The lost opportunities of Networx

News that federal agencies probably will mostly conduct like-for-like transition to the Networx contract from their existing FTS 2001 telecom contracts smacks of a lost opportunity.

Networx holds out the potential for agencies to converge their networks so that more cost-effective, streamlined architecture can emerge.

"Clearly, the shortest, the quickest way to transition is like-for-like," telecom industry maven Warren Suss told FierceGovernmentIT in an interview. But a like-for-like transition now means that agencies effectively must undergo two transitions--one like-for-like now and, later, a migration to updated technology, Suss said.

Admittedly, a real transformation isn't easy--as federal officials testifying May 20 before the House Oversight and Government Reform hastened to emphasize.

As Suss explained, "those technologies, especially when you overlay the federal government requirements for privacy and security, really do need a lot of attention to get them to work right."

Diana Gowen, general manager of Qwest Government Services, suggested there are other reasons, too. "There are many agencies who have responses from us in-house. They've had them in-house for months and months. So, if they would rigorously follow their evaluation criteria and make a decision, that's great step forward," she said.

In postponing transition and essentially putting off transformation, agencies appear mainly to be postponing grappling with serious issues, putting them off until later.

Resources are limited and network architecture isn't the sexist of issues, nonetheless, by allowing inventories to grow stale, by setting themselves up to do two Networx transitions, by letting difficult issues of technology transformation fester unresolved, agencies appear to have lost an opportunity to do it well and in a forward-looking manner. - Dave