FDA awards $2.5 billion to modernize IT

FDA awards $2.5 billion to modernize IT The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has picked 10 contractors to receive up to $2.5 billion for information technology and data center management services over the next 10 years.
   The contract is part of the FDA’s Information Technology for the 21st Century (ICT 21) initiative, an extensive modernization program including data management and warehousing, and IT infrastructure and security.
   “This contract sets the stage for the FDA to have IT to acquire, analyze and act on data critical for import protection, food protection and medical product safety plans,” said FDA Commissioner Andrew C. von Eschenbach, in a Sept. 30 statement.
   The contracts, with a minimum value of $25,000 in orders per contractor, were awarded to:
   ' Buccaneer, Warrington, Va.
   ' Computer Sciences Corp., Rockville, Md.
   ' Dynanet, Elkridge, Md.
   ' Electronic Data Systems, Herndon, Va.
   ' General Dynamics, Fairfax, Va.
   ' Human Touch, McLean, Va.
   ' IDL-Pragmatics, Vienna, Va.
   ' Interactive Technology Solutions, Silver Spring, Md.
   ' Telesis, Rockville, Md.
   ' Unisys, Reston, Va.
   The FDA said the 10 contractors will compete for data IT task orders through this contract. The agency has awarded three task orders under the ICT 21 contract for the design and migration of all systems applications to two new data centers, which will be the “cornerstone” of the FDA’s IT infrastructure and bioinformatics modernization for the next decade.
   The three task orders were awarded to:
   ' IT Solutions (Task Order 1 — funded initially at $3 million) provides design and implementation as well as migration of existing FDA applications to the newly configured White Oak Data Center, which will support all FDA test and development applications.
   ' Buccaneer (Task Order 2 — funded initially at $3 million) provides the operations and maintenance of the White Oak Data Center.
   ' EDS (Task Order 3 — funded initially at $12 million) provides the design, implementation, migration, operations and maintenance of existing FDA applications to a contractor-owned and operated hosted data center for FDA production operations.
   “All FDA software applications and hosting operations will transition to the new data centers over a two-year period,” the agency said.