FBI cancels agile BPA

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The Criminal Justice Information Services division of the bureau is expected to conduct its own acquisition program for vendors specializing in agile development.

The FBI canceled plans last week for a multiaward blanket purchase agreement covering the acquisition of agile development expertise after months of market research.

The FBI first released a call for agile services market research on Aug. 13, 2021 with an eye to using a federal multiple award schedule contract such as the Schedule 70 vehicle at the General Services Administration for a five-year effort. 

FBI was looking to create a multivendor vehicle consisting of vendors with Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) expertise to work on single-service projects within the FBI or take on cross-functional, interdepartmental efforts. 

The BPA was envisioned as a way for the FBI to access talent across multiple occupational categories by competing task orders to preselected vendors on the BPA.

"The flexibility of the FAST BPA will allow customers to elect one or multiple task orders be issued to a particular service. It would also permit acquired services to augment existing teams, create a new cross functional team, or create a new agile release train," the bureau stated in its notice to industry six months ago.

The FBI's Criminal Justice Information Services tech hub located in West Virginia plans to leverage the market research for its own agile BPA. The CJIS is expected to detail its own requirements for an agile contract in the summer or fall of this year, according to contracting documents.