San Diego County is again rebidding its enterprisewide technology and telecommunications outsourcing agreement, a public-private structure that initially began in 1999.
The county will choose a prime contractor from five prequalified vendors, including the incumbent Hewlett-Packard. The other four companies are Atos IT Solutions & Services; CGI Technologies & Solutions, Inc.; IBM; and Science Applications International Corp. (SAIC).
This month the county released the voluminous bid document, and expects to award a contract in fall 2016. If necessary, a one-year transition period would follow and the new contractor would take over beginning in 2018. The county intends to award a seven-year contract with five additional option years.
Over the years, San Diego County has been held up as an example that private industry can effectively manage a large-scale government IT shop.
The county’s help desk, desktop, network, data center and applications are managed entirely by a private company. The county began outsourcing in 1999 with Computer Sciences Corp., and then Northrop Grumman Corp. took over in 2007 after winning the contract rebid. Then in 2011 Northrop Grumman transferred ownership of its $700 million contract to Hewlett-Packard ahead of the agreement’s 2013 end date. HP previously was a big subcontractor on the agreement.
As part of the 2016 rebid, the prime contractor will be tasked with transforming the county's desktop environment, voice services and network, and implementing a cloud-based enterprise file sharing system and IT portfolio suite.
