NASA starts taking bids on large IT services project

NASA has released the first of five planned solicitations for large information technology services contracts that have been estimated to be worth more than $4 billion total.

The space agency kicked off the bidding with the release of a request for proposals (RFP) on Dec. 4 for its Web Enterprise Service Technologies (WEST) contract for public Web site hosting, Web content management, messaging and calendar services. The Web services solicitation is classified as a small business set-aside.

The Web site hosting requirements are currently met under the Outsourcing Desktop Initiative for NASA contract and the agency’s Web Portal Services contract. Input Inc., a market research firm, has said the WEST contract could be worth $80 million over five years, based on an earlier draft RFP.

Meanwhile, Input has estimated the total value for the five contracts, based on NASA’s draft RFPs, to be nearly $4.3 billion. The overall IT services program is called Information Technology Infrastructure Integration Program, or I3P.

Next up, NASA plans to release, as early as Dec. 11, a final RFP for the NASA Integrated Communications Services contract for wide-area network services, local-area network services, telecommunications services, video services and data services.

The agency also plans to release a final RFP for the Enterprise Applications Service Technologies contract for services that involve NASA’s Enterprise Applications Competency Center on or about Dec. 18, the agency said.

However, the projects that are estimated to be the most lucrative under I3P -- the NASA Enterprise Data Center contract for data center operations and facility management, and the Agency Consolidated End User Services for program management, support for personal computers, cell phones and personal digital assistants -- won’t be out until next year.