CORRECTION: Wrong contract tied to protest
By
Nick Wakeman
Yes, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services has been hit with some protests, but they just aren't related to a project to modernize its financial system.
I'm writing over top of my previous blog because after publishing yesterday and pushing the story out in this morning's newsletter, it's come to my attention that I made a mistake.
The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services contract to modernize its financial systems is not under protest as I reported. The financial systems modernization contract known as FSM will go to a federal shared services provider. I repeat, that contract is not under protest.
What is under protest are a series of Eagle II task orders for operations and maintenance services for various USCIS systems.
The confusion came when the solicitation number on the Government Accountability Office protests tied back to the FSM notices on the FBO.gov website. Why that occurred, I do not know.
So, here are the facts that I can verify about the protests:
Three companies including Computer Sciences Corp. have filed bid protests involving the Homeland Security Department’s contract known as the Joint Engineering Teams Sustainment or JETS.
JETS is a group of task order awards and it breaks up a larger contract known as Sustainment Program Application Support or SPAS. CSC was the incumbent on that contract and it was worth $361.5 million, according to Deltek.
In breaking up SPAS, USCIS created portfolios of services around functions such as records, benefits, customer services and biometrics.
Each portfolio is part of a separate task order under the DHS Eagle II contract. The protests filed so far with GAO challenge DHS’ evaluation of the bids.
CSC is protesting an award for the benefits portfolio won by Vencore Inc.
Sapient Government Services Inc. is challenging the award for the customer service portfolio won by Sevatec.
And Dev Technology Group is protesting the biometrics award that went to Pyramid Systems Inc.