As of June 24, 59 percent of the 168 federal agencies have completed their transition onto Networx, the General Services Administration telecommunications contract vehicle replacing the expiring FTS2001 vehicle.

The figures are according to Karl Krumbholz, GSA's director of network service programs, who recently posted a series of Networx updates on his official blog. Krumbholz does not appear to blog unofficially.

Krumbholz lays blame for the current state of transition on both contractors and agencies, stating that the former have an increased backlog of orders and in some cases have been unable to meet on-time  provisioning service level agreements. As for agencies, Krumbholz says several large agencies have failed to complete a fair opportunity process that includes data networks.

"Fair opportunity'" is the agency-level process agencies must undertake in order to select a telecom contractor with a slot on a Networx vehicle. Some agencies have performed this in a more admirable fashion than others.

As of June 30, Krumbholz' s blog also notes that all telecom carriers with slots on FTS 2001--whether on the original FTS 2001 vehicle, which was awarded in 1998 and 1999 to Sprint and MCI/WorldCom (now Verizon), respectively, or later under an effort dubbed the "FTS2001 Crossover Program," which added in 2004 Qwest and SBC Global Services (now AT&T)--now have sole source continuity bridge contracts in place.

For more:
- go to Karl Krumbholz's official blog

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