
Microsoft wins $927M Pentagon contract - richardboegli
http://www.defense.gov/News/Contracts/Contract-View/Article/1035122
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blister
This is an ID/IQ, which means that DISA has set aside $927M over five years
for optional services and support. ID/IQs are a cool contract vehicle because
it gives the government a cost-effective way to buy just what they need as
they go along.

Even if they leveraged the hell out of this contract, they're basically buying
the full power of MS for $185M per year. That's a hell of a good deal for the
government.

~~~
frankydp
+-1.5M DISA email users(Navy/MC unclass contracted separately) at 185M a year
is quite a bargain.

Not to mention desktop/laptop OS, collaboration tools, web servers,
forest/domain management at 800 sites in 70 countries.

~~~
blister
Oh dang. I estimated tens of thousands. I was off by an order of magnitude and
I was the one trying to defend this contract to HackerNews. Lol. Yeah, DISA is
freaking huge. We're doing some work for them right now and the scope is
massive.

Speaking of which... if any of you have a Secret clearance and want a job...
:)

~~~
Retric
Out of curiosity, if you have a Secret clearance and it expires after 10 years
where does that place you on the scale from never having a clearance 0 to
having an active clearance 10.

~~~
USNetizen
Your Secret clearance now expires sometimes within a matter of months of being
off a contract or out of a job that requires it. OPM is cleaning up the
clearances, and revoking millions of them. I've had employees go from active
TS to "eligible" status (which mean no clearance) in a matter of a few weeks
after their contract ended. That whole "10 year active period" is not true, at
least anymore, unless you are in a position that requires the clearance for
that whole period of time.

You're considered lucky to retain a clearance more than a month out of the
service now, too. OPM is taking a tough stance on unused clearances and it has
negatively impacted the job market for recently separated Veterans because the
contracts that come out all require a pre-cleared workforce, which is a
rapidly diminishing pool of people to pull from given that clearances are now
being revoked as soon as someone gets out of the service or leaves their last
position.

~~~
jonwachob91
I don't recall what the actual text says, but when I became a security manager
we were always told it was 10/5 years eligible.

But I've never even attempted to get a job that required a clearance after my
ETS...

But I think the question being asked is not what you answered. I think he's
wondering if his clearance eligibility expired last year, where does he stand
in line for getting a job that requires a clearance?

~~~
blister
Yeah, and having already had a clearance in the past definitely helps speed up
the process to "reactivate" it. The big bummer for companies like mine is that
our contract says that we have to have employees with an active clearance. So
to activate the clearance, we have to hire them, keep them on overhead for
several months and they can't start working until their clearance is approved.

It's a painful $20-$40k hit to the budget. :/

~~~
frankydp
Do you not have a Prime? They should be supporting these kind of issues with
supplement contract workers.

------
eganist
I like articles that consist of just one sentence.

> Microsoft Corp has been awarded a $927 million contract to provide technical
> support to the Defense Information Systems Agency, the Pentagon said in a
> statement on Tuesday.

> (Reporting by Mohammad Zargham)

In all seriousness, this shouldn't be a surprise given the amount of outdated
systems and general reliance on Microsoft tech at DISA.

~~~
metaphor
> I like articles that consist of just one sentence.

I like articles like that too...just not when they're packaged in a ~4MiB page
sprinkled with ads.

~~~
stephengillie
The page works fine as a flat page with JavaScript disabled.

And that was the most concise article I'll read all day.

------
FLUX-YOU
I knew MS shared their code with select customers, but has the DOD always had
it?

~~~
youdontknowtho
They were one of the first customers of that shared source review program.

------
niels_olson
In other news, Microsoft just bought the most lucrative position for corporate
espionage available on planet Earth.

------
freddref
How many people are typically involved in this type of decision?

~~~
bmelton
It depends on the type and scope of the contract. Federal Acquisition
Regulations do a fair job at keeping oversight and "fairness" (depending on a
lot of factors), but at a minimum, you'd have:

* A large body of workers and analysts constructing the requirements * A few contracts officers working to codify those requirements into a request for proposal * A handful of technical contracts officers evaluating the mass of responses * A _large_ pool of technical contracts officers and contracts officers ensuring that the statutory grounds of the proposals are met (verifying that yes, this _is_ a small / veteran owned / minority owned business or yes, this business does have prior qualifications, etc.)

After you've separated the wheat from the chaff, and eliminated the obviously
incapable parties, the team contracts down to 1 or 2 contracts officers and
their staff. This team evaluates the technical feasibility against the
requirements, asks a lot of questions to their own technical teams, and then
ultimately, votes on the winner.

------
mtw
How is it deemed "reporting"?

~~~
jwtadvice
There are three times as many public relations professionals as journalists in
America. Media companies are being consolidated into a few owners, many of
them with tech leadership. Microsoft, for example is the MS in MSNBC (although
I think they recently sold MSNBC?)

------
nunez
Someone's getting sweet Christmas gifts this year.

------
andreasley
Here [1] is the actual statement on defense.gov.

[1] [http://www.defense.gov/News/Contracts/Contract-
View/Article/...](http://www.defense.gov/News/Contracts/Contract-
View/Article/1035122)

~~~
mdrzn
We should change OP's link and leave the title.

~~~
ageofwant
Mr. Zargham certainly is a concise writer.

~~~
up_so_floating
A bit too long-winded for me.

