ICF, Octo protest exclusion from Army cyber contract

A pair of companies are complaining that the Army was wrong to eliminate them from the competition for a blanket purchase agreement for cybersecurity services.

Octo Consulting and ICF International were both eliminated from the competition for the Army’s Eagle Shield Defensive Cyber Operations BPA.

Octo and ICF are both arguing that they should still be in the running for the award and that the Army was wrong to eliminate them.

 Deltek values the BPA at $13 million, but it is an opportunity to show case advanced cyber defense products and services.

The BPA has three buckets: near term, mid-term and long term needs for the Army’s cyber protection teams.

In the near term, the contractor will be prototyping solutions for defensive cyber operations. As requirements move into the mid-term, will build from the prototypes and will start fielding solutions.

Long term the goal is to bring on board more advanced technologies and work more with academia and the Defense Department’s Science & Technology unit to increase the technology available for cyber defense.

Awards were expected this month, but the Octo and ICF protests will delay that most likely. The Army can continue to evaluate proposals but it can’t make awards until the protests are resolved.

Octo and ICF filed their protests on April 29 and decisions are due Aug. 7. GAO will likely bundling them into a single decision.