GSA-chosen EDS begins FIPS 201 infrastructure work while competitor Bearing Point scores major agency win : SecureID News

Excerpt:
EDS consortium well underway with new SSP offering

BearingPoint’s announcement comes nearly four months after the government selected EDS as the official Shared Services Provider for the FIPS 201 Card Rollout. The five-year contract, worth $66 million, was touted by GSA as a taxpayer bargain.

Upon issuing the award, GSA Administrator Lurita Doan said in a statement: “This award further enhances GSA’s ability to provide critical national security systems while reducing the overall costs to the government and taxpayers.”

BearingPoint was originally selected as the GSA’s SSP one year ago, in a contract worth $104.6 million. Soon afterwards, BearingPoint helped nearly 40 agencies produce their first cards produced for the Oct. 27, 2007 deadline.

The Shared Services Provider Program began in August 2006 to give agencies a one-stop-shop for implementing standards-compliant cards and card-management systems.

Under the SSP competitive contract, agencies in the same geographic locations will be able to share required HSPD-12 implementation services and take advantage of GSA’s oversight and related management services.

At press time, an EDS spokesman said the company had already long since begun execution of plans to build the infrastructure and service centers that will support the ID cards. This is the first step in preparing the 42 government agencies who have signed up for the SSP program for the FIPS 201 identity card rollout.

“I know that’s going on right now,” says EDS senior spokesman Brad Bass, who works with the company’s government contracts division. EDS’s partners in this venture include Northrop Grumman Corp., ActivIdentity Corp., Data Systems Analysts, Identification Technology Group, L-1 Identity Solutions, Oberthur Card Systems, and Tibco Software Inc.

In selecting EDS, the government basically chose the most cost-effective proposal. But undergoing the task of building the infrastructure and issuing cards requires a huge multi-million dollar financial investment, says Jeremy Grant, the Emerging Technologies Analyst at the Washington, D.C., research arm of Stanford Group Company.

“From what we hear, they're doing a very decent job," says Mr. Grant. "And from my perspective, the EDS team was a sensible choice. The GSA had to choose a vendor that was credible in this space. There was a very shaky coalition of federal agencies that signed up with GSA to deliver managed services. So GSA had to select someone those agencies would feel comfortable with, and EDS is certainly a company that has credibility in this space."

The high level of business risk prompted Bearing Point to drop out of bidding at the last minute, Mr. Hannah confirmed.

GSA-chosen EDS begins FIPS 201 infrastructure work while competitor Bearing Point scores major agency win : SecureID News