Update March 24, 2023
NITAAC’s most recent update stated they would have a “preliminary notification of apparent successful offerors” for CIO-SP4 on or before this upcoming Monday the 27th and it appears they will meet this deadline.
Stephanie Mitchell of BD Squared was the first to publicly report this afternoon that “Phase 3 emails went out today“. You can follow some of the celebratory notices related to taking the next step on CIO-SP4 here.
This is clearly still far from over, but now NITAAC can begin the tedious process of validating scoring and addressing the many issues and challenges that were raised with GAO over the past few months, before announcing the final and complete list of confirmed and validated awardees.
Update March 23, 2023
NITAAC surprised many early this week when, just days after rescinding unsuccessful offeror notices and announcing plans to make “successful award notifications” for CIO-SP4, they sent out a fresh batch of notification letters to unsuccessful offerors. According to an anonymous source and recipient of the notification: “There were no significant or strategic changes. The letter was nearly identical.”
Industry was quick to react – OS AI has notified by 5 different CIO-SP4 bidders this week that they have already filed a protest with GAO, and several more are rumored. It is not to say that firms did not expect a cut to take place. They did, but there was an expectation and hope that when GAO dismissed the latest set of protests, NITAAC would take some time to resolve the issues that had been identified.
Impact on the timeline for awards – This has been followed by a lot of speculation and buzz about the impact that this new round of GAO protests may have on NITAAC’s ability to award CIO-SP4. What we do know is that it appears that NITAAC still plans to, at least for now, move forward with announcing a “preliminary notification of apparent successful offerors” for CIO-SP4 on or before this upcoming Monday. You can keep track of all of the announcements by NITAAC here related to CIO-SP4 and any possible extension of CIO-SP3.
Published March 20, 2023
Last week was a busy one for NITAAC leadership – this week promises to be even busier.
Last week’s actions
- Protests – As is well documented, last Wednesday, GAO “dismissed” all active protests after NITAAC agreed to take corrective action to resolve identified issues.
- Rescinded Unsuccessful Offer Letters – On Friday of last week, bidders on the Chief Information Officer – Solutions and Partners 4 (CIO-SP4) IDIQ were informed in writing that NITAAC was rescinding all unsuccessful offeror notices. This was expected and had been communicated to at least a portion of the protestors in early March.
- Full Steam ahead (kind of) – This action was followed by NITAAC posting an update on its website noting: “As of March 17, 2023, there are no active protests. CIO-SP3 GWACs will expire on April 29, 2023, and we look forward to successful award notifications on CIO-SP4 on or around March 24, 2023.”
This week’s actions: Prepare to distribute successful award notifications
Q) Should those firms who missed the cut have a glimmer of hope that they will receive a Prime spot on this important GWAC?
A) A glimmer? Absolutely, especially if your company was close to the cut line.
Q) Does this mean that you should start ramping up your task order response engine?
A) Not so fast. We will not spend time speculating here as to what could take place as NITAAC has yet to communicate the complete set of actions at this time. What we do know is that, unless NITAAC gives an award to every bidder – a new round of protests is likely to follow – expect to see challenges filed within days, if not hours, of any award notifications going out. NITAAC leadership will and should be anticipating this. The clock may be ticking for CIO-SP3, but CIO-SP4 is unlikely to be resolved anytime soon.
More to come in the days ahead … maybe as early as this Friday. Have questions – feedback? Did we miss something? Want to share your ideas? Contact us here.
CIO-SP4 Solicitation Number 75N98121R00001
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There are already a half dozen or so on the GAO docket as of this morning
Up to 10 now