State Department’s Consolidated IT MAC Could Fetch $5B: Top 20

The U.S. Department of State may consolidate its spending on information technology products and equipment into a new multiple-award contract that could be worth as much as $5 billion, according documents released in late May.

The State Department’s Information Resource Management (IRM) Strategic Sourcing Solution Information Technology Equipment request for information (RFI) is the subject of this week’s Top 20 Opportunities.

IRM’s goal is to centralize oversight of IT acquisition in order to keep the department’s IT infrastructure on a regular refresh cycle, according to the RFI. That way, State Department personnel will be less reliant on outdated technologies, which are more susceptible to cyber threats.

The department appears increasingly attuned to the risks cybersecurity vulnerabilities pose to its global workforce. A June 8 RFI called on industry for strategies to design a next-generation 5G telecommunications network free of components built s Huawei Technologies Co, and other Chinese companies.

The purpose of the IRM RFI is to gather information on small businesses that are capable of participating in the contract, as well as the number of awards IRM should issue, the contract ceiling, and the ability of existing indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity (IDIQ) contracts to meet the requirement.

IRM would use one or more IDIQ contracts as a go-to source for the department’s IT hardware needs, which include desktops, smart phones, servers, network equipment, printers, cloud computing-related equipment, as well as tech support for those items.

Historical Spending

The State Department has obligated just shy of $2.5 billion on IT products and hardware since fiscal 2016, according to Bloomberg Government data. About one-third of that spending, or $831 million, has flowed through NASA’s Solutions for Enterprise-Wide Procurement (SEWP) V contract. Another $207 million, or about 8%, is with Schedule 70. Still, hundreds of millions of dollars in IT product spending is fragmented across hundreds of other contracts.

The department’s top IT products vendors since fiscal 2016 include CDW Corp. ($329 million), Mythics Inc. ($237 million), AT&T Inc. ($201 million), and Carahsoft Technology Corp. ($171 million).

The department’s catalog of requested items includes products from Cisco Systems Inc., Samsung Electronics Co Ltd., Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co., Apple Inc., VMWare Inc., and many others. A complete list of needed items is available in the June 4 updated products checklist.

Bloomberg Government estimates that a draft request for proposal could be released as early as July. Subscribers can click the Alert icon in the top-right corner of the solicitation page to have the latest updates delivered to their email inbox.

To contact the analyst on this story: Chris Cornillie in Washington at ccornillie@bgov.com

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Daniel Snyder at dsnyder@bgov.com; Jodie Morris at jmorris@bgov.com