SRA International Inc. just won a $117 million contract to work as the General Accountability Office's IT systems integrator, a move that is expected to save the watchdog agency millions of dollars. The award was announced on Tuesday by the General Services Administration (GSA), and represents GAO's first attempt at performance-based contracting, virtually a necessity in these austere times. It's a strategy being used across government to save money.

SRA's fees will depend on semi-annual reviews of its work on a wide range of services that include security, network upkeep and software development. Pete Burr, manager of FEDSIM, which is part of GSA's Federal Acquisition Service, said GAO expects to save $15 million over five years as a result of consolidation and reducing unnecessary IT infrastructure.

"We're looking for more consolidation and a better mix of skills [from the contractor]," said Burr. "We want to have the contractor bring best practices into the organization to provide better service." This concept has been a success in many other agencies, and SRA has been at the helm of making this new kind of contracting work.

But it will take clear analysis of cost-savings at GAO to see if it works there. And it is a contracting device likely to be relied on more frequently in the wake of President Obama's pledge to save billions of dollars in unnecessary federal expenditures.
                                                     
For more on this story:
- see this nextgov.com article