GSA releases draft RFP for $200M modernization BPA

The General Services Administration has released the draft solicitation for a new IT modernization contract to support the Federal Acquisition Service.

FAS is looking to transform its business services through the use of cloud computing and agile development.

This follow-on contract will be a blanket purchase agreement and is called the CIO Modernization and Enterprise Transformation Project, or COMET. The contract held by Alliant Solutions and Leidos was known as the CIO Application Maintenance, Enhancements and Operations contract, or CAMEO.

CAMEO has pulled in $217.2 million in task orders since it was awarded in 2014.

According to solicitation documents, GSA expects to make between five and seven awards under COMET including small business awards.

Bidders on the contract will be evaluated on four factors:

• Past experience which will include work with agile development, concurrent development, delivery of micro-services and web-based applications, transition and re-factoring of applications.

• Technical approach, which will include providing an agile product roadmap, O&M services in an agile environment, and continuous integration and continuous deployment.

• Management Approach, which will include how to attract and retain the right people, management of the contractor team, organizing agile teams, and responsiveness to government’s environment evolving needs.

• Price

There also is a coding challenge exercise, which is listed as Factor 4 in the draft solicitation.

The contract evaluation will have three steps and bidders will be invited to each step.

Step one is the submission of past experience as Volume 1. That step is open to all.

But GSA will invite selected bidders to Step 2 and the submission of Volume 2 to detail technical approaches and management approaches.

Bidders who make the cut after that will advance to Step 3, where they will take part in the coding challenge and submit pricing.

GSA is still working on the details of the coding challenge but it could be a proof-of-concept, coding challenge or a hackathon exercise. It will be held at a GSA office in the Washington, D.C., area.

The notice doesn’t list a due date for comment on the draft solicitation. We’ll update when we have one.