New NASA IT contract may consolidate 10 programs
Gettyimages.com/ MARK FELIX / Contributor
By
Nick Wakeman
Large and small business incumbents will all feel the impact of how NASA plans to structure its Consolidated Applications and Platform Services acquisition.
NASA has put together a list of contracts it expects to consolidate into an eight-year, single-award procurement to standardize and centralize how the agency acquires IT support services.
This determinations and findings document is partially redacted, but we can see the 10 contracts that will be impacted by the new NASA Consolidated Applications and Platform Services vehicle known as NCAPS.
No dollar value has been assigned to the contract, but it is likely worth at least $1 billion.
Among the incumbent contracts to be affected are Science Applications International Corp. and its $485 million Enterprise Application Services Technologies 2 program that expires next year.
General Dynamics IT’s NASA Next-Gen contract worth $480 million is also listed. That program expires next month, but is currently in a recompete.
One other large business contract held by Mori Associates for communications and outreach work will be affected. The remaining seven contracts are held small businesses, including three held by ASRC Federal subsidiaries.
In the determinations document, NASA says it will likely not recompete these contracts.
NASA is using the consolidation to save money, plus standardize and gain efficiencies in how it manages platforms and applications. The agency expects the small business contract consolidation to generate $27.4 million in annual savings with another $25 million administrative savings, according to the document.
“Although there will not be a SB prime contractor, ambitious SB goals in the low 30 percent range are planned,” NASA said.
The NCAPS vehicle will cover end-user support for desktop applications, mobile apps, websites and information systems. Software applications such as SAP, Salesforce, ServiceNow, Office365 and SharePoint will be supported.
Services under the contract will need to complaint with security protocols such as FISMA, plus NIST and NASA policies.
NCAPS also will be a complement to current NASA enterprise IT contracts, such as AEGIS held by Leidos and Cybersecurity and Privacy Enterprise Solutions and Services held by Booz Allen Hamilton.
The new contract does not have solicitation number yet, but Deltek data indicates the draft request for proposals could be released next week, according to Deltek.
NASA will likely use the Alliant 2 governmentwide contract vehicle to award the work.