Ten contractors will receive a combined $2.5 billion for information technology (IT) and data-center-management services over the next 10 years as part of the FDA's Information Technology for the 21st Century (ICT21) bioinformatics initiative, an extensive IT modernization program encompassing data management, data warehousing, IT infrastructure, and IT security.

The contracts, with a minimum value of $25,000 in orders per contractor, were awarded to Buccaneer, Warrenton, Va.; Computer Sciences Corporation, Rockville, Md.; Dynanet, of Elkridge, Md.; Electronic Data Systems, Herndon, Va.; General Dynamics, Fairfax, Va.; Human Touch, McLean, Va.; IDL-Pragmatics, Vienna, Va.; Interactive Technology Solutions, Silver Spring, Md.; Telesis, Rockville, Md.; and Unisys, Reston, Va.

The 10 contractors will compete for data information technology task orders. The FDA has awarded three task orders under the ICT 21 contract for the design and migration of all systems applications to two new data centers, which will be the cornerstone of the FDA IT infrastructure and bioinformatics modernization for the next decade. The three orders were awarded to:

• IT Solutions ($3 million) to provide the design, implementation, and migration of existing FDA applications to the reconfigured White Oak Data Center, which will support all FDA test and development applications.

• Buccaneer ($3 million) to provide operations and maintenance of the White Oak Data Center.

• EDS ($12 million) to provide the design, implementation, migration, and operations and maintenance of existing FDA applications to a contractor-owned-contractor-operated hosted data center for FDA production operations.

All FDA software applications and hosting operations will transition to the new data centers over a 2-year period.