NITAAC tries again to finalize CIO-SP4 awards

Award notices for the $50 billion CIO-SP4 contract vehicle have started going out and the big question is, will its long-troubled history continue to repeat itself?

The National Institutes of Health's IT Acquisition and Assessment Center confirmed to us that awards are being finalized, but no final list of winners has been released. No word either on how many bidders have been rejected.

NITAAC has not updated its CIO-SP4 information page since July. CIO-SP4 is a government-wide contract vehicle with a $50 billion ceiling that covers health, biomedical, scientific, administrative, operational, managerial and information systems requirements.

One source said debriefings have not begun yet, but what NITAAC has sent out is similar to the notices sent last year that led to hundreds of protests at the Government Accountability Office.

GAO either sustained or dismissed the protests when NITAAC said it would reconsider its decision.

NITAAC came under fire because companies complained that the agency set an arbitrary threshold for the self-scoring portion for the first phase of evaluations. Companies said NITAAC favored small business joint ventures over traditional small businesses because of the kinds of contracts it would count as acceptable past performance.

One final (for now) protest was dismissed in September, when NITAAC said it would broaden the range of what will be considered past performance. With that change, NITAAC said it would recalculate points and make new awards.

At the time, NITAAC said hoped to make new awards by April 2024. It seems the agency is ahead of that schedule.

Tyrula LLC is one small business who has announced on LinkedIn that it won a spot.  No word yet on how many companies won positions, and how many were left out.

OrangeSlices.AI reported earlier this week that notices were going out.