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Telecommunications: GSA Has Made Progress in Planning Governmentwide Program but Challenges Remain

GAO-04-1085T Published: Sep 15, 2004. Publicly Released: Sep 15, 2004.
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Highlights

The General Services Administration (GSA) has begun planning for a governmentwide telecommunications program known as Networx. GSA issued a request for information in October 2003 that proposed two acquisitions: Networx Universal, which was to provide a full range of national and international network services across the United States, and Networx Select, which was to provide agencies with leading-edge services with less extensive geographic coverage. Contracts under the Select acquisition were to be awarded 9 months after the Universal In February, we testified on GSA's initial plans and identified four key challenges GSA faced in ensuring a successful outcome for the program: structure and scheduling, transition planning, service inventories, and performance measures. GAO assessed GSA's progress in addressing the challenges identified as well as GSA's efforts to address long-standing issues related to billing.

Recommendations

Recommendations for Executive Action

Agency Affected Recommendation Status
General Services Administration To prevent repeating the transition problems experienced in the past, and to ensure that transition plans are developed with adequate time to be implemented, GSA should develop a transition timeline and procedures to prevent the reoccurrence of identified difficulties from previous transitions.
Closed – Implemented
In July 2007, GSA developed a timeline for the transition to Networx with milestones and events such as contract award, agency fair opportunity process, a period for transitioning telecommunications services, and the expiration of transition reimbursements. Regarding the development of procedures to prevent the recurrence of identified transition difficulties, GSA coordinated with agencies through the Interagency Management Council and issued the Networx Transition Pre-Award Guide. This guide recognizes the value of applying lessons learned from previous transitions and identifies activities that agencies can undertake to reduce the time and costs associated with the transition effort.
General Services Administration Until GSA develops a firm strategy, it lacks assurance that the required program measures will be in place at the appropriate time. As a result, its measures may have limited effect as a program management tool. Therefore, GSA should finalize its efforts to identify measures to evaluate progress towards program goals and develop a strategy for using those measures for ongoing program management.
Closed – Not Implemented
GSA has not yet addressed this recommendation. GSA drafted performance measures for the Networx transition, and, according to GSA's Director for Network Services Programs, they were never finalized. At this point the official does not believe that GSA will finalize them or actively use them for ongoing program management.
General Services Administration Regardless of the plans of industry, if GSA does not develop a billing process that better meets the needs of its customers, the agencies are likely to continue to experience difficulties in managing their telecommunications costs. To better address this challenge, GSA should develop and implement a strategy for addressing the billing data issues raised by its customer agencies.
Closed – Implemented
To address this recommendation, GSA identified a strategy for addressing billing concerns. Specifically, the Networx contracts include service level agreements that hold the contractors accountable for the accuracy of the billing data they provide and a requirement that contractors assign a unique identifier to each transaction, which agencies believe will improve both billing and inventory management.

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Topics

Billing proceduresFederal procurementPerformance measuresProgram evaluationProgram managementService contractsTelecommunicationsTimelinessFederal agenciesSolicitations