Accenture takes Commerce, VA IT modernization jobs

Accenture’s federal subsidiary has won one contract and confirmed its award of a second for nearly $430 million combined in IT modernization work with the Commerce and Veterans Affairs departments.

The company was chosen for a potential 20-year, $340.9 million contract to work with Commerce on consolidating much of its business and other back-office applications into a single suite of systems.

Commerce said in an award notice posted Friday that the contract supports its Business Applications Solution project, through which the goal is to integrate a suite of commercial off-the-shelf platforms for centralizing administrative functions and leveraging cloud-based platforms for IT operations.

The department and Accenture Federal Services signed the contract on Thursday for one initial base year and up to 19 option years afterward. Three bids were submitted for the contract, according to Federal Procurement Data System information, so it could still be protested after all competitors get a post-award debrief.

Full system development life cycle services will support core financial management, acquisition management, property management, enterprise data warehousing and business intelligence reporting. The company will also carry out broad technology hosting and administration, application management and system implementation services.

Solicitation documents indicate Commerce has planned the project to roll out in three phases with the initial leg requiring approximately two-and-a-half years. Phases two and three will need one year each, according to that plan.

The contract with Commerce is a brand new requirement and thus there is no incumbent.

In a release Tuesday, Accenture Federal Services said it was awarded a five-year, $96 million task order to automate manual workflows and introduce applied intelligence and machine learning functions into the VA’s IT infrastructure.

AFS will also work with the VA on ways to gain more visibility into that IT infrastructure’s health in order to identify incidents and respond to them on a quicker basis, plus increase service availability for veterans and VA employees.

The ServiceNow platform will be at the center of this modernization effort in support of the VA’s central health office, Veterans Health Administration, Veterans Benefits Administration and National Cemetary Administration.

As part of its COVID-19 operations, the VA will enable self-service password reset functions through ServiceNow to help workers have uninterrupted access and keep business operations going.