Last week the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), National Institute of Health (NIH), released a Request for Information (RFI) seeking industry comments in regards to the next generation contract to support government IT efforts, with a specific focus on health and research IT. According to the NIH, this next generation contract will be the successor to two of the three current GWACs which are hosted by NIH for the purpose of providing information technology to the government. These GWACs are:
The third GWAC is the Electronic Commodities Store III (ECS III). Since this vehicle does not expire until 2012 it is not expected to be initially consolidated with the others. However, it will be interesting to see what happens with this vehicle once it expires.
Spending on these vehicles is not from HHS, but rather from agencies throughout the federal government on both the civilian and defense sides.
- According to 2007 FPDS spending data only 56% of spending on the CIO-SP2i contract is from HHS, significant percentage attributed to:
- Department of Homeland Security at 12% utilization
- Department of the Army with 10%
- According to 2007 FPDS spending data, the Image World vehicle details this to an even greater extent:
- Department of the Navy is actually the largest user of this contract, accounting for 44% of the total spending with HHS lagging far behind with only 13%
The question that arises with these statistics is whether GWACs will become the procurement strategy of choice across the federal market space?
With the percentage use of GSA Schedules remaining flat over the past five years (about 18% annually) and the drastic increase in the dollars going towards task order vehicles, the development of these GWACs and others needs to be watched closely.
As this procurement methodology for potential GWAC consolidation continues, INPUT will continue to track all potential follow-on activity. Individual opportunity reports can be viewed:
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