Army readies next ITES

HERSHEY, Pa. — The Army will follow up the $1 billion Information Technology Enterprise Solutions (ITES) program with another performance-based contracting initiative.

Army officials are working on guidelines for ITES 2 because the service will hit the $500 million limits for ITES Functional Area-1 (FA-1) hardware and FA-2 services' work sooner than expected. ITES 2 requirements should be ready this fall, said Kevin Carroll, program executive officer in the Program Executive Office-Enterprise Information Systems (PEO-EIS). He spoke today at the 2004 Army IT Conference.

PEO-EIS officials erred by not putting higher ceilings on the FA-1 and FA-2 contracts, Carroll said. He candidly took responsibility.

"We learned our lesson," said Col. Tom Hogan, project manager for enterprise infostructure at PEO-EIS. "We have to do something new."

The decision to create ITES 2 comes about six months after the service awarded the first ITES products and services contracts.

Industry officials criticized Army officials for not putting higher dollar limits on ITES FA-1 and FA-2. They said the service cannot do anything enterprisewide for $1 billion during a five-year period.

But Army officials said another performance-based procurement initiative does not represent a major mistake. They said ITES' popularity demonstrated the need for enterprise projects and industry-devised IT solutions.