The General Services Administration (GSA) on Monday awarded its new government wide acquisition contract vehicle, selecting 61 companies to compete for up to $50 billion in customized information technology (IT) services and solutions for various departments and agencies.
The Alliant 2 unrestricted contract vehicle follows up the current Alliant vehicle, which allows departments and agencies to purchase IT services and solutions from a qualified list of vendors, and expires in April 2019.
The new contract vehicle includes cyber security standards that meet standards put forth by the National Institute of Standards and Technology and fit requirements of the Federal Information Security Management Act. It also includes Defense Department acquisition regulations into the “master contract so they automatically flow down to the task order level on all task orders issued by a DoD agency,” GSA said.
“Taken what we learned from Alliant, and what we heard from our stakeholders, we made some significant enhancements that will serve the federal government very well as IT modernization takes center stage, and as agencies work to enhance and improve their mission-critical systems,” Bill Zielinsky, deputy assistant commissioner for IT Category Management Operations at GSA, said at the outset of a media briefing on Monday for reporters.
In addition to the new cyber security enhancements, Zielinsky said some of the other features of the A2 contract include “on-ramp and off-ramp provisions, ensuring retention of a highly qualified pool of contractors” and non-IT support if it’s needed for the IT services.
“Alliant 2 will provide a flexible and high-performing contract for federal agencies that have mission-critical complex IT services requirements as they move to implement transformative IT modernization initiatives,” Zielinsky said.
The request for proposals for A2 was issued in June 2016.
Some of the awardees include the major defense contractors—BAE Systems, General Dynamics [GD], Lockheed Martin [LMT], Northrop Grumman [NOC] and Raytheon [RTN]—as well as a slew federal professional services and solutions providers such as Accenture [ACN], Booz Allen Hamilton [BAH], CACI International [CACI], CSRA [CSRA], Engility Corp. [EGL], Leidos [LDOS], ManTech International [MANT], Science Applications International Corp. [SAIC], and Unisys Corp. [UIS].