Interior to re-evaluate $1B cloud contract bids
Gettyimages.com/ Jason marz
By
Nick Wakeman
Peraton could still win the competition again, but the Interior Department in the meantime is moving to address complaints raised by two protestors.
A pair of unhappy bidders who lost their attempt to win a $1 billion cloud hosting contract with the Interior Department maybe getting a second bite at the opportunity.
General Dynamics IT and Science Applications International Corp. each filed protests after the department chose Peraton for the 11-year contract to build a standardized cloud infrastructure for Interior.
Interior awarded Peraton the contract in mid-June, then the protests followed in early July. A Government Accountability Office decision was slated for October.
GDIT and SAIC argued that there were problems with the evaluation of proposals and flawed discussions.
But now GAO has dismissed the protests, which means that Interior has pulled back the Peraton award to take a second look at its evaluations.
That does not mean Interior will choose another bidder than Peraton. But it does mean that Interior is moving to address the protestors' complaints, rather than stick with the award and risk being told by GAO to do more.
Interior received seven proposals for the contract.
We see the original winner keep the contract when it gets re-awarded. In cases where an agency picks a new winner, we generally see a new round of protests.
There is no time frame for Interior to make a new award decision, but we would expect to see it before the end of the calendar year.
If we learn more, we’ll update this post.