NIH Awards $20 Billion IT Contract
By Christine Kern, contributing writer
More than 60 vendors were selected for new contract designed to address IT needs across the federal government.
The National Institutes of Health announced it has awarded a $20 billion Chief Information Officer – Commodities and Solutions (CIO-CS) Governmentwide Acquisition Contract (GWAC) to 65 vendors. “This GWAC is intended to support the full range of IT needs across the federal government with a particular emphasis on agencies like NIH and its parent, [the Department of Health and Human Services], that are involved in health care and clinical and biological research,” the original solicitation said according to Federal News Radio.
“Our vision was to create a strong suite of contracts which meet the IT needs of not only NIH but the entire federal landscape,” Diane J.Frasier, director, Office of Acquisition and Logistics Management and head of the Contracting Activity at NIH, explained in a statement.
This GWAC offers IT commodity-enabling and shared solutions both on-site and in the cloud, including services such as deployment and installation, maintenance and training, engineering studies, enterprise licenses and extended warranties, everything-as-a-service, mobility, collaboration, web and video-conferencing, cyber security, big data, virtualization and health and biomedical IT.
“With its emphasis on cloud and managed services, we expect CIO-CS to appeal to a broad base of customers throughout the government tasked with implementing IT solutions,” said Brian Goodger, associate director of the NIH Office of Acquisitions and Logistics Management.
“We will continue to build strong relationships with our customers through superior customer service and quality contracting. This contract introduces a new, highly select community now poised to serve the federal government's emerging, next generation information technology needs within a culture that embraces uncompromising quality and bold innovation,” Robert Coen, NITAAC program director assured.
Forty-four of the 65 vendors selected are small businesses across multiple socioeconomic categories. There are eight HUBZones, 14 women-owned, six 8(a), seven economically disadvantaged women-owned small businesses and six service-disabled veteran-owned small businesses. All awardees went through acompetitive source selection process to ensure the most technically capable and competitively priced solutions will be available over the next 10 years.
“As soon as ECS III expires, NITAAC's new Chief Information Officer-Commodities and Solutions (CIO-CS) contract will be open for business,” NIH said on its NITAAC website. “Like ECS III, you will still be able to order IT commodities for the enterprise, lab and office. We are, however, excited that CIO-CS opens new horizons with service enabling commodities that can be used on-site or in the cloud.”