BearingPoint in $104 million HSPD-12 contract
Company will provide end-to-end services; smaller agencies seen to benefit from scale; 30 August deadline to order HSPD-related services through Fedral Acquisition Service looms
As longtime Daily Wire readers know, the federal government’s effort to implement the HSPD-12 mandate to provide secure, interoperable identification cards across the federal sector by 27 October 2006 has been beset by problems. Just last week, for instance, we reported that maritime and port workers would be temporarily excluded because the neccesary card readers were subject to saltwater corrosion.
To help speed up the process across the board, the General Services Administration last week awarded consulting powerhouse BearingPoint a $104 million, five-year contract to provide end-to-end services for government agencies yet to comply. Under the contract, the McLean, Virginia-based company will help agencies coordinate the purchase and implementation of government-approved products and services. The hope is that a number of smaller agencies, many of which have been unable for financial reasons to implement HSPD-12, will take advantage of the program. GSA officials said the more agencies that sign up, the lower the cost will be for each.
They had better move fast: Agencies that need help from the General Services Administration have until 30 August to order HSPD 12-related services through the Federal Acquisition Service and have until 22 September to order supplies. “It is an incredibly aggressive timeline, and we’re not going to have a lot of free time in the next couple of months,” said Michel Kareis, director of GSA’s HSPD 12 program. “We’ve committed a tremendous amount of our personal time in addition to our business time. The team is quite committed to this.”
-read more in Daniel Pulliam’s Govexec.com report
