The Government Accountability Office (GAO) on Wednesday denied Perspecta’s protest of Leidos’ [LDOS] Navy Next Generation Enterprise Network Re-compete (NGEN-R) contract win, clearing the final protest and allowing the new work to move forward.
This came a week after GAO denied a similar protest by the other competitor, General Dynamics Information Technology [GD] (Defense Daily, June 12).
In neither ruling did GAO explain its decision yet because the protest is covered by a protective order since “some information in the decision may require redaction before public release. A final redacted version of the decision will be posted when this process is complete.”
Perspecta filed its protest in March against the Navy’s awarding Leidos a $7.7 billion NGEN-R Service Management, Integration and Transportation (SMIT) contract (Defense Daily, March 11).
Leidos was first awarded the NGEN-R SMIT contract in February. It runs for five years through 2025 and includes three one-year option periods that would extend it to August 2028 and reach the full $7.7 billion value (Defense Daily, Feb. 6).
The Navy is using the NGEN-R contracts to replace the legacy NGEN contract vehicle that provides information technology capability and support services to the Navy Marine Corps Intranet (NMCI) and Marine Corps Enterprise Network (MCEN) users and stakeholders.
NGEN-R is meant to add IT coverage outside the continental United States (OCONUS) via the OCONUS Navy Enterprise Network (ONE-Net) and also was split into two sections in a bid to save money: SMIT and end-user hardware (EUHW).
The SMIT section that was under protest particularly covers base network services covered by the current NGEN. This includes electronic software delivery, end user core build, endpoint detection, logistics management, network operations, security operations, service desk, transport and virtualization services.
Speaking to reporters on Thursday, Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Research, Development and Acquisition James Geurts commented this “clears the next-gen contract for us to move forward. And, again, COVID has shown the real need and criticality of having the right network moving forward so we can be adaptive in the workforce and give the workforce all the tools they need to be successful.”
“So I was proud of the team for working our way through that and that process, so we’ll move forward on that,” Geurts added.
Before the protest, the Navy had planned a “kick-off” meeting between it and Leidos to start ramping down Persepcta’s legacy NGEN SMIT services while starting to ramp up the new Leidos NGEN-R services. In February, a Navy official said the transition would take about nine months and is the initial focus for Leidos. However, the meeting was postponed due to the protests (Defense Daily, Feb. 11)
Last October, the Navy awarded Hewlett Packard Inc.’s HPI Federal LLC [HPQ] the $1.4 billion NGEN-R EUHW contract, which no competitor protested (Defense Daily, Oct. 9, 2019).