DISA will rewrite its $17.5B IT contract after protest
The Defense Information Systems Agency is rewriting its $17.5 billion Encore III IT service contract after federal auditors upheld protests from two companies who complained the agency didn’t say how it planned to evaluate bidders’ costs.
In a statement, DISA’s procurement chief Doug Packard said the massive request for proposals issued March 2 would be amended “in accordance with the findings and decision of the [Government Accountability Office],” which last week upheld pre-award protests of the RFP from Booz Allen Hamilton and CACI.
Packard said the decision “pertains only to limited aspects of the cost/price evaluation.”
The GAO has yet to release its written ruling, which is being redacted to remove any proprietary data, but a statement from Kenneth Patton, the office’s managing associate general counsel for procurement law, noted that DISA didn’t set out any method for evaluating contractors’ costs in the parts of the multiple-award contract that it planned to pay for on a cost-plus basis.
Patton added that the agency’s plan to automatically disqualify the highest and lowest 10 percent of the bids it received was “arbitrary and … inconsistent with procurement law and regulation.”
The Encore III contract — with an award ceiling of up to $17.5 billion during a five year base period plus five more option years — is part of DISA’s ambitious Joint Information Environment program.
