Summary

  • GSA managed 221 agencies' transition to the Enterprise Infrastructure Solutions telecommunications contract. GAO examined six agencies in depth and found GSA lacked evidence that replacement service was in place before an old service disconnected; it had not established whether the selected agencies suffered disruptions.
  • The six agencies' legacy Networx bills rose from $13.38 million in February 2025 to $40.93 million in March, a 206 percent one-month increase. That figure applies to those agencies, that contract and those months, not the whole federal transition.

A migration dashboard that ended at disconnection

The GAO's August 2026 report describes a government-wide move from expired telecommunications contracts to Enterprise Infrastructure Solutions, or EIS. GSA supported 221 agencies through it. The detailed audit studied six with substantial work still open in September 2024: Agriculture, Commerce, Defense, Homeland Security, Interior and Transportation. The six eventually completed their transitions more than three years after GSA's revised September 2022 deadline.

The old Networx, WITS 3 and regional contract vehicles kept services running while agencies moved. GSA extended their operating periods repeatedly, with final expirations in February 2026 for WITS 3 and May 2026 for Networx and the regional agreements. The final deadline was May 31, 2026. Extending a contract can buy time. It also buys invoices. For the six agencies, the Networx amount billed rose from $13,376,056.85 in February 2025 to $40,925,594.85 in March. GAO calculated a 206 percent increase in that single month, with different increases at each agency.

It linked the price exposure to extensions, vendor price rises and ageing technologies. This is a six-agency Networx comparison, not a bill for all 221 agencies or an annual rate.

GSA's monthly transition reports measured progress using service instance records, or SIRs. Each record rolls up a base service and associated equipment or features; the tracker counted how many old-contract records had been disconnected. That is useful procurement accounting. It tells a manager whether an old billing and service line has closed. It does not tell a user whether the new line was live before the old one was cut. The full GAO report says GSA was not notified whether replacement service was in place before disconnection. At the most consequential moment of the migration, the central dashboard watched the outgoing side of the handoff.

The price of buying more time

The six agencies collectively identified 21 factors behind their delays. Recurring causes included EIS vendor performance, pandemic-related supply and staffing problems, and legacy connections difficult to replace. Three agencies had identified and mitigated risks associated with more than half of their own cited factors. But the most basic final-deadline risk was handled unevenly by GSA and the agencies. In two agencies, related risk records were closed or did not even name the final 2026 cutoff. A risk register can look orderly while missing the date on which a line will actually be disconnected.

The record does not establish that a particular agency went offline. GAO found something more specific: GSA had not determined whether the selected agencies experienced service disruptions, what any impacts were, or whether contingency measures worked. Without replacement-before-disconnect notifications and a post-transition assessment, a clean count of old records closed cannot resolve those questions. Paying more to extend Networx may have prevented disruption in some places; the audit does not show which ones. The missing evidence is the operating result, not a further explanation of how contracts were extended.

This distinction cuts across three kinds of continuity. Contract continuity means the legal and commercial arrangement remains available. Migration accounting means the legacy record has been closed. Service continuity means an agency had a working connection when its work required one. GSA had tools and records for the first two. GAO asked it to establish the third. That is the difference between a transition spreadsheet and a transition that survived contact with users.

An expensive rehearsal for the next contract

EIS was awarded in 2017 as a 15-year, $50 billion combined-value contract. GSA has already begun planning what follows it. GAO made one recommendation: conduct post-transition assessments for at least the six selected agencies to determine whether disruptions occurred, what they affected, and whether mitigation and contingency plans worked. GSA agreed and said it was developing a plan. The recommendation was listed as open on GAO's report page when checked. The next procurement cycle needs the answer before officials recycle the same confidence about a different deadline.

The practical evidence is mundane: for each old service, a dated record of the replacement's acceptance and operation before the cutoff; where that sequence failed, an incident and impact record; and a review of whether the contingency plan preserved service. No amount of money spent on extension proves that sequence occurred. A 206 percent monthly increase shows that the selected agencies paid dearly for time. It cannot tell GSA what that time achieved.

Heng Lu's distinction between institutional stability and the continuity experienced by network users supplies an analytical lens, not evidence about this federal contract. The agency's central progress line was contract disconnection. The public-interest outcome was service that stayed available through the cutover. A government that measures the first and leaves the second untested will be surprised at the next transition for reasons already visible in this one.

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