Vet Firms Eyed for VA Tech Upgrades

The Department of Veterans Affairs is planning to pour millions of dollars into information technology contracts for veteran-owned small businesses, VA Secretary Eric Shinseki said in a July 20 speech in Las Vegas.

The purchasing strategy is called "T4," or Transformation 21 Total Technology -- a program already in use by the Army and Air Force, Shinseki said. For veterans, the T4 strategy means up to $7 billion in IT procurement contracts over the next five years -- more than $1 billion a year for about 9 percent of the agency's total outlays, he said.

The VA will be using the T4 program to upgrade its information technology systems across the agency, Shinseki told about 3,000 people attending the 6th annual Veterans Small Business Expo in Las Vegas.

Shinseki said there will be 15 prime contracts, four reserved for service-disabled veteran-owned small businesses and three reserved for veteran-owned small businesses.

The contracts will be awarded in a two-step process. In the initial award, contracts will be doled out without regard to the size of the bidding companies.

If that doesn't get enough bidders, the next step will be to "eliminate the big firms and non-veteran businesses, and select the most competitive of those remaining," Shinseki said.

Big companies that are selected for prime contracts must meet subcontracting goals, he said, such as 35 percent of their subcontracts going to small business, including 12 percent for veteran-owned and 10 percent for service-disabled-owned businesses.

"We also reserve the right to set aside task orders for service-disabled and veteran-owned small businesses, so that those teaming with big firms actually get the work they have been promised, and are not just used for window-dressing," he said.

Small-business subcontracting goals will be aggressively monitored, and firms that do not meet their goals will not receive additional work. Shinseki said the agency has more authority now to bar firms from bidding on VA contracts.

In remarks he repeated later to reporters on a conference call, Shinseki said the VA will continue to put veterans first in employment and contracting.

He said the agency exceeds the federal government goal for veteran hiring.

"The goal … is a modest 3 percent of a department's workforce. VA's level of veteran employment is 27 percent, or about 80,000 veterans," he said.

In procurements, he added, the federal government's goal for all small business is 23 percent, but VA's procurements have exceeded 30 percent each year since 2007. The goal for fiscal 2010 is 33.5 percent, he told reporters and, once that is reached, the goal will be pushed up again.

At the same time, the VA has more than doubled its contracts with service-disabled veteran-owned small businesses, from less than 7 percent to 16 percent. Purchases from veteran-owned small businesses went from 10 percent to 19 percent during the same period, Shinseki said.

Shinseki added that the VA's T4 program not only was adopted from the Pentagon program, but the VA "hired en masse the Army's experts on the strategy." He said the VA brought in 160 T4 experts who were cut loose through a Base Realignment and Closure action.

"This provided critical mass for standing up a new office to provide a full-service, one-stop shop for IT acquisitions," he said. "Almost all of these specialists have worked together for years, through three successful executions of the Army's IT strategy, so there was no need for a break-in period with this new office."