“If you look at our partnership with the U.S. Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA), which we called the future Com/SatCom services agreement, it was a very tight partnership,” Gallo said during the interview. “We worked hand-in-hand with them to develop these contract vehicles. They were customer-focused offerings and that partnership model is something we intend to follow forward. We also applied what the Department of Defense called targeted scope, meaning we will look at the way the government was procuring commercial satellite communication services and developing contracts to fit that approach.”

   GSA and DISA split the Future Commercial Satellite Communications Services Acquisition (FCSA) program into three areas, covering transponder or bulk bandwidth needs, managed services and end-to-end solutions, each with customized strategies that were all coordinated under FCSA.

   Gallo said the NS2020 would still follow the basic formula. Under the NS2020 program, GSA is reviewing how effective previous contract initiatives such as Alliant and Schedule 70 were in functioning together, and whether or not they would be more effective if separated.

   “We have launched a monthly interagency advisory panel consisting of a deputy chief information officer, senior procurement executives and others who have extensive interaction with the network,” said Gallo. “The strategy development also will include one-on-one meetings with industry and possible industry days in the next year. Once a draft strategy is completed, we will ask the CIO and CAO councils for approval.”

   Speaking at the Independent Telecommunications Pioneer Association (IPTA) luncheon Jan. 3, Gallo said GSA conferred with several government and industry experts through a top-to-bottom review of the entire telecommunications portfolio during the last year-and-a-half.

   “The new initiative looks at the whole gamut of telecommunications and other IT services,” said Gallo. "Services such as cloud computing, wireless and managed services are all part of the considerations for Network Services 2020. It will result in a strategy for the contract vehicles and the support services that we provide for that and it will be a follow-on effort for what are the appropriate acquisition or reuse of existing contracts.

   We are trying to match how the government buys these products and services with how vendors sell them. It’s all about making it easier to buy and sell these services.”