

Feds reviewed only one bid for Obamacare website design - 001sky
http://washingtonexaminer.com/feds-reviewed-only-one-bid-for-obamacare-website-design/article/2537194

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tssva
The reporter is wrong in his characterization of IDIQ's. They are not some
little used or known loophole of government procurement. IDIQ's are extremely
common especially for IT services.

IDIQ's are also competitively bid. When the IDIQ is solicited multiple vendors
compete and a single or multiple awards are made. In the case where multiple
awards are made, as in the IDIQ used for healthcare.gov, each awardee then
gets to compete for the individual task orders issued under the IDIQ. With a
multiple award IDIQ except for under limited circumstances an individual task
cannot be directed awarded to without allowing all contractors on the IDIQ a
chance to compete.

The particular IDIQ used for healthcare.gov was the CMS ESD. This IDIQ was a
multi-award with the 16 awardees being: Northrop Grumman, CGI Federal, EDS,
CSC, IBM, Lockheed Martin, SAIC, ViPS, Buccaneer Computer Systems, IDL
Solutions, Quality Software Services, Maricom Systems, 2020 LLC, iFed LLC,
Alta Systems, DCCA. Now some of these companies will actually be partners on
the contract so the total number of competitors for each task is not 16.

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hga
Indeed, except that people who don't follow this area indeed don't know about
them. A whole bunch of people have been getting upset at a DHS procurement for
_billions of hollow point bullets!!!_ ... which of course is an ID/IQ contract
where the government is only obligated to buy 1,000 rounds of each type in the
first year. The extreme total would only result with maximum purchases for it
and the following four optional years (and the possible quantities of the
various types of rounds ordered are very much not what you'd want for a civil
war, but that's looking even deeper into the contract).

Ah, as a side note, annual US civilian production of ammo is 12+ billion
rounds per year, with 3 or less billion being rimfire. Importation is not
inconsequential (and much greater post-Newtown), so this isn't really even
_that_ large in the scheme of things.

Anyway, as you say, they're common in IT, where knowing ahead of time how much
of what you'll need is not entirely possible, although this is the first I've
heard of one for software or complete systems including serious amounts of
custom software, or multiple vendors all in the same game.

Funny thing, I briefly worked for AMS starting just before most of it was
bought by CGI. Not top tier, but I didn't get the impression they were at the
bottom, where I'd e.g. place CSC, which was mentioned in the article.

(I myself was in a national security unit that got bought by CACI, which for a
variety of reasons I declined to join.)

BTW there are conservative sites of high quality. _The Washington Examiner_ is
unfortunately not one of them, unless you're reading a column by Micheal
Barone or one of the their other big names.

~~~
tssva
They are very common for software and complete systems including serious
amounts of custom software. Also partners on IDIQs, especially large multi-
award ones, are very common. At least they are on the civilian side. About
half my life is spent working on proposals in response to tasks for complete
systems issued under multi-award IDIQs.

