DHS to award small-business Eagle contracts

The Homeland Security Department is in the process of announcing the winners of contracts in the small-business phase of the Eagle IT services procurement, sources inside and outside the government said.

DHS established the Eagle procurement in two phases, for large and small businesses, as a means of consolidating the department's crazy quilt of IT services contracts. Eagle marches in step with the First Source procurement that will furnish DHS components with a coordinated contract vehicle for IT hardware.

Department officials declined to confirm the names of companies that received awards under the procurement, which is also called the Enterprise Acquisition Gateway for Leading Edge solutions.

DHS officials issued a private announcement of the contract awards, which sources said ranged from about a dozen to almost 20. But the officials declined to release a full list partly because of procurement rules that require agencies to wait five days after they unveil a contract for other firms to file bid protests.

Some versions of the contractor list did not match others, a circumstance that counseled caution in releasing any version of the list.

Sources said that the contract winners would be allowed to bid for task orders to be granted by the department's component agencies as soon as they completed their agreements with DHS.

The department issued contract awards under the "unrestricted," or large-business, phase of the Eagle procurement last month.

Companies that bid for Eagle contracts competed in one or more of three different work categories, including systems operation and maintenance, independent verification and validation, and software development, sources said.

Wilson P. Dizard III is a staff writer for Washington Technology's sister publication, Government Computer News.