Telecommunications: Agencies Should Fully Implement Established Transition Planning Practices to Help Reduce Risk of Costly Delays

As of October 2019, the 19 selected agencies were in different stages of transitioning from their soon-to-be-expiring telecommunications contracts to the new Enterprise Infrastructure Solutions (EIS) program. All of these agencies reported that they plan to fully transition to EIS before current contracts expire in May 2023. However, 11 agencies did not plan to fully transition by the General Services Administration’s (GSA) September 30, 2022, milestone. The majority of the selected agencies also did not meet GSA’s milestones for completing critical contracting actions in 2019 (see table). While transitioning to EIS is a complex undertaking, delaying this transition will cause agencies to miss potential cost savings that would result from the generally lower rates for services on EIS.