11 vendors win call center contracts

The General Services Administration has signed agreements with 11 vendors to offer call center management services to federal agencies.

The agreements, in the form of blanket purchase agreements, span five years and carry a potential value of $100 million each.

Henry Lai, director of the Center for Emerging Technologies at GSA, said the BPAs offer agencies an easy way of finding vendors that can plan and operate call centers — whether those call centers field queries that come in via telephone or the Internet.

"What we're trying to do is simplify the process for the agencies a little," said Lai, who explained some agencies spend a lot of time and money trying to determine vendors' call center capabilities before hiring them. "That's basically the idea: to provide more of a one-stop shop for them [agencies]," Lai said. "Otherwise, they'll have to go to Company A for this, Company B for that, Company C for that."

GSA awarded the BPAs last month and has begun to publicize them among agencies. Vendors winning BPAs include: Arthur Andersen, Arthur D. Little Inc., Booz-Allen &Hamilton Inc., PricewaterhouseCoopers and Metamor Government Solutions — all of which may provide consulting and management services. Other vendors include: Dichroma Inc., Kajax Engineering Inc., Lucent Technologies, Science Applications International Corp., Unisys Corp. and VGS Inc. — all of which may provide systems integration and support services.