Awards were announced Tuesday on the newest governmentwide acquisition contract vehicle, NIH's CIO-Commodities Solutions (CIO-CS), which provides pre-competed contracts for IT products and services, especially those needed by the health IT community.
The National Institutes of Health Information Technology Acquisition and Assessment Center (NITAAC) announced 65 awardees on the new GWAC, set to replace ECSIII. Final orders on ECSIII must be placed by May 9.
More: Full list of CIO-CS awardees
The new contract vehicle is designed to be more agile, from both the customer and vendor perspective.
Agencies buying off CIO-CS will have access to the new e-GOS system, where they can list requirements for a project and get timely feedback from industry on the best ways to achieve those goals.
On the vendor side, contractors were chosen specifically for their ability to be flexible and adapt to new product and service demands as technologies evolve.
"You are going to see some differences in the contract holders who are on the old ECSIII contract versus the new CIO-CS contract," NITAAC Program Director Robert Coen said in an interview with Federal times. "Contract holders really had to prove that they are going to be able to be relevant and meet those ever-changing needs that the government has over the next 10 years."
Interview: Coen dissects CIO-CS GWAC
As part of NITAAC's mission, CIO-CS has a focus on supplying IT to the health community – namely NIH, HHS and DoD components – but the products and services can also be adopted more broadly.
"We are here to support any agency … who [has] a mission to meet the health needs of our constituents, the taxpayers, and the warfighters, whoever it may be," Coen said. "In addition to that, the contract is built to be able to meet every IT need that the government has."
The vehicle is also designed to be the third stool of NITAAC's total GWAC offerings, working in tandem with two existing vehicles: CIO-Solutions and Partners 3 and CIO-SP3 Small Business.
Aaron Boyd is an awarding-winning journalist currently serving as editor of Federal Times — a Washington, D.C. institution covering federal workforce and contracting for more than 50 years — and Fifth Domain — a news and information hub focused on cybersecurity and cyberwar from a civilian, military and international perspective.
