4 ms·

Feds reviewed only one bid for Obamacare website design

3 points by 001sky 13y ago

tssva 13y ago
The reporter is wrong in his characterization of IDIQ's. They are not some little used or known loophole of government procurement. IDIQ's are extremely common especially for IT services. IDIQ's are also competitively bid. When the IDIQ is solicited multiple vendors compete and a single or multiple awards are made. In the case where multiple awards are made, as in the IDIQ used for healthcare.gov, each awardee then gets to compete for the individual task orders issued under the IDIQ. With a multiple award IDIQ except for under limited circumstances an individual task cannot be directed awarded to without allowing all contractors on the IDIQ a chance to compete. The particular IDIQ used for healthcare.gov was the CMS ESD. This IDIQ was a multi-award with the 16 awardees being: Northrop Grumman, CGI Federal, EDS, CSC, IBM, Lockheed Martin, SAIC, ViPS, Buccaneer Computer Systems, IDL Solutions, Quality Software Services, Maricom Systems, 2020 LLC, iFed LLC, Alta Systems, DCCA. Now some of these companies will actually be partners on the contract so the total number of competitors for each task is not 16.
- hga 13y ago
  Indeed, except that people who don't follow this area indeed don't know about them. A whole bunch of people have been getting upset at a DHS procurement for billions of hollow point bullets!!! ... which of course is an ID/IQ contract where the government is only obligated to buy 1,000 rounds of each type in the first year. The extreme total would only result with maximum purchases for it and the following four optional years (and the possible quantities of the various types of rounds ordered are very much not what you'd want for a civil war, but that's looking even deeper into the contract). Ah, as a side note, annual US civilian production of ammo is 12+ billion rounds per year, with 3 or less billion being rimfire. Importation is not inconsequential (and much greater post-Newtown), so this isn't really even that large in the scheme of things. Anyway, as you say, they're common in IT, where knowing ahead of time how much of what you'll need is not entirely possible, although this is the first I've heard of one for software or complete systems including serious amounts of custom software, or multiple vendors all in the same game. Funny thing, I briefly worked for AMS starting just before most of it was bought by CGI. Not top tier, but I didn't get the impression they were at the bottom, where I'd e.g. place CSC, which was mentioned in the article. (I myself was in a national security unit that got bought by CACI, which for a variety of reasons I declined to join.) BTW there are conservative sites of high quality. The Washington Examiner is unfortunately not one of them, unless you're reading a column by Micheal Barone or one of the their other big names.
  - tssva 13y ago
    They are very common for software and complete systems including serious amounts of custom software. Also partners on IDIQs, especially large multi-award ones, are very common. At least they are on the civilian side. About half my life is spent working on proposals in response to tasks for complete systems issued under multi-award IDIQs.

3 points by 001sky 13y ago

tssva 13y ago

The reporter is wrong in his characterization of IDIQ's. They are not some little used or known loophole of government procurement. IDIQ's are extremely common especially for IT services. IDIQ's are also competitively bid. When the IDIQ is solicited multiple vendors compete and a single or multiple awards are made. In the case where multiple awards are made, as in the IDIQ used for healthcare.gov, each awardee then gets to compete for the individual task orders issued under the IDIQ. With a multiple award IDIQ except for under limited circumstances an individual task cannot be directed awarded to without allowing all contractors on the IDIQ a chance to compete. The particular IDIQ used for healthcare.gov was the CMS ESD. This IDIQ was a multi-award with the 16 awardees being: Northrop Grumman, CGI Federal, EDS, CSC, IBM, Lockheed Martin, SAIC, ViPS, Buccaneer Computer Systems, IDL Solutions, Quality Software Services, Maricom Systems, 2020 LLC, iFed LLC, Alta Systems, DCCA. Now some of these companies will actually be partners on the contract so the total number of competitors for each task is not 16.

hga 13y ago
Indeed, except that people who don't follow this area indeed don't know about them. A whole bunch of people have been getting upset at a DHS procurement for billions of hollow point bullets!!! ... which of course is an ID/IQ contract where the government is only obligated to buy 1,000 rounds of each type in the first year. The extreme total would only result with maximum purchases for it and the following four optional years (and the possible quantities of the various types of rounds ordered are very much not what you'd want for a civil war, but that's looking even deeper into the contract). Ah, as a side note, annual US civilian production of ammo is 12+ billion rounds per year, with 3 or less billion being rimfire. Importation is not inconsequential (and much greater post-Newtown), so this isn't really even that large in the scheme of things. Anyway, as you say, they're common in IT, where knowing ahead of time how much of what you'll need is not entirely possible, although this is the first I've heard of one for software or complete systems including serious amounts of custom software, or multiple vendors all in the same game. Funny thing, I briefly worked for AMS starting just before most of it was bought by CGI. Not top tier, but I didn't get the impression they were at the bottom, where I'd e.g. place CSC, which was mentioned in the article. (I myself was in a national security unit that got bought by CACI, which for a variety of reasons I declined to join.) BTW there are conservative sites of high quality. The Washington Examiner is unfortunately not one of them, unless you're reading a column by Micheal Barone or one of the their other big names.
- tssva 13y ago
  They are very common for software and complete systems including serious amounts of custom software. Also partners on IDIQs, especially large multi-award ones, are very common. At least they are on the civilian side. About half my life is spent working on proposals in response to tasks for complete systems issued under multi-award IDIQs.