Veterans Affairs to again rethink $400M file conversion contract

A back-and-forth battle between GovCIO and General Dynamics IT over a $400 million Veterans Affairs Department contract has entered another round now that the agency has again decided to rethink its award decision.

GovCIO first won the contract for file conversion services in late 2022, but a successful protest by GDIT in the spring of 2023 forced VA to take a second look at its decision.

VA reversed course and awarded the contract to GDIT in August, which of course led to protests by GovCIO. The agency responded to the protest within weeks and pulled back the award to GDIT to re-evaluate.

GDIT won the contract a second time in December, which was followed by another GovCIO protest on Dec. 26.

The Government Accountability Office dismissed the GovCIO protest on Friday after VA said it would take another corrective action.

VA intends to reopen discussions with bidders, re-evaluate proposals, conduct a best-value tradeoff and then make another award decision.

GovCIO’s alleges that the evaluations to date have not been proper and discussions were lacking. They also allege that GDIT tried to convince one of GovCIO’s partners to quit the team.

Three months passed from the time of the August corrective action and the second award to GDIT in December, so we are probably looking at a similar amount of time before another award is made.

GDIT is the incumbent on the contract with the name of File-to-File Conversion Service with File Indexing Management.