$1.5B FLASH contract delayed by protests
By
Nick Wakeman
Several protests have been filed against the $1.5 billion FLASH contract to bring digital services to the Homeland Security Department.
Well, that didn’t take long.
In the last week, five protests have been filed against the $1.5 billion Flexible Agile Support for the Homeland contract, known by the superhero moniker of FLASH.
The contract is a Homeland Security Department vehicle to buy services related to creating a more digital government. The 13 winners were all businesses that could provide Agile software development services to help design and develop new systems.
The contract was awarded in late November and over Dec. 7 and 8, five companies filed protests. The protesters are:
- Citizant Inc.
- Ventera Corp.
- Incentive Technology Group LLC
- Harmonia Holdings Group
- BC Digital Services
The number of protesters could grow significantly as 101 companies bid on the contract and only 13 won spots as prime contractors.
A decision on the protests is expected by March 20. But this is the type of contract that we often see agencies take second look, so we’ll be watching for dismissals, which would indicate that the agency is taking a corrective action.
Besides its size, the vehicle also is interesting in that DHS is planning to have some on-ramping opportunities to keep a steady number of small businesses on the contract.
Among the specific services DHS is looking to buy are collaboration, code development, integration support, data migration, DevOps, configuration management, user training and metrics reporting, according to Deltek.
As a reminder the winners of the contract are:
- Ad Hoc LLC
- EDC Consulting
- Emagine IT
- Excella Consulting
- Innovations Joint Venture
- Karsun Solutions
- LinkTec
- Navitas Business Consulting
- SemanticBits
- SimonComputing
- Soft Tech Consulting
- Solution Technology Systems
- Wexler Technical Solutions
The contract has a one-year base and two one year options, so it isn’t a long contract. It was developed in response to the 2012 presidential memorandum called Building a 21st Century Digital Government. The memo led the federal CIO to release a strategy called the “Digital Government Building a 21stCentury Platform to Better Service the American People,” according to the procurement solicitation.
The CIO’s strategy provided agencies with a 12-month roadmap for more efficient and coordinated digital service delivery. For DHS this meant adopting Agile software development methods for the design, development and deployment of secure, critical services.