- DHA said its test environment has grown past what programs actually use, with deferred hardware refreshes leaving aging infrastructure
- Phase 1 submissions are due Aug. 20
- Awards will be fixed-price only, tied to delivered results rather than labor hours
The Defense Health Agency has told industry that the test infrastructure behind its health IT programs costs more than it returns, and is asking companies to propose commercial fixes. DHA’s contracting activity posted a commercial solutions opening Wednesday on SAM.gov for Enterprise Support Services Next, on behalf of Program Executive Office Defense Healthcare Management Systems.
Phase 1 submissions will close Aug. 20. Any resulting contracts will be fixed-price and tied to tangible results, with the agency stating it cannot award on a level-of-effort or labor-hour basis.
Technology, AI and modernization priorities at DHA, HHS and the Veterans Health Administration are on the agenda at the Potomac Officers Club’s 2026 Healthcare Summit on Dec. 3. Register now!
What Problem Is DHA Trying to Solve?
Individual programs were handed infrastructure and left to configure and manage it themselves, an arrangement the agency says offered early flexibility but produced uncoordinated growth that far exceeds operational demand. Hardware refresh cycles were deferred, leaving equipment that costs more to maintain.
Three consequences follow: the agency pays for capacity nobody uses, program staff who should be building products spend their time administering infrastructure instead, and DHA lacks the utilization and cost visibility to confirm its spending matches mission need.
The agency called these problems structural and said that better management of the existing contract would not resolve them. No single entity is accountable for the environment’s performance or cost, it said.
What Is DHA Asking Industry to Deliver?
Five goals were listed in the announcement, three of them immediate.
The first covers the consolidation of infrastructure and facilities, with different constraints by program. Joint Operational Medicine Information Systems work must retain hardware-in-the-loop capability for simulating disconnected, intermittent and low-bandwidth tactical conditions, including physical device handshakes. Defense Healthcare Management Systems testing of medical devices and peripherals, by contrast, should explore moving out of centralized lab space, whether into virtualized environments, military treatment facilities or something else that measurably shrinks the footprint.
The second turns the service model from a workspace that tenants configure into a governed platform, with automated provisioning, self-service capabilities with security guardrails and continuous license rationalization. DHA specified that total cost of ownership calculations must account for its own lifecycle cost estimate components and its Amazon Web Services spending, not just the contractor’s price.
The third places cybersecurity accountability on the contractor, covering continuous authorization, vulnerability remediation and progress toward zero trust maturity.
Two further goals are structured as options that DHA will exercise later, with timing depending on when other contracts end. One covers developmental test and evaluation and independent verification and validation work. The other consolidates enterprise tooling onto Software Development Lifecycle Next as the standard platform.
How Will DHA Evaluate Submissions?
Phase 1 asks for a paper of no more than five pages, or 15 briefing slides, describing the concept and a rough order-of-magnitude cost. Selected companies move to Phase 2, where DHA requests a contractor-drafted performance work statement and pricing, plus at least one collaborative session the agency describes as mutual due diligence.
DHA named Boston Consulting Group and Andrew Morgan as non-government advisers who will review submissions.
