DHS plans EAGLE II take-off

The Homeland Security Department plans to issue a draft solicitation for its $45 billion Eagle II procurement by the end of March, with the request for proposals coming in the third quarter of fiscal 2010, a senior DHS procurement official affirmed today.

The multiple-award contract will replace the first Enterprise Acquisition Gateway for Leading Edge Solutions contract, known as Eagle. Eagle II will consist of two contracts – a small business contract and one that’s unrestricted, said Soraya Correa, the director of DHS’ Office of Procurement Operations. Correa made the comments in Washington during a breakfast hosted by the American Council for Technology and the Industry Advisory Council.

Correa said that about $8 billion worth of task orders have been awarded under the original Eagle program, which remains active. The program can be used by all parts of DHS.

Correa said DHS had reached out to industry to develop theEagle II solicitation through two requests for information. One was specific to small businesses and one that was unrestricted. She said her office got “outstanding feedback” from industry and has also surveyed DHS users of Eagle to find out what they liked and didn’t like about the first contract.

She said that through the small business RFI, DHS explored categorizing small businesses by type rather than via functional categories. Meanwhile, through the RFI for the unrestricted part of Eagle II, she said DHS explored whether Eagle II needs functional categories at all and, if so, how they should be structured.

Correa said officials are now meeting to determine what strategy should be used. She said no decisions have been made on what the draft RFP will include, and that DHS hasn’t started writing it yet. “Everything that we’ve told you is what we know today,” she said.

Between the release of the draft RFP and the final solicitation, DHS will accept further comments, she said.

Correa said she hoped Eagle II would bring greater consistency to how the contracting vehicle is used across the department. She also said another challenge was to ensure that the contract isn’t used for procurements that would be better handled through other means. In addition, she said it would be a challenge to get the contract awarded in an efficient manner in what she said was “the age of protests.”