Procurement shop eyes telecom
- By Greg Langlois
- May 28, 2001
Gov.Works, the fee-for-service acquisitions provider based at the Interior
Department, is looking for a contractor to help it determine whether offering
telecommunications services makes business sense.
In a recent Commerce Business Daily notice, Gov.Works (govworks.gov), part of the procurement branch of Interior's Minerals Management
Service, announced that it is seeking a firm with knowledge of the telecom
market to assess how it might structure a new telecom business line.
"We're in the first stages of evaluating and determining if there is
a business case to pursue," said Michael Del-Colle, chief of the procurement
and support services division at Gov.Works. "We're evaluating the merits
of and opportunities that might exist to offer local telecommunications
support on a national basis."
Gov.Works, a federal franchise fund program authorized under the Government
Management and Reform Act of 1994, helps other federal agencies acquire
supplies and services. In most cases, agencies pay Gov.Works a fixed fee
of 3 percent of a contract's value.
Much of Gov.Works' business lies in helping agencies acquire information
technology.
The complexity of buying telecom may be too much of a headache for agency
contracting officials — and that might make telecom purchasing a lucrative
business line for Gov.Works, Del-Colle said.
"Buying telecom is not easy," he said. "It's specialized contracting
where the dynamics of the marketplace are intricate."
The contractor Gov.Works selects will conduct a market survey, write
an acquisition plan, create a performance-based statement of objectives
and help structure a schedule of services that would be performed under
a telecom contract, among other tasks.
While noting that agencies already have other organizations to turn
to for buying telecom services, Del-Colle said that if Gov.Works decides
to add telecom to its lineup, the competition will likely improve overall
service.
"We clearly recognize if there is a market there and [we] can construct
good business opportunity, we...will provide an alternative to existing
opportunities out there," he said. "As far as I know, competition always
improves the market for everybody."