NIH pulls the plug on its government-wide contracts

After floundering for over a year, the National Institutes of Health have officially pulled the plug on its program for government-wide acquisition contracts.

NIH's IT Acquisition and Assessment Center has released the end dates for the CIO-SP3 and CIO-CS contracts.

The last day for making task order awards will be Oct. 29. The period of performance must end by Dec. 31, 2028. Task orders awarded after June 8 also cannot have period of performance beyond Dec. 31, 2028.

The end of the NITAAC program has been widely expected since the start of the Trump administration, but the troubles date back to at least 2022. NITAAC struggled to get CIO-SP4 awarded and its attempts faced rounds of challenges at the Government Accountability Office and the U.S. Court of Federal Claims.

Many of the complaints revolved around the self-scoring cut-off line that NITAAC used to eliminate bidders. Bidders argued that the threshold was arbitrary.

The Trump administration came into office with a focus on streamlining acquisition and consolidating more contracts at the General Services Administration.

In February, NITAAC told told the U.S. Court of Federal Claims that it was cancelling CIO-SP4 to align with Trump’s executive order “Eliminating Waste and Saving Taxpayer Dollars by Consolidating Procurement.”

The announcement this week sets the end date for CIO-SP3, CIO-SP3 Small Business and CIO-CS.

NITAAC will essentially shutter at the end of 2028.

NITAAC is also telling agencies to download their order file documents from the Electronic Government Ordering System (eGOS) by Dec. 31, 2028.