Federal Agency Seeks $6.6 Billion In Outsourcing DealsFederal Agency Seeks $6.6 Billion In Outsourcing Deals

The Defense Intelligence Agency is moving forward with plans to spend up to $6.6 billion over five years on new information technology outsourcing contracts, on Tuesday issuing a request for proposal that covers development, deployment and management of various Department of Defense systems between now and 2015.

The new multi-vendor contract vehicle, Solutions for the Information Technology Enterprise (SITE), will be managed by the DIA, but covers military intelligence technology that will be used by the military branches and other DoD agencies.

The contracts, which will go to about eight vendors in total, will consolidate a larger number of existing contract vehicles into one, and will cost the DoD up to $1.32 billion annually. That might seem like a hefty fee, but by consolidating these contracts, the DIA said in a press release, the agency aims to make its IT acquisition processes simpler and more efficient.

The "vast majority" of the SITE work will take place on top secret government networks, according to the RFP. Though many of the specifics of that work aren't yet clear -- and likely won't be, due to their classified nature -- the RFP lays out a number of possibilities.

The IT services sought via SITE include a wide array of technology support, from CRM to cybersecurity, from data center administration to help desk, and from disaster recovery to software development.

Data plays a central role in the RFP. Among the expertise the RFP requires is with "convergence and visualization of large scale and complex data sets from dynamic and fixed databases, full motion video, and mixed data environments," and says the outsourcing provided will engineer data manipulation and presentation tools and carry out a slew of database management tasks.

The new contract vehicle replaces a number of other big military intelligence IT contracts, including an Air Force contract, the $2 billion Intelligence Information, Command and Control Equipment and Enhancement, won in 2003 by General Dynamics, as well as the $300 million multi-vendor DIA-led Defense Intelligence Information System Integration and Engineering Support contracts.

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