NASA releases $1.5B AEGIS IT contract's solicitation
By
Nick Wakeman
NASA has released the final solicitation for its $1.5 billion AEGIS IT services and solutions contract that it will use to continue consolidating and centralizing IT support.
NASA has released the final solicitation for its $1.5 billion Advanced Enterprise Global Information Technology IT Solutions contract known as AEGIS.
At Friday morning's Washington Technology Power Breakfast, NASA Senior Procurement Executive Monica Manning confirmed the final request for proposals would be out today. She said that in response to a question from an audience member who had heard it was delayed until the first quarter of fiscal 2021.
AEGIS is the follow-on to NASA’s Integrated Communications Services contract currently held by Science Applications International Corp. For this current fiscal year so far, $163.3 million in work has flowed through the contract, according to data from the immixGroup's market intelligence analyst Jessica Parks.
Deltek also reports that since 2011, $1.4 billion in work has gone to SAIC through the NICS contract. With all options, the new contract will be for 10 years as well.
NICS is used to consolidate and centralize IT services such as service desk and ordering, web services and technologies, enterprise business and management applications, network services and data center services.
NASA wants to create an end-to-end communications network and infrastructure that includes all of its centers.
The new NICS contract will continue that mission, according to procurement documents. NICS expands into more network automation and automated segmentation across all NASA centers.
NASA also is structuring AEGIS to be more flexible and cost-effective, as well as advance NASA’s IT security posture. Some keys to success are a zero trust architecture, software-defined networking, machine learning/predictive analytics and artificial intelligence, according to a presentation at the March industry day.
The contract also includes a broad range of service offerings including network connections, voice systems, network security, video, and mission services. Services will be used to support the Space Network, Near Earth Network, Deep Space Network and Flight Dynamics Facility.
Proposals are due Oct. 30 and an award is expected in May 2021 with work slated to begin in July 2021.
SAIC did not respond to a request for comment but it is hard to imagine that they won’t be chasing this one as an important recompete.