The companies that landed awards under Interior’s Foundation Cloud Hosting Services II contract are Accenture Federal Services, IBM, CGI Federal, SAIC, Cognosante, Zivaro and Smartronix. Those seven vendors will compete for task orders under the greater indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity contract. 

The announcements of the seven awards detail Interior’s statement of work for the contract, requiring cloud license and support services for infrastructure, platform and software in a cloud environment. 

This contract comes as the initial iteration of the Foundation Cloud Hosting Services vehicle is set to expire later this year. Awarded in 2013 to 10 contractors, the initial contract has a $10 billion ceiling.

In the department’s initial statement of work, it wrote about the latest contract: “This follow-on FCHS contract is shifting to multiple service provider focus and integration among our solutions and a hybrid model hosting environment vision. Providing interoperability and data integrations between multiple technologies and services across the Department bureaus and offices.”

It also complements Interior’s $1 billion cloud contract award to Peraton last year for its Cloud Hosting Solutions III acquisition, which enlists the IT contractor to manage the department’s portfolio of cloud services.

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Under the single-award contract, called T-Cloud, SAIC will support Treasury’s adoption of a multi-cloud environment as a cloud broker, centralizing management of services from major cloud providers like Amazon, Google, IBM, Microsoft and Oracle, with the opportunity to onboard others.

“T-Cloud will enable the Treasury Department to rapidly and securely adopt a modern, flexible and cost-effective approach to utilizing and consuming data in the cloud,” said Bob Genter, SAIC’s president of defense and civilian sector. “SAIC is honored to be the Treasury Department’s cloud services digital transformation partner.”

SAIC will also provide services for business operations, technical, security, network, service desk, subject matter expert support, and transition services, according to a news release.

Treasury has been planning out T-Cloud since as far back as 2019, when it introduced a cloud roadmap developed by its Office of the Chief Information Officer in collaboration with the IRS, procurement offices and other stakeholders.

“At present, Treasury bureaus are individually moving forward with cloud solutions, and have implemented a number of cloud solutions to address unique mission priorities requiring agile and elastic approaches, often through duplicative contract actions,” that roadmap explained. “This scattered approach, while offering varying degrees of agility for individual customers, ignores opportunities for cost reduction through service deduplication and consolidated procurement actions.”

The contract has a seven-year period of performance.

Treasury isn’t the only large department to award a major cloud contract recently. The Department of the Interior last week awarded Peraton a $1 billion cloud contract. And, the Department of Agriculture is plotting a similar departmentwide contract for cloud adoption.

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Townes-Whitley will take over as CEO on Oct. 2 when current chief executive Nazzic Keene steps down. Before then, she will join SAIC on June 12 as CEO-elect to “ensure a seamless transition,” per a release on her appointment.

“I have known, respected and admired Toni for years and am thrilled to welcome her to our SAIC family,” Keene said. “I am proud of all we have accomplished for our customers and colleagues during my tenure at SAIC, and I am excited to work alongside Toni in the coming months to ensure we don’t miss a beat in driving sustained growth and performance.”

Most recently, Townes-Whitley served as president of U.S. regulated industries at Microsoft and led sales within the U.S. promoting digital transformation for the public sector. Earlier in her career, she was president of CGI Federal, and before that led the federal civilian group for Unisys Corp. She also holds independent director and trustee roles on a number of boards, including for Nasdaq, PNC Financial Services, United Way, and the Partnership for Public Service.

“I am honored to bring my passion for driving our nation’s digital transformation to this extraordinary company that is positioned at the intersection of mission critical government programs at a time of evolving, multi-dimensional global threats,” Townes-Whitley said in a statement. “SAIC is on a solid growth trajectory with an expanding solutions portfolio, positive financial trends and a culture of serving its customers with integrity, and I look forward to building on the company’s momentum.”

Townes-Whitley is a former FedScoop 50 winner.

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The Pentagon’s Joint All-Domain Command and Control (JADC2) concept seeks to connect sensors and shooters, and provide battlefield commanders with the right information to make faster decisions. But each of the military departments have their own JADC2 initiatives: the Air Force’s Advanced Battle Management System, the Army’s Project Convergence and the Navy’s Project Overmatch.  

“Every service has their own interpretation of JADC2. The Department of Air Force is ABMS, the Army is Project Convergence and I think the Navy and Marine Corps … [Project] Overmatch. All different. I’ve looked at all of the documentation associated with all three. We are not aligned with what we need to be to be interoperable to be able to fight together,” Wanda Jones-Heath, the principal cyber adviser for the Air Force and Space Force, said Tuesday at the annual Air Force Summit hosted by the Potomac Officers Club.

“Someone needs to just push us where we need to go because we are way out here, everybody’s doing their own part. We’re investing tremendously in those capabilities, but we just need to take step back, we need some leadership to push us in the right direction,” Jones-Heath said.

Industry partners are voicing similar concerns.

“A lot of the capabilities between them are not matching up. We’re beginning to find that out,” Joe Sublousky, vice president for All Domain Command and Control at SAIC, said at the same event Tuesday regarding ABMS, Project Convergence and Project Overmatch. “I’d rather find that out before we get to actual conflict with a near peer or peer adversary.”

Sublousky did note that the best example he’s heard for how to connect data and sensors was from the Department of Defense chief information officer’s discussion surrounding data cloud transport from the edge.

“Those are the components that we’re trying to focus in on to help understand a better way of looking at the JADC2 capability and architecture of the future,” he said.

There have been efforts to better integrate the services in their respective JADC2-related events. For example, last year’s Project Convergence exercise included systems and platforms from all the services. This year, the exercise will also include international partners — both as participants and observers.

“It’s not only just data, we’re talking about sensor data off of our mission systems to ensure we can share it not only with our joint partners, but also share it with our coalition partners,” Brig. Gen. Jeth Rey, director of the Army’s network cross-functional team, told reporters in May. “Can they tie into our Patriot missiles and then share the data and then the best system shoot? That’s what we’re going to try to find out about the integration piece of data.”

Earlier this year, Pentagon leaders submitted their classified JADC2 implementation plan to Congress. However, lawmakers are still worried about a lack of coordination.

“The committee is concerned about the Department of Defense’s progress in implementing the Joint All-Domain Command and Control (JADC2) concept,” the House Armed Services Committee wrote in the item of special interest in its version of the fiscal 2023 National Defense Authorization Act. Such items aim to prep continued legislation upon merging the House version of the NDAA with the Senate’s version.

“The committee recognizes the Department has made progress on JADC2 planning, but each of the military services has a separate effort to address the Department’s JADC2 requirements concept, and it is unclear what capabilities will be delivered to the warfighter, how much they will cost, and when they will be delivered,” the item stated.

The item also calls for a Comptroller General review of the initiative.

The Senate Armed Services Committee, for its part, has a provision in its version of the bill requiring “mission-critical effects chains” and an implementation plan for the establishment of a joint force headquarters that will be the operational command for certain JADC2-related capabilities, functions, missions and tasks.

“The committee believes successful implementation of JADC2 requires constant, long-term attention of the Deputy Secretary of Defense and the Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, with the support of the Joint Requirements Oversight Council, and commends them for their leadership on this issue,” a report accompanying the Senate’s bill states.

“However, it will take years to achieve universal common data standards and system interfaces across the Department of Defense (DOD) to support JADC2,” it added. “Therefore, it is critical that the Department enable interoperability and joint operations across domains, services, and systems by emphasizing experimentation and demonstration of novel kill chains that do not currently share common standards.”

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The company disclosed details of the awards Monday as it reported a modest 4% decline in operating profits for the quarter, which it attributed to high indirect costs.

Late last month, SAIC revealed that it had won a $390 million re-compete of a previous technology service management contract to help modernize the U.S. Global Positioning System (GPS) program. As part of that contract win, SAIC will continue to provide systems engineering and integration services.

For the first quarter of its fiscal year, which runs roughly from the start of February to the end of the following January, the company reported an operating income of $125 million, down from $130 million in the prior-year period. Adjusted earnings per share fell by 3% to $1.88 for the quarter.

Speaking on an earnings call Monday, SAIC executives said the company currently has more than $1 billion of federal contracts tied up in bid disputes, which has affected its new business pipeline.

Responding to analysts’ questions, SAIC Chief Financial Officer Prabu Natarajan said: “[T]he reality is we’ve got about $1 billion of new business wins that are sitting right now in protest that’s not reflected in backlog.”

He added: “To the extent we have good success in keeping those awards and pulling the revenues associated with those earlier in the year, you’ll start to see some modest improvement [in contract backlog] to the outlook for Q2 and Q3, probably more likely Q3 than Q2.”

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He takes over the post from Wanda Jones-Heath, who has moved into a role as principal cybersecurity adviser at the department.

Bishop joined the Air Force in November to lead cybersecurity innovation and to advise CIO Lauren Knausenberger and other senior officials on cyber policy and programs and IT systems risk management.

He comes from a deep cybersecurity background with experience in the defense industrial base. Most recently Bishop served as CEO and founder of the Quantum Security Alliance, a cybersecurity research organization, during which he took on a role on the Presidential National Quantum Initiative Advisory Committee.

Prior to that, he served as CISO of government IT contractor SAIC. Bishop also served a decade-long tenure as general manager of Microsoft‘s National Security Group.

Knausenberger discussed Bishop’s hire briefly during an AFCEA NOVA event Thursday, explaining he will have a large focus on refining the Air Force’s authority to operate processes, which plays into the service’s pursuit of becoming a more digital force.

As the new CISO, Bishop “will be able to really grab that by the horns and push it,” Knausenberger said of streamlining cyber authorizations. “We have some of the best processes available to us in the department. People love to benchmark off of our fast-track process. People love to work with our continuous ATO process. But we still have a little bit too much of a feudal system.”

Knausenberger wants to continue to iterate on the idea of “accreditation by red team” and using penetration testing to accredit a system. “I’m looking now at how do we do even more automation, not just automated pen testing, but how can we literally crawl our network and look at where are we vulnerable, and where is that exploitable?” she said. “And to be able to very, very easily prioritize what we need to do in that area.”

The Air Force is also in the midst of launching a five-year zero-trust roadmap that will kick off in fiscal 2023, Knausenberger said. Essential to that is the Air Force’s work to enhance its identity, credential and access management, “which is such a foundational building block of everything that we need to do,” she said.

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Sarah Donnelly, who advised high-ranking officials on tech issues and co-founded Pallas Advisors, and Intel’s chief strategy officer Sef Yeboah-Amankwah are among the appointees, who have yet to be sword in. Zillow chief technology office David Beitel is also set to join the board.

The three business leaders are among the 17 new members appointed to the relaunched board, which is the most diverse since the panel was established 20 years ago. It is now led by former Air Force secretary and SAIC executive Deborah Lee James, and has been re-established following a Pentagon review.

It was suspended in February by the Biden administration, following a number of last minute panel appointments by the Trump administration.

The board advises on business issues including IT, and will be tasked by senior leaders to study how to improve business operations within the department. Previous studies included recommendations to remove the chief management officer position, how to improve back-office IT and the implications tech may have on the future workforce.

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Salient contended USPTO‘s analysis of proposals didn’t align with the Business-Oriented Software Solutions (BOSS) solicitation’s evaluation scheme, which based awards on the highest technically rated proposals with “fair and reasonable” prices.

GAO found USPTO’s comparative analysis and awards to Booz Allen Hamilton, Halvik Corporation, RIVA Solutions, Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), and Steampunk Inc. were “reasonable, adequately documented and consistent” with the solicitation.

“Salient does not identify, and our review of the record does not find, any distinguishing aspect of either Salient’s or Booz Allen’s proposal that the agency failed to consider,” reads GAO’s decision made July 21. “We deny this ground of protest.”

BOSS primarily sought agile development teams for modernization and maintenance of USPTO IT, and five 10-year, indefinite-delivery, indefinite quantity contracts were awarded — three to small businesses. After technical rating and pricing, criteria were ranked as follows: small business participation, technical approach, past performance, and program management and staffing approach.

After selecting three small business proposals, USPTO found SAIC’s higher technically rated than Salient’s and selected them along with Booz Allen as the highest technically rated non-small business proposals.

Salient protested USPTO’s analysis on the grounds the agency weighted past performance and program management and staffing approach — areas where the large businesses received “superior” ratings to Salient’s “satisfactory” ones — more heavily. SAIC’s overall rating was inflated as a result, Salient argued.

“The agency contends that it properly found SAIC’s proposal to be higher technically rated than Salient’s because the relative benefits identified in SAIC’s proposal under the most important factor, small business participation, as well as under the past performance factor, and the program management and staffing approach factor, outweighed the relative benefits identified in Salient’s technical approach,” reads the decision.

USPTO evaluated the small business participation and subcontracting plans of large business offerers Booz Allen and SAIC. SAIC proposed 36% of contract work would be done by small businesses, compared to Salient’s 27%, leading GAO to side with USPTO’s decision.

Salient also protested the award to Booz Allen on the grounds the company’s proposal was unreasonably found higher technically rated that SAIC’s, during a comparative analysis of just those two proposals.

Booz Allen proposed the worst small business participation of the three companies, which Salient felt meant they’d win out in a comparative analysis between the two. But GAO agreed the advantages of Booz Allen’s technical approach outweighed participation shortcomings.

Booz Allen, SAIC and Salient did not respond to a request for comment.

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Speaking on the company’s second-quarter earnings call, Altabef said the company would compete hard to outgrow market peers and to take market share.

As part of a restructure earlier this year, the company sold its U.S. federal services arm to SAIC and launched two new business segments: Digital Workplace Services and Infrastructure and Cloud services. Its digital workplace arm is focused on consultancy and the sale of communications-as-a-service systems.

Unisys expects the $17 billion public sector cloud services market to grow by about 15% to 18% each year, according to an investor presentation published in January.

During the second quarter of 2021, Unisys swung to an operating profit of $49.3 million compared with a $8.5 million loss in the second quarter of 2020. Within its cloud and infrastructure business segment, revenue grew 9.9% year-over-year to $124.4 million

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The agency is taking corrective action over the 10-year Advanced Enterprise Global IT Solutions (AEGIS) contract, which could take until the third or fourth quarter of 2021, Krone said.

SAIC held the NASA Integrated Communications Services (NICS) contract, AEGIS’s predecessor, prior to its split with Leidos and protested its now competitor’s win with the Government Accountability Office on July 6. The new contract adds zero-trust security, data center and cloud computing services and is integral to NASA’s Artemis program aiming to send astronauts to Mars, but now it’s in limbo.

“History has told us NASA takes corrective action, they make another award decision and then, of course, usually that is followed by another protest, and those tend to last kind of 100 days,” Krone said. “And so it may take them another three, four weeks to do their corrective action, and then you tack another three months on the back of that.”

NASA did not respond to a request for comment on the corrective action it’s taking by publication time.

The agency plans to use the contract to move to modern identity and access management through network automation. AEGIS also covers wide area networking, center local area networking, telecommunications, online collaboration tools, cable plant, emergency and early warning notification systems, telephony, and radio systems.

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