State officials said about 100 evaluators from state and local government agencies will participate in the evaluation of proposals from MCI WorldCom Communications Inc. and its team of subcontractors, and Connect Georgia, a bid team composed of BellSouth, AT&T, Electronic Data Systems, Lockheed Martin and their team of subcontractors.
"We are very pleased that these respected companies are interested in partnering with the state on this revolutionary project to build a world-class telecommunications infrastructure," said Larry Singer, Georgia's CIO and executive director of the Georgia Technology Authority (GTA), which is managing the procurement. "We look forward to studying their proposals for bringing high-speed Internet access to every corner of the state."
The CCOP addresses the state's need for local, long distance and wireless phone service; high-speed online access; video and two-way radio; local area networks; personal computing equipment and support.
The project's goal is to provide a modern communications network for state and local government agencies, including schools, libraries and city or county offices. State agencies currently spend an average of $182.3 million each year on telecommunications.
The acquisition of a new data center facility, which will be financed through an $18 million bond package, will also happen in conjunction with the project.
Officials said an extensive evaluation of the two proposals will begin immediately. After an initial administrative review to ensure that bidders have complied with general procurement rules, separate teams will evaluate the technical and pricing components of each proposal.
The evaluation teams represent more than 17 state agencies and several city and county governments and organizations.
A final evaluation will consider both technical and pricing elements to determine the vendor offering overall best value. A separate review will consider the proposals with regard to the data center facility. The GTA expects to sign a 10-year contract with the successful vendor by December 2002. At that time, the state will pay for and take ownership of the data center.
Data center services are not part of the CCOP, and data center staff will remain state employees. The vendor will employ state workers affected by the outsourcing effective May 1, 2003, and assume its operational responsibilities under the contract on July 1, 2003. The vendor will contract for the services of state employees with 25 or more years of state service.
When the contract is signed, the vendor is expected to immediately begin two critical projects-- building an infrastructure for Georgia Public Broadcasting to transmit signals digitally as required by the FCC and an infrastructure for interoperable, two-way radio across jurisdictional lines, a critical part of homeland defense strategy.
The Georgia Technology Authority
