NSA Considers $5B Outsourcing Pact

Computerworld - The National Security Agency (NSA), the super-secret communications intelligence arm of the Pentagon, next month plans to open its doors to industry with a request for proposals (RFP) for a contract to outsource the majority of its non-mission-critical IT infrastructure.
The 10-year, $5 billion initiative, called Project Groundbreaker, is the result of a 15-month NSA study to determine if the agency's IT infrastructure needs could be met more efficiently through a massive outsourcing agreement with the private sector.
If awarded, the deal would be the second-largest government outsourcing pact in history. In October, the Navy awarded Plano, Texas-based Electronic Data Systems Corp. a $6.9 billion contract to build an intranet infrastructure for the Navy and Marine Corps.
The Fort Meade, Md.-based NSA is known as the signals intelligence arm of the U.S. Department of Defense, tasked with intercepting and analyzing a vast array of foreign military and national security-related communications. The pace of technological change in recent years, including advances in encryption, the spread of fiber-optic cable and the increasing volume of Internet communications, has made infrastructure modernization a top priority for the agency.
However, Project Groundbreaker is limited to administrative and logistics functions, and won't involve turning data collection or analysis over to a third party, NSA officials said.
Project Groundbreaker has been designed to reverse what NSA director Lt. Gen. Michael Hayden has characterized as years of modernization neglect at the agency. The project could affect the jobs of as many as 5,000 agency employees who may or may not be hired by contractors, according to NSA officials.
Three Prime Contractors
The NSA has prequalified three prime contractors to bid for the project: AT&T Corp.; El Segundo, Calif.-based Computer Sciences Corp.; and Greenbelt, Md.-based OAO Corp. Representatives from each of the firms declined to comment before NSA releases the RFP next month.
John Pescatore, a former NSA analyst and now an information security analyst at Stamford, Conn.-based Gartner Group Inc., said Project Groundbreaker is a departure from what the NSA has done in the past. "Service-level agreements will be used and the contractor will manage all the resources," he said.

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