More than a year after the initial award, the General Services Administration and the Defense Department chose the same contractor for the Defense Enterprise Office Solutions (DEOS) contract.

GSA announced today it again picked the team led by CSRA LLC, now known as General Dynamics-IT, for the 10-year, $4.4 billion blanket purchase agreement. The initial award back in August 2019 was estimated to be worth between $7.6 billion and $12.6 billion. It is unclear why the estimate of the BPA changed.  GSA declined to comment about the award until after the 10-day protest period.

GD-IT, which also runs the MilCloud 2.0 platform, is teaming with Dell Marketing L.P. and Minburn Technology Group LLC.

“DEOS is a key part of the department’s Digital Modernization Strategy and its fit-for-purpose cloud offering will streamline our use of cloud email and collaborative tools while enhancing cybersecurity and information sharing based on standardized needs and market offerings,” said Dana Deasy, the DoD chief information officer, in a statement. “The last six months have put enormous pressure on the department to move faster with cloud adoption. All across the department there are demand signals for enterprisewide collaboration and ubiquitous access to information.”

Under DEOS, the Pentagon will implement Microsoft Office 365 and associated capabilities including word processing and spreadsheets, email, collaboration, file sharing and storage. DoD and GSA say DEOS will include access to DoD Impact Level 5 (Unclassified) and Impact Level 6 (Classified) cloud services operating within the United States and overseas providing capability to support garrison and network challenged operations.

The journey to get to this second award has been fraught with what, too often now, are common bumps in the road.

GSA and DoD first awarded the CSRA the DEOS contract back in 2019, only to face a protest by Perspecta, which challenged GSA’s evaluation of the bids and alleged that CSRA has a conflict of interest.

GSA took corrective action in October by investigating alleged organizational conflicts of interest, revising the DEOS solicitation, and then asking bidders to submit entirely new proposals.

Then in June, Perspecta filed another protest after GSA disclosed their pricing template to the other bidders. GSA told the Government Accountability Office that it would take corrective action once again. GSA amended the solicitation and accepted new proposals.

GSA and DoD say they’re confident they got DEOS right this time.

In the press release, the agencies say they have made every effort to ensure this process is fair, transparent and equitable, and they addressed previous shortcomings with the process.

“GDIT stands ready to execute this critical work which will provide enterprise-wide visibility and collaboration capabilities across the Department of Defense. The need for DEOS capabilities have been further amplified by the COVID-19 crisis, which has forced agencies to leverage other short-term solutions to support their remote workforces. More than ever, it’s imperative that we accelerate the deployment of technology to support our mission partners,” said Amy Gilliland, General Dynamics Information Technology president, in a statement.

An email to Perspecta seeking comment about GSA and DoD’s new award decision was not immediately returned.

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