Army pauses bundled recompete of professional services, IT vehicles
Gettyimages.com / Johannes Kroemer
By
Ross Wilkers
The so-called MAPS contract is yet another big-ticket Army tech acquisition to enter a holding pattern two months into the second Trump administration.
The Army has paused the bundled recompete of two of its major go-to contract vehicles for professional and IT-centric services, following a March 20 White House executive order focused on efficiency in contracting.
Known as MAPS, the future Marketplace for the Acquisition of Professional Services contract has been poised to have a multibillion-dollar ceiling and become their primary vehicle for acquiring staff augmentation and technology support from industry.
Army officials designed MAPS to combine requirements from the current Responsive Strategic Services Sourcing and Information Technology Enterprise Solution-3 Services vehicles.
In a Wednesday notice to Sam.gov, the Army said it is reviewing the “Eliminating Waste and Saving Taxpayer Dollars by Consolidating Procurement” executive order from President Trump to determine any potential impact on MAPS.
That order moves some contracting work from other agencies to the General Services Administration amid a period of heightened scrutiny on acquisitions of certain types of professional services, especially consulting work.
As our partner publication NextGov/FCW reported, GSA is looking to quadruple the volume of procurements it will take on to about $400 billion per year.
Regarding MAPS’ immediate future, the Army is delaying both a pre-solicitation meeting with industry and release of the final draft request for proposals. The Army has released three drafts of the RFP so far and the most recent window for comments on the solicitation closed Feb. 14.
Approximately $12.4 billion in obligations have flowed through RS3 and ITES-3S since the former’s opened for task order business in 2017 and the latter in 2018, according to GovTribe data.
MAPS is not the only big-ticket Army technology and professional services contract currently in some sort of a holding pattern amid the second Trump administration’s move-in.
In February, the Army paused its $10 billion New Modern Software Development contract vehicle to review the overall strategy. That appears to have been a pre-emptive move by Army leaders to ensure the contract aligns with Trump administration priorities for the military.
A third contract on indefinite hold is the Army Data Platform 2.0 effort, which is also in the pre-solicitation phase like MAPS and Modern Software Delivery. The Army also announced the pause and review of ADP 2.0 on Wednesday, like with MAPS.
ADP 2.0 focuses on acquiring enterprise data platforms and related professional services from multiple providers. An August 2024 procurement forecast from the Army pegs ADP 2.0’s ceiling in the range of $250 million-to-$1 billion.
(EDITOR'S NOTE: The Army announced late Thursday that it has cancelled the New Modern Software Development effort altogether. Click here to read our update on that decision.)