Homeland Security Dept. Stands Up IT Acquisition Center The Department of Homeland Security is creating a new Information Technology Acquisition Center that will be responsible for large departmentwide IT procurements. Dan McLaughlin, ITAC’s acting director, said the new office will not replace the seven other IT contracting shops in DHS’s component agencies. Those shops will continue to handle “mission-specific” procurements while ITAC oversees enterprise-wide purchases. He spoke Oct. 21 at a Washington conference sponsored by the market research firm Input. Kevin Boshears, DHS’s OSDBU director, said he has been working with the team that is forming ITAC to make sure its contracts will be “small-business friendly.” McLaughlin said the department is likely to rely on small businesses for commodity items such as desktop computers and printers. ITAC will focus on infrastructure projects such as operations centers, help desks and other functions that overlap several of DHS’s component agencies. He said the department has just begun staffing the center and will develop “a governance structure” to manage relationships between ITAC and the individual agencies’ contracting offices. “There is so much IT being bought at DHS” that there is plenty of work for everybody, he added.