5 contracts to watch

When it comes to IT procurement, some deals are bigger than others — not just in terms of dollars, but also in their implications and precedents for agencies and contractors. Here are five that bear watching.

1. The CIA's cloud contract

When FCW reported in March that the CIA had awarded a $600 million cloud contract to Amazon Web Services, the IT community did a double take. Then IBM filed a bid protest, the Government Accountability Office upheld it, and AWS took the matter to court. The question now is who will win the battle to build a private cloud for the intelligence community — and what it says about the broader landscape of cloud services vendors.

2. The Energy Department's data center ESPC

Can data center projects pay for themselves? DOE officials thought so, and they worked with Lockheed Martin on the outlines of a $70 million energy savings performance contract then stopped just short of issuing a task order. There is disagreement over whether the Office of Management and Budget hit the brakes or DOE officials had second thoughts about using an ESPC in this way. But other interested agencies are in limbo until the budget rules are clarified.

3. The General Services Administration's OASIS

The $60 billion One Acquisition Solution for Integrated Services contracts could change the way agencies buy IT services, but if the request for proposals process is any indication, those changes could be remarkably complex. Contractors complained that vendor-scoring criteria were too Byzantine to be useful and that midsize firms could be squeezed out of the contracts. Proposals were due Sept. 17, and at least one protest is pending.

4. The Department of Homeland Security's EAGLE II

After years of preparation, the awards under DHS' Enterprise Acquisition Gateway for Leading Edge Solutions II contract began in earnest this year, and more than 50 have been made. The departmentwide contract covers a wide range of IT services and an equally diverse pool of would-be providers, offering other agencies two very different barometers to monitor.

5. The Navy's NGEN
Sometimes it really is all about the size: The $321 million contract to replace the Navy Marine Corps Intranet — the largest outsourced federal IT project and the largest computer network outside the public Internet — could be worth $3.5 billion if all four one-year options are exercised. In June, Navy officials announced that HP Enterprise Services will lead the team building the Next Generation Enterprise Network, which will serve more than 800,000 users in nearly 2,500 locations worldwide and return ownership of the system to the U.S. government.