In a DoDNews release from last week appeared this announcement:IBM Corp., Fairfax, Va., was awarded in Sept. 17, 2009 a $20,634,771 firm-fixed-price contract. This project is for post deployment system support for the Army Learning Management System day-to-day labor for operations and systems enhancements for a one year period Sept. 21, 2009 through Sept. 20, 2010. This includes courseware migration of 1,500 existing courses. Work is to be performed in Fairfax, Va., with an estimated completion date of Sept. 20, 2010. One bid solicited with one bid received. Mission Installation and Contracting Command Center, Fort Eustis, Va., is the contracting activity (DAAB15-01-A-1013).I accept that 1,500 courses is a lot. Some -- possibly a lot -- of the cost is operational -- server capacity, licenses, communications and training -- though the announcement does specify "post-deployment." I accept that the conversions could be gnarly, with lots of structuring and graphics and standardization and who knows what else. But it's a reminder of how critical it is to have content authored for online learning in the first place -- at least in some basic ways. One must presume from the size of this award that there is little occasion for reuse, and that there's a lack of readily available conversion tooling. (Enter the knowledge engineer). But does "migration" imply that perhaps some or all of the content was already in a close-to-suitable format? Unclear.
The better question is, will the next 1,500 courses also cost $20M?
p.s. Assuming that this is the Army's system cited in this contract award, and that the portal is part of their responsibility, I assume that IBM's contracted-for QC hasn't started, as there's a typo in the Army's landing page.
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