Protests filed over Army's ITES-2S award

Five companies have protested the Army's recent $20 billion Information Technology Enterprise Solutions-2 Services contract award.

Dean Sprague, spokesman for the Army's Program Executive Office, Enterprise Information Systems, said BAE Systems North America Inc. of Rockville, Md., Multimax of Largo, Md., NCI Information Systems of Reston, Va., Northrop Grumman Corp. and Pragmatics Inc. of McLean, Va., had filed protests with the Government Accountability Office. GAO said it will rule on the matter by Aug. 11.

"There isn't a lot more we can say at this point, as the contracting office is in the process of determining its strategy to proceed forward," Sprague said.

The Army awarded the nine-year contract to 11 companies?eight large and three small businesses April 14.

ITES-2S is a consolidated contract vehicle for products and services, and serves as a follow-on to the original ITES-Enterprise Mission Support Services Solutions contracts. Services under ITES-2S include business process reengineering, information systems security, information assurance, IT services, network support, systems operations and maintenance, program management, enterprise design, integration and consolidation, and education and training.

The Army, Defense Department and other federal agencies are authorized to order off of ITES-2S by issuing individual task orders.

The Army also plans to issue a request for proposals around May 15 for its second round of ITES-Hardware contracts, which it hopes to award in August. The new ITES-2H contract vehicle will have a ceiling of $10 billion over 10 years.