VA has completed Milestone 5.3. The VA response is provided below.
The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) continues to aggressively pursue options to reduce the acquisition and management costs of mobile devices nationwide. VA has issued National Mobile Device Indefinite Delivery/ Indefinite Quantity (IDIQ) contract(s). Evaluations are in progress and awards are expected in late spring 2013. These acquisitions will allow VA to take advantage of economies of scale through volume pricing, reduce administrative burden, simplify reporting, and minimize underutilized services.
The new VA National Mobile Device IDIQ contracts will not be comprised of a traditional minute plan. There will be a massive pool of minutes to be shared with all end users across the enterprise.
Additionally, a draft of the tool created in Milestone 5.2 has been released and is being shared with VA’s acquisition community to compare prices and expose them to the soon to be released government-wide contracting tool. The expectation is that VA will be able to negotiate better prices for digital devices and service contracts. VA will continue to update its contract data quarterly, to share its data with all other federal agencies.