Brian Goodger, acting director of the National Institutes of Health Information Technology Acquisition and Assessment Center (NITAAC), said NITAAC plans to issue a request for proposals for the potential $40 billion Chief Information Officer – Solutions and Partners IV contract for IT support services by mid-to-late March, Federal News Network reported Monday.
Goodger told FNN in an interview NITAAC will accept bids through April 30 and expects to receive more than 1,000 proposals for CIO-SP4 with plans to select up to 450 large and small business vendors by early 2022.
He said NITAAC will adopt a three-phased approach to the evaluation of bids for the governmentwide acquisition contract to immediately address any potential complaints. The initial phase calls for vendors to fill out a self-scoring sheet, while the second phase is a go no-go decision. Phase three includes a technical and business proposal review.
“That will result in some total score at the bottom of the page out of 10,000 points. It’s important to note that each company based on their business size is competing to get on the GWAC only amongst companies of a similar size. So larges are only going against larges, and smalls are only going against smalls,” said Goodger, who is also CIO-SP4 program director.
“Another reason we’ve moved to the phased approach is that although the offerors will submit everything in total upfront. The phased approach allows NITAAC the opportunity to notify them immediately after the conclusion of each phase of whether or not they’ve advanced to the next phase. And in doing so, we will be able to start any protest clock immediately with those that did not make it from phase one to phase two,” he added.
