Georgia Tech Procurement Assistance Center

  • Home
  • About Us
  • Training
    • Class Registration
    • On-demand Training
    • GTPAC COVID-19 Resource Page
    • Cybersecurity Video
    • Veterans Verification Video
    • GTPAC Community
    • Other Training Audio & Video
  • Useful Links
  • Team Directory
    • Albany Counselor
    • Athens Counselor
    • Atlanta Counselors
    • Augusta Counselor
    • Carrollton Counselor
    • Columbus Counselor
    • Gainesville Counselor
    • Savannah Counselor
    • Warner Robins Counselor
  • Directions
    • Athens
    • Atlanta – Training Facility
    • Atlanta – Office
    • Albany
    • Augusta
    • Carrollton
    • Columbus
    • Gainesville
    • Savannah
    • Warner Robins
  • COVID-19
  • New Client Application
  • Contact Us

Social Security expects to award mega-IT contract by October

September 1, 2010 By ei2admin

The Social Security Administration expects to award by October a contract potentially worth more than $2 billion for information technology support during the next eight years, agency officials confirmed late Friday.

The huge purchase is an extension of an IT services contract currently held by Lockheed Martin Corp. that has reached its cap of $525 million. The scope of work for this follow-on will extend beyond the previous contract that was primarily for software development and maintenance to include health information technology as well as new management responsibilities. The award may be split between multiple companies.

In June, Social Security officials described the procurement as consisting of many technical areas, including application and business planning; systems administration for the operating systems z/OS, Unix, Windows and IBM WebSphere; and emerging technology applications, such as data mining, cloud computing and voice recognition.

The new contract also will continue the work being performed under SSA’s current agreement with Lockheed, the Agencywide Support Services Contract. That award, announced in November 2004, covers application development, testing and maintenance; document management, and software engineering. Lockheed has provided software support to Social Security since 1989 under various task orders.

The impending contract award comes at a time when SSA is under pressure from lawmakers and applicants to reduce disability hearing backlogs partly through videoconferencing, expedite claims processing and offer more online services. Given the rising tide of baby boomer enrollees and applicants suffering economic hardship, the agency’s infrastructure is strained. Social Security already processes 4.7 million retirement claims annually and pays 60 million beneficiaries a total of more than $700 billion a year.

The contract winners will be responsible for ensuring continuity of citizen services and remote disaster recovery as the agency renovates its 30-year-old database system, according to the request for proposals.

The health IT responsibilities for the program are exhaustive. Social Security manages the largest repository of imaged medical information in the world, according to SSA officials. The agency currently stores more than 250 million medical documents and adds 2 million more per week.

The contractor must create business models for exchanging electronic medical records, expand Internet services for Medicare and supplemental security income applicants, and enable the agency to request and receive medical data automatically through health information exchanges.

Such tasks require expertise in the areas of health IT standards, clinical terminology, multiple formats of electronic health records, patient confidentiality procedures, the medical community’s financial transactions and analysis of health care legislation.

This activity will “set them up for compatibility and interoperability with the pending growth of health IT among commercial providers who will be taking advantage of the HIT incentives that were legislated” in the 2009 Recovery Act, said Ray Bjorklund, chief knowledge officer for FedSources, a market research firm. Starting in 2011, doctors and hospitals that install certified electronic health records systems will be eligible for receiving bonus Medicare and Medicaid payments.

Several federal market specialists presume the government will award the contract to more than one vendor to boost competition, which should drive down prices, for individual task orders. The trade-off might be a lack of consistency in services, but the net benefits should generally outweigh the negatives, Bjorklund said.

He predicted multibillion-dollar contracts like SSA’s project will soon disappear in civilian agencies given tight budgets. In addition, the government is moving toward shared services, through which multiple agencies use a common IT infrastructure. The Obama administration particularly is pushing cloud computing, a type of shared services arrangement that provides IT products and services online and on-demand.

“For the civilian agencies this could be one of the last big ones for a while,” Bjorklund said. “But the pendulum swings.


— By Aliya Sternstein – 08/23/10 – NextGov.com – © 2010 BY NATIONAL JOURNAL GROUP, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Filed Under: Contracting News Tagged With: cloud, health records, information technology, SSA, technology

Recent Posts

  • DoD publishes long awaited interim rule on CMMC
  • GSA Region 4 OSDBU hosting small business webinar
  • GTPAC launches COVID-19 resource page
  • GDEcD seeks GA Manufacturers and Distributors that can help with critical health care supply needs related to COVID-19
  • Georgia DOAS to hold 4th Annual Georgia Procurement Conference April 21-23, 2020

Popular Topics

8(a) abuse Army bid protest budget budget cuts certification construction contract awards contracting opportunities cybersecurity DoD DOJ False Claims Act FAR federal contracting federal contracts fraud GAO Georgia Tech government contracting government contract training government trends GSA GSA Schedule GTPAC HUBZone innovation IT Justice Dept. marketing NDAA OMB SBA SDVOSB set-aside small business small business goals spending subcontracting technology VA veteran owned business VOSB wosb

Contracting News

DoD publishes long awaited interim rule on CMMC

Small business subcontracting for cloud computing gets easier

Long awaited changes to WOSB/EDWOSB regulations expected this summer

The CMMC has arrived: DoD publishes version 1.0 of its new cybersecurity framework

GSA keeping ‘on track’ with schedule consolidation

Read More

Contracting Tips

A guide to labor and employment obligations for federal contractors

Who pays for CMMC certification?

Other transaction agreements: Where does an unsuccessful bidder go?

Knowledge is power, if you know how to use it

EAJA provides relief to construction contractor for government’s bad actions

Read More

GTPAC News

GSA Region 4 OSDBU hosting small business webinar

GTPAC launches COVID-19 resource page

GDEcD seeks GA Manufacturers and Distributors that can help with critical health care supply needs related to COVID-19

Georgia DOAS to hold 4th Annual Georgia Procurement Conference April 21-23, 2020

MICC Fort Stewart hosting acquisition forecast open house on Thursday, Feb. 6, 2020

Read More

Georgia Tech News

Dr. Abdallah testifies on U.S. competitiveness, research, STEM pipeline at Congressional hearing

Georgia Tech’s Technology Square Phase III to include George Tower

Student surprises his teacher with Georgia Tech acceptance news

Georgia Tech Applied Research will support DHS information safeguarding effort

$25 million project will advance DNA-based archival data storage

Read More

  • SAM.gov registration is free, and help with SAM is free, too
APTAC RSS Twitter GTPAC - 30th Year of Service

Copyright © 2021 · Georgia Tech - Enterprise Innovation Institute