Round 2: 500 companies lined up for awards on $50B STARS III vehicle

The General Services Administration has unveiled a second group of winners in the third iteration of its popular STARS contract vehicle for acquiring IT services and solutions from small businesses with the 8(a) designation.

For this round announced Monday, GSA has decided to make at least 500 awards for the contract known as Streamlined Technology Acquisition Resources for Services III that has a $50 billion ceiling over up to eight years.

Click here to see the full list of awardees for STARS III’s second cohort, which grows the pool of companies with awards to at least 900. Round one of awards last year went to nearly 400 companies.

Block number three of awards, the last group, is slated to go out later this calendar year after discussions with companies still in the competitive range.

The STARS program is GSA’s mechanism to reach into the 8(a) small business community for help in adopting and deploying emerging technologies.

Some of the tools and techniques GSA is particularly interested in for STARS III include artificial intelligence, blockchain and robotic process automation.

STARS is one of several contracts targeted for 8(a) small businesses, a group to which the federal government aims to award at least 5 percent of all contracting dollars each year.