Perpsecta pushes back on lost NASA contract

Perspecta has filed a protest over a $2.9 billion incumbent contract with NASA that Leidos recently won.

The contract at the center of this protest is NASA's End-user Services and Technologies contract, also known as "NEST." Perspecta inherited the contract from the former DXC Technology U.S. public sector business, which merged with Vencore and KeyPoint last year to create Perspecta.

NASA awarded the potential 10-year contract to Leidos earlier this month.

That DXC business traces its roots to HP Enterprise Services, which first won the work in 2010 when the contract was known as NASA Agency-wide User Services and valued then at $2.5 billion.

NASA uses the contract for a variety of IT operations including end-user device management, end-user software management, mobile device management, print device management, messaging and collaboration, infrastructure services, enterprise service desk, local service decks and IT security.

Requirements include IT service management, computer services, Office 365 services, mobile services and print solutions.

Perspecta filed the protest Feb. 19 and a decision from GAO is expected by May 30.

This contract also provides interesting perspective on the twists and turns of the market.

The roots of this contract go back to the late 1990s and the awardof the Outsourcing Desktop Initiative for NASA, known as ODIN. It was one of the early so-called "seat management" contracts.

Several companies won spots on the contract, but one in particular hit a real home run. That company was OAO Corp., which captured the bulk of the work under ODIN.

In 2001, Lockheed Martin bought OAO to further build up an IT services business that merged with Leidos in 2016.

In 2010, ODIN went from a multiple-award contract to a single award contract under ACES, which HP won. ACES then went to HPE Enterprise Services after HP split into two companies.

But given Leidos' pursuit of NEST, I guess the former Lockheed folks there never forgot about it.