By Calvin Biesecker

The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) last week awarded a CSC [CSC] a five-year, $489 million contract for the deployment, maintenance and enhancement of the agency’s information technology (IT) infrastructure capabilities.

CSC originally won the contract last fall, unseating incumbent Unisys [UIS], but a subsequent protest was sustained by the Government Accountability Office, which required TSA to reopen the procurement. A TSA spokeswoman told Defense Daily on Friday that the agency evaluated proposals from companies and made a decision based on the “best value proposal for TSA’s requirements.”

Last week’s award is a few million dollars less than when the IT Infrastructure Program (ITIP) contract was first announced last September (Defense Daily, Oct. 1, 2009).

The ITIP contract augments TSA’s ability to protect its IT network from cyber threats and ensures that the agency has the IT infrastructure to support computing and communications hardware, software and related services.

“This contract award provides TSA with the information technology infrastructure and secure IT systems support crucial to carry out our mission across transportation systems around the country and internationally,” Emma Garrison-Alexander, TSA’s assistant administrator for Information Technology and Chief Information Officer, said in a statement.

TSA awarded the contract to CSC through a competitive contracting process. All proposals were evaluated on the basis of both price and technical merits to determine the best value proposal for TSA’s requirements. The award was competed among contractors on the DHS-wide Enterprise Acquisition Gateway for Leading Edge Solutions (EAGLE) contract.