Budget woes doom $250M small business contract

The Homeland Security Department has killed off a $250 million small-business software contract.

DHS began developing the Software Requirements, Architecture and Design and Software Development Services contract as a blanket purchase agreement over a year ago. But the plug was pulled on the contract, known as SD2/RAD, last week.

The department sited budgetary constraints, as well as less-than-anticipated usage for its decision.

DHS said in its announcement that future work will be handled on an individual basis.

My question is whether there are more cancelled contracts on the way. It seems each time we write about large, multiple award contracts, we get several comments from people questioning the need for them.

After all, there are the General Services Administration’s schedules, and a plethora of large IDIQs from GSA and other government agencies are already available.

I’ve heard Deltek’s Ray Bjorklund say more than once that if you added all the contract ceilings together, you’d never be able to spend that much money.

Sometimes, I get the feeling that some of these large contracts are let by agencies as a means of justifying the existence of their contract shops. At least, that is a common complaint.

So, I applaud DHS for their decision to cancel the contract. They did spend money on an industry day, and companies did submit white papers, but that’s better than continuing on with a contract that would have wasted more money, and been of little use to the government or to contractors.