VA seeks single contractor to modernize sprawling supply chain
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By
Nick Wakeman
The Veterans Affairs Department has 63 legacy systems across 174 sites that have created fragmented and inefficient operations.
The Veterans Affairs Department is planning a new single-award contract to modernize and integrate its sprawling supply chain management systems.
In a request for information posted Friday, VA describes its desire to pull together 63 legacy systems that touch 174 sites around the country.
The department is plagued by a supply chain management system with “fragmented operations, limited enterprise visibility, and inefficiencies,” VA says in the RFI. “Standardization and modernization are required to transform supply chain systems into integrated, enterprise-wide system of systems.”
VA is using responses to help develop a five-year contract for supply chain modernization efforts. The contract will likely be a hybrid fixed-price award with time-and-materials optional tasks.
VA wants a single contractor to support the department’s Healthcare Environment and Logistics Management product line known as HELM.
HELM is an active program for software development that has 34 products currently in operation. These include software for supply chain, logistics, assets, inventory, and environmental compliance.
Some of the key technical demands include the DevSecOps software practice, as well as continuous integration and continuous delivery support. The department also wants cloud-based modernization work to support its VA Platform One/OpenShift enviroinment.
The new supply chain management system also needs to integrate with other enterprise-wide VA programs,, such as the electronic health record and the department’s financial management system.
The RFI also talks about the use of artificial intelligence and machine learning. VA has several requirements around AI including prohibitions against web-based, publicly-available generative AI services such as ChatGPT, Microsoft’s Copilot, Google’s Gemini and Anthropic’s Claude.
“Only VA-hosted instances of generative AI services may be approved for use with VA-sensitive data,” the RFI says.
Responses to the RFI should address specific areas such as hiring/onboarding of IT talent, concurrent product support, cybersecurity experience, enterprise deployments, legacy system modernization roadmaps, VA-specific system integration experience and cloud data migration.
VA wants responses to be no more than 12 pages. Responses are due by 12 p.m. Eastern time on May 8.