issuance or proposed issuance of task or delivery orders above $10 million (not just on the grounds that the order increases the scope, period or maximum value of the contract under which it was issued). In addition, the new statutes required additional measures in giving all contractors a fair opportunity to be considered for orders over $5 million. In addition to lacking clear guidance, according to GSA’s analysis, because agencies previously relied on GSA to provide expertise on contract processes and procedures, several agencies lacked expertise in the fair opportunity process. To GSA’s credit, once aware of this issue, it responded by providing guidance; however, according to GSA, its guidance was sometimes inconsistent and created confusion. GSA officials agreed that different organizations within GSA, such as acquisition support or the help desk, provided oral guidance to customer agencies that was inconsistent. According to GSA’s analysis, a decline in telecommunications technical and contracting expertise in the federal government contributed to some agencies’ inability to efficiently identify and contract for Networx solutions for their requirements. In particular, customer agencies requested GSA’s assistance in developing a statement of work and conducting the fair opportunity process. Moreover, according to the analysis, customer agencies are concerned that the shortage of telecommunications specialists will get worse because there are not enough to replace experienced workers nearing retirement. Further, since February 2011, we have identified gaps in the skills of the federal workforce as a high-risk area that threatens the government’s ability to effectively address national issues. We have noted that agencies should work with the Office of Personnel Management, the central human resources agency for the federal government, to pursue a strategic, government-wide approach to addressing these critical skills gaps. GSA has yet to fully study this issue, and agreed that understanding expertise shortfalls would be useful for future transition planning purposes; however, it has not established a plan to do so. As we previously reported, sound transition planning practices include ensuring that personnel with the right skills are in place to support the transition effort. These skills include contract expertise, legal expertise, asset management, and program management. Identifying current and projected shortfalls in critical telecommunication specialist roles early in the process of planning the next transition could better position GSA to assist customer agencies and help avoid future delays. Another key factor that contributed to delays was weak project planning. According to sound transition practices, a transition such as the one from FTS2001 to Networx should be approached as a critical project. Accordingly, agencies should develop a project management plan as the primary document that defines how the transition is to be executed and controlled, as called for by leading project management practices. As we previously reported, a transition project management plan should include, among other things, a time line of all activities that need to be completed, taking into account priorities relative to the agency’s mission- critical systems, contingency plans, and identified risks. Moreover, transition plans should be updated on an ongoing basis to reflect the current status of the project and allow for reporting progress. However, neither of our case study agencies had a current transition project management plan or an integrated transition time line.