FDA selects contractors to lead IT, data systems management

WASHINGTON The Food and Drug Administration announced Tuesday that it had selected 10 contractors to receive a total of up to $2.5 billion for information technology and data center management services over the next 10 years.

The agency said the contract was a cornerstone of its Information Technology for the 21st Century bioinformatics initiative, a modernization program that includes data management, data warehousing, IT infrastructure and IT security.

“This contract sets the stage for the FDA to have IT to acquire, analyze and act on data critical for import protection, food protection and medical product safety plans,” commissioner of food and drugs Dr. Andrew von Eschenbach said. “We are creating a high-tech, efficient data-management system designed to meet the needs of those who must accomplish our mission‹protecting and promoting the health of the American public.”

Contracts worth at least $25,000 each went to Buccaneer, Computer Sciences Corporation, Dynanet, Electronic Data Systems, General Dynamics, Human Touch, IDL-Pragmatics, Interactive Technology Solutions, Telesis and Unisys.

Three companies have received task orders to design and migrate systems applications to new data centers, which the FDA said would be the cornerstone of its IT infrastructure and bioinformatics modernization for the next 10 years. IT Solutions received $3 million to design, implement and migrate existing FDA applications to the newly configured White Oak Data Center to support test and development applications; Buccaneer received $3 million to operate and maintain the data center; EDS received $12 million to design, implement and migrate applications to a “contractor owned, contractor operated” hosted data center for FDA production operations.