DISA releases revised RFP for ENCORE III

The Defense Information System Agency has released the revised request for proposals for its five-year, $17.5 billion ENCORE III indefinite-quantity, indefinite-quantity contract.

The Sept. 7 release of the RFP follows the Government Accountability Office's publication of its bid protest decision that asked DISA to revise the solicitation but kept in place DISA's choice of a lowest price, technically acceptable source selection process. See Business Beat blog analyzing the GAO report.

DISA wants a quick turnaround on the RFP with questions due Sept. 13 and final proposals due Sept. 30. The agency will not consider proposals already filed so bidders need to update and resubmit their proposals.

The agency plans to award 20 contracts to large businesses, as well as 20 contract to small businesses.

ENCORE III includes 19 performance areas that provide the basis for IT solutions to develop, install, fielding and training, operation and life-cycle management of components and systems. The goal of ENCORE III is to provide global IT capabilities for military services, the Defense Department, and other federal agencies.

The performance areas include:

• Enterprise IT policy and planning
• Integrated solutions management
• Process, performance, and strategic benchmarking
• Business process reengineering
• Requirements analysis
• Market research and prototyping
• Information and knowledge management
• Custom application development
• Product integration
• Test and evaluation
• Asset management
• Network support
• Cyber security assessment and authorization
• Information communications technology
• Computer-telephony integration
• Web services
• Operations support
• IT support services
• Cloud professional services

Through ENCORE III, DOD is transitioning from stovepipe systems and architectures to an integrated and interoperable.

DISA is an important component in developing the Joint Information Environment (JIE), a network-centric environment required to achieve information superiority.

DISA released the final RFP Sept. 7. Responses are due by Sept. 30.