PEO-EIS’ Kevin Carroll: The $36 Billion Dollar Man
Federal Computer Weekly profiles Kevin Carroll. The Army’s top information technology official runs the Army’s Program Executive Office for Enterprise Information Systems (PEO-EIS). This office will manage almost $36 billion in information technology contracts in upcoming years, including:
- IT Enterprise Solutions 2 Services, a 9-year, $20 billion contract for enterprise services.
- Army Desktop and Mobile Computing 2, a 10-year, $5 billion contract for hardware.
- World Wide Satellite Systems, a 5-year, $5 billion contract for satellite communications systems and services.
- Infrastructure Modernization, a multiyear, $4 billion contract to update telecommunications lines, including installing fiber-optic cable at major Army installations in the United States.
- General Fund Enterprise Business System, a 6-year, $850 million contract to update the Army’s financial systems.
- Army Knowledge Online Enterprise Services, a 6-year, $600 million contract to manage the service’s Web portal and knowledge management strategy.
Carroll faces additional challenges over the next few years as PEO-EIS manages more people, projects and money. PEO-EIS currently employs 613 and works with 844 contractors, with 20 employees and 321 contractors supporting warfighters in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Army’s IT shop has 14 project offices with 40 programs, including six that the Defense Department and service officials moved to PEO-EIS in 2003. The office currently accounts for $2 billion annually in projects, including $810 million in IT purchases last year. As noted above, that number is set to rise as Army officials plan to announce or award major contracts this summer and next year worth almost $36 billion.
In addition, Army officials must slash $2.6 billion from the service’s budget during the next five years, and they want $31 million from PEO-EIS. Carroll must also deal with changes in his top-level staff, as he will be losing a number of his program managers this summer.
Carroll admitted at a conference recently that he blundered in putting only a $500 million financial ceiling on the services portion of the IT Enterprise Solutions (ITES) contract two years ago. He took responsibility, adding that PEO-EIS workers also learned lessons from the Army’s first wide-scale, performance-based contract. One result of those lessons is that the new ITES 2 Services deal comes with a ceiling of $20 billion.
See Also:
- Federal Computer Weekly: The $36 Billion Man
- A Military Information Technology interview with Kevin Carroll.
