EDS has been selected by the U.S. General Services Administration to provide call center services for all federal government agencies under the newly awarded USA Contact contract. EDS is one of nine companies that may compete for task orders under the $2.5 billion Indefinite Delivery/Indefinite Quantity contract.

USA Contact will provide a vehicle for any federal government agency to purchase a range of automated and manual customer support services to respond to inquiries about federal government programs and policies from the general public, congressional offices, the media and other government offices.

EDS officials say its scope encompasses any type of contact center services from order fulfillment to customer relationship management (CRM) and can be tailored to the individual needs of client agencies.

For the record, this reporter would like a $2.5 billion contract with indefinite delivery and indefinite quantity parameters too.

Last November the fur flew in London as BSkyB (News - Alert) and CRM vendor EDS faced off over the age-old problem of vague instructions, a deep-pocketed client who's not really sure what he wants and the myriad temptations and slippage therein.

Basically the problem was that BSkyB hired EDS to build them a rootin'-tootin' state of the art CRM system, with EDS filling in the details. EDS contends that yes, they cashed the checks -- but Sky didn't know what it really wanted. Sky contends that EDS cashed the checks without giving any real value for aforesaid cash.

According to invaluable industry observer Leo King, Sky and EDS "clashed heavily in the Technology and Construction Court over the specifications the broadcaster required for a new customer relationship management system." Or, rather, the inherent lack thereof.

Last fall King, reporting from England, wrote that lawyers for CRM vendor EDS said in court this week that a $90 million CRM project for BSkyB was "too poorly defined for the IT provider to have committed fraud when pitching for the contract."

BSkyB is suing the vendor for $1.5 billion, claiming that EDS misrepresented its abilities and resources when bidding for the contract. The vendor delivered late, and BSkyB figures it lost $1.5 billion in benefits and damages as a result.

EDS contends that okay, it "failed to deliver on several aspects of the deal, and was partly to blame for the project being poorly specified further down the line," as King says, but charges that BSkyB's project requirements "remained unclear until at least three years into the contract, by which point Sky had taken over the project management."

EDS says its failures were "not due to any intent not to perform."

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David Sims is a contributing editor for TMCnet. To see more of his articles, please visit his columnist page.

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