DISA prepares for new contracts, new responsibilities

The Defense Information Systems Agency’s busy summer may stretch well into the next quarter, with several contract activities on the docket as the agency takes on unprecedented responsibilities.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates’ plans for trimming the Defense Department's budget has resulted in new duties for the $8.3 billion agency, including taking on various jobs from organizations set to be shuttered under the budget reform such as the Joint Forces Command and the Networks and Information Integration office.

Coupled with those plans and an upcoming move of more than 4,000 employees from DISA’s current Arlington, Va., headquarters to Ft. Meade, Md., required under the Base Realignment and Closure law, the latest contracting activities underscore the agency’s growing inventory.

Perhaps one of the most prominent programs centers on a next-generation, department-wide host-based security system (HBSS). The HBSS monitors, detects and counters against known cyber threats to DOD, and in its current form is based on software by McAfee.

According to Mark Orndorff, director of DISA’s Mission Assurance and Network Operations Program Executive Office, the agency wants to expand HBSS with the scheduled contract recompetition, one for maintenance and support services and one for open architecture, both expected to be awarded in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2011.

Open architecture will be the focus as the program is expanded, Orndorff said at a recent DISA forum in Washington, D.C., late last month. Currently, “HBSS is not the fully open framework we would like,” he said, adding that his office is seeking to move to open architecture that “everyone gets to be a part of.”

Orndorff and other DISA officials outlined a number of upcoming contracts, including a handful expected to be awarded in 2010. Among the contracts scheduled for award in the next 60 days are the DISA NetOps support and the IA2 information assurance and security engineering support.

Contracts for fourth quarter 2010 for DISA program executive office-GIG enterprise services:

• Machine-to-machine messaging, under the General Services Administration's Alliant-Small Business contract vehicle.
• Enterprise service management under GSA COMMITS NexGen.
• Service discovery under GSA COMMITS NexGen.

The DISA contracts expected in fiscal 2011 include:

• Assured Compliance Assessment Solution, first quarter, fiscal 2011.
• E-mail Security Gateway, first quarter, fiscal 2011.
• eMass, first quarter, fiscal 201.1
• NetOps Situational Awareness, first quarter, fiscal 2011.
• Public Key Enabling, first quarter, fiscal 2011.
• Strategic Knowledge Integration Web first quarter, fiscal 2011 (under ENCORE II).
• DOD Visitor, second quarter, fiscal 2011 (under 8(a) set-aside).
• Client Server Enterprise License, second quarter, fiscal 2011.
• Privilege Management Solution, third quarter, 2011.
• Capacity Services Processor (re-compete of existing Capacity Services contract), fourth quarter, fiscal 2011.
• GIG Content Delivery Service, fourth quarter, fiscal 2011.
• DOD Antivirus, fourth quarter, fiscal 2011.
• Detection Denial of Services, fourth quarter, fiscal 2011
• Remediation Tool, fourth quarter, fiscal 2011.

On the horizon for DISA contracting is Software as a Service (SharePoint and V-Office), first quarter, fiscal 2012.