Federal court system eyes expanded push to the cloud

The federal court system wants to take the next step in its cloud computing adoption journey with a new $100 million contract to migrate more of its IT assets into that environment.

The Administrative Office of the U.S. Court has developed a multiple-award blanket purchase agreement to procure the services, which will expand and consolidate the judiciary’s current use of the cloud. Each individual court is currently responsible for its own cloud infrastructure.

AO is the judicial branch's central entity for acquiring administrative, legal, financial, management, program and IT services for the federal courts.

The courts want a common computing environment for all jurisdictions that will be interconnected, virtualized and hybrid. The cloud environment will host mission systems, applications, services and data, according to procurement documents posted by GovTribe.

AO is planning for a contractor-owned and -operated environment.

Proposals are due Aug. 1. With this being a BPA, bidders have to hold General Services Administration Schedule contracts. The contract will run through 2032. The courts plan to make at least three awards.

Evaluation of proposals will focus on three factors -- technical and management approach, technical approach, and price.

For the second technical approach factor, the judiciary will assess processes and procedures for integrating the courts' applications with third-party systems.

All non-price factors will be scored as High Confidence, Some Confidence and Low Confidence. Price will be the least important factor in picking the winners.

The awards will be made without discussions, according to the solicitation documents. Every initial offer should be the best from a price and technical standpoint. AO reserves the right to conduct discussions if they deem it necessary.

Bidders will also have to prepare for oral presentations, which will be broken down into four sessions over a three-hour period.

Session one is for the technical and management approach and should last no more than 30 minutes. The following sessions will be an option one for clarifications and will last no more than 45 minutes.

The third session for 30 minutes is for the technical approach, followed by another optional 45-minute session for any needed clarifications.