GAO rules on GTSI dispute

GTSI Corp. should be able to go back to work on one of the U.S. Army's premier small computer programs following a legal decision by the General Accounting Office.

In late August, the Army awarded an $857 million contract to GTSI and a $617 million deal to IBM Global Services-Federal to provide hardware, software and services to the Army, Navy and Treasury Department under the Maxi-Minis and Databases-1 (MMAD-1) program. The dual award was expected to offer the Army several advantages, including ongoing competition and ensuring a continuous supply line should one contractor run into trouble. Since then, however, a series of legal maneuverings have left the GTSI portion of the contract in limbo.

Two losing contractors — Litton PRC Inc. and Federal Data Corp. — formally protested the awards to the Army Materiel Command, which handed down a split decision, denying the protest against IBM but recommending that the Army's Communications-Electronics Command consider re-competing the award to GTSI.

GTSI then protested to the General Accounting Office the Army Materiel Command decision, and the company announced March 26 that the General Accounting Office had sustained the protest filed by GTSI, meaning the company can get back to work on the contract.

"We are hopeful that we can now move forward with this contract," said Dendy Young, GTSI chairman and chief executive officer.

GTSI will provide commercial off-the-shelf, high-end 64-bit servers, workstations, operating systems, compilers, software applications, peripherals, local- and wide-area networking, and engineering and support services, among other things.