Summary
1. There were also delays with FTS2001. 2. It is the nature of government institutions to advance slowly (perhaps one of their saving graces as well). 3. Unless there are real pressures to move forward, agencies do not have enough of an incentive to go more quickly.
Analysis
Certainly, the existing government telecommunications networks are working fine now. Unless there is a mandate to make draconian cuts in departments, say, in the neighborhood of 25%, these agencies will continue to just plod along. An across the board $100 million budget cut is practically meaningless. In addition, these federal departments do not really care about “an opportunity...to save taxpayer money.”
The lack of alacrity is these situations should give one pause before getting overly excited about the short-term impact of federal contract wins. In transitioning to FTS2001, there was the problem then as well to “maintain two contracts.” Although the transition to FTS2001 was supposed to be finished in December of 2000, in March of 2001, as many as 45% of the transition orders for switched data services were not done. As with the current state of affairs, FTS2001 buyer departments were not necessarily in a rush to order changeovers.
