Small Firms Win VA Work Five small businesses are among the prime contractors on the Department of Veterans Affairs’ blanket purchase agreement contracts worth up to $1 billion over 10 years. The companies, along with three large businesses, will compete for task orders to support the Veterans Health Information Systems and Technology Architecture e-medical records system and other IT work. The winners of the VistA Contractor Services are: *Three large companies: EDS, Perot Systems and Science Applications International Corp.; *Two service disabled veteran-owned 8(a) firms, CSSS.NET and Merlin Technical Solutions; *Patriot Technologies, a service disabled veteran-owned small business; *dNovus, a veteran-owned small business; and * DSS, a small business. VistA is VA’s advanced clinical and administrative system, used by more than 157 VA health care facilities and 887 ambulatory care and community- based outpatient clinics nationwide. In addition, any VA office can hire contractors through the VCS program. EDS said the contractors could also work on converting VA’s systems to open source software if the department decides to do that.