DISA turns to LPTA for alert service solution
By
Nick Wakeman
DISA is using an LPTA evaluation method to award a contract for an alert messaging solution that will be used across the Defense Department.
The Defense Information Services Agency is looking for a vendor to provide a commercial messaging as a service solution that can be used to send alerts to cell phones and other mobile devices.
And DISA wants it for the lowest price possible.
No value for the contract has been disclosed but proposals are due Jan. 17. The solicitation is listed on Beta.Sam.Gov under the Notice ID of HC108420R0003. Searching on the Notice ID should get you to the solicitation. I would like to directly link it here but do not trust the website yet.
DISA is competing the contract as full and open but based on lowest price, technically acceptable evaluation criteria. DISA doesn’t expect to enter into any discussions with bidders, so proposals need to be best and final in terms of price and technical solution.
The agency will evaluate the lowest price proposal first. If that technical proposal is acceptable, then that bidder will get the award. If it isn’t technically acceptable, DISA will move to the bidder with the next-lowest price.
DISA is looking for a message delivery service that can deliver a pre-generated message to mobile devices via a text. It needs to be secure and reliable. The system will deliver critical data and automatic alerts.
The target audience will include civilians and service members at Defense Department locations worldwide. “DISA’s goal is to prove a tool that delivers SMS messaging to the DOD community, anytime, anywhere,” the agency writes in the solicitation.
The solution also needs to operate on an IBM mainframe environment.
DISA is collecting industry questions through Jan. 6. Only five questions have gone to the agency so far including these threee:
- Is there an incumbent?
- What is the current alert process?
- How does DOD currently send these types of notifications?
DISA's answer to all three questions was “This is a new requirement.”
The other two questions deal with the requirement to work with an IBM mainframe. The current application DISA uses is hosted on an IBM mainframe.
Other agencies that have signed inter-agency agreements with DISA will also use the alert system.