The Department of Interior (DOI) is pushing forward with recompeting a general cloud hosting contract that was awarded a decade ago and is seeking input from the industry. However, the department is allowing for a considerable amount of time before proceeding to the final solicitation for the Foundation Cloud Hosting Services II (FCHS II) contract to get feedback. This potential 10-year contract, with a value of $10 billion and multiple winners, will be subject to a lengthy preparation period.
According to the recently posted solicitation notice, the DOI intends to choose 3-5 primary contractors for the FCHS II contract. This contract is an indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity (IDIQ) contract with a base term of two years and four option periods of two years each. 
The government is looking for vendors who can provide cloud platforms certified under the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program and employ net-zero cloud strategies. Interested parties are expected to explain how they will adhere to basic data management best practices for data dictionaries, open web services, discovery metadata, and other hosted systems. They should also demonstrate their ability to manage and update department data integration through emerging architectures, as specified in the statement of work.
Furthermore, contractors must possess the necessary expertise to offer technical advisory services for the full migration of target applications and services to the cloud. They must provide cloud environments for production, integration, and sandbox purposes, as well as post-deployment cloud support and governance services, among other technical requirements.
A draft request for proposals for four sections (below) of FCHS II was released on April 20, with feedback due by April 27.
- Section B: Supplies, services and costs
- Section C: Statement of work
- Section L: Instructions, conditions and notices
- Section M: Evaluation factors for award
Feedback on all other sections isn’t due until July 30.
FCHS 2 is the successor to the contract awarded to 10 technology integrators in 2013, who provided cloud services related to storage, file transfer, databases, testing, etc. The previous 10 contract awardees were Aquilent, AT&T, Autonomic Resources, CGI, GTRI, IBM, Lockheed Martin, Smartronix, Unisys and Verizon. Currently, the department has utilized just over half of the overall ceiling for this contract.
The DOI intends to award the contracts for FCHS 2 without engaging in discussions with offerors. Instead, a two-phase advisory down-select process will be used to determine the winners. The first phase, an evaluation team will review all submissions and provide their assessment to the contracting officer, who will then communicate the results to the bidders and advise them on their prospective changes of being awarded.
In addition to FCHS 2, the Department is also pursuing a $1 billion contract that is more focused on the virtual data center aspect of its cloud migration objectives. Proposals for this contract, known as Cloud Hosting Solutions III (CHS III), were due in November.
To learn more about FCHS 2, it’s predecessor, and associated awards, get started with a 5-day trial of EZGovOpps today.
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