Why It Matters

A major federal telecommunications modernization effort has stalled, leaving the General Services Administration unable to say whether the delays caused actual service disruptions across government. A new GAO report finds that GSA managed the transition of 221 agencies from legacy telecom contracts to a new Enterprise Infrastructure Solutions (EIS) program, but the effort missed its September 2022 deadline by more than three years.

Six agencies examined in the report did eventually complete their moves, but at a steep cost. More troubling: GSA has no way of knowing whether any of those agencies lost service during the transition, because the agency receives no notification when replacement systems activate before old ones are disconnected.

GSA has no clear picture of whether the delayed telecom transition caused actual service disruptions across federal agencies. As the agency plans its follow-on contract to the EIS program, it still lacks critical data on whether any agencies suffered outages, what impact those disruptions had on federal operations, or how effective the mitigation efforts actually were. This blind spot leaves GSA unable to learn from the transition's failures or prepare better for the next one.

Broader Context

The costs of the delay were steep. The Department of the Interior saw its costs surge by 365 percent, climbing from $399,435 in February 2025 to $1.86 million in March 2025. The Department of Commerce experienced a 226 percent increase in Networx contract costs from February to March 2025, while the Department of Defense's Networx contract costs rose 210 percent from February to March 2025.

The Department of Transportation's bills jumped 217 percent. The Department of Agriculture saw its Networx contract costs rise 138 percent from February to March 2025. Agencies that relied more heavily on legacy connections saw steeper increases, reflecting the prevalence of older technology in their networks.

The delays stemmed from multiple factors. The most commonly reported causes included performance issues with EIS vendors, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the complexity of legacy connections. But the delays also reflected a deeper problem: GSA and the agencies themselves had been inconsistent in identifying and mitigating the risk that missed deadlines would trigger service disruptions.

The Bottom Line

GSA has not determined which agencies, if any, experienced service disruptions. The agency is not even notified whether replacement services were in place before old systems were disconnected.

The GAO made one recommendation to address this blind spot: GSA should conduct post-transition assessments for at least the six selected agencies to determine whether any experienced service disruptions and, if so, what the impact was.

The recommendation also calls for GSA to evaluate how well agencies' contingency plans worked in practice. GSA concurred with the recommendation and stated that it is working on a plan to address it.

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