Patent & Trademark Office finalizes awards for $2B software contract
By
Ross Wilkers
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office picks five companies for a $2 billion software development and systems integration contract.
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has awarded five companies positions on a 10-year, $2 billion contract for broad software development and systems integration services.
Booz Allen Hamilton, Halvik Corp., Riva Solutions, Science Applications International Corp. and Steampunk emerged as the final winners as announced in an award notice Friday.
For USPTO, this comes nearly a year after the agency initially selected a field of 24 competitors that that then vied for the final slots.
That downselect for the Business Oriented Software Solutions contract looked like one but technically was not as USPTO has procurement rules unique to the agency.
One of those differences is an exemption from rules on using full-and-open competition for procurements -- a factor that two protestors found out the hard way when they were not chosen for the field.
Work areas for BOSS include software development and integration, testing, configuration management, production, software maintenance and transition, and program management. Companies will also vie to help in architecture and design, coding, defect triaging and user experience design.