“The General Services Administration outlined a plan for its newest governmentwide acquisition contract (GWAC), dubbed “Polaris,” in a draft request for proposal released Dec. 31.”
“Polaris aims to provide federal agencies with a list of pre-qualified small businesses offering a range of information technology services and solutions. The contract will support governmentwide IT modernization priorities, such as cloud computing and cybersecurity, as well as experimentation with emerging technologies like artificial intelligence and 5G, according to the draft RFP.”
“Polaris’s impact on federal IT could be massive. The GWAC could generate billions of dollars in contract obligations for small-business IT vendors over its possible 10-year period of performance. Further, Polaris will enable the GSA to flex its newly granted authority to push pricing questions to the task-order level, and perhaps serve as the blueprint for a more streamlined and competitive acquisitions process…”
Polaris’s Three Small-Business Pools
“Polaris will replace the $15 billion Alliant 2 Small Business (A2SB) contract, which the GSA canceled in July 2020 after a series of successful legal challenges. Over the summer and early fall, officials from GSA’s IT Category office conducted a series of listening sessions and stood up a Small Business GWAC Community of Interest to gather industry feedback…”
“In contrast to its predecessors, Alliant Small Business and A2SB, the Polaris GWAC will establish three separate vendor pools: one for HUBZone businesses, another for women-owned small businesses (WOSBs), and a third for other small businesses. Until Polaris, the GSA hadn’t created a dedicated GWAC for either HUBZone businesses or WOSBs, as it had for 8(a) vendors with STARS II and III and service-disabled veteran-owned small businesses with VETS 2…”
What’s Ahead
“After a bruising experience with A2SB, small IT vendors may view Polaris as a welcome sign that the GSA is taking their concerns seriously. Set-aside pools for HUBZone and women-owned small businesses will expand federal market opportunities for historically disadvantaged groups, while use of Section 876 authority will help the GSA avert costly legal challenges.”
“The GSA’s relatively aggressive timeline — only six months separate cancellation of A2SB and the release of the Polaris draft RFP — may mean that we see a final RFP by the end of March and award decisions by the end of the 2021 fiscal year…” Read the full article here.
Source: This Is IT: GSA Picks Three Small-Business Pools on New IT GWAC – By Chris Cornillie, January 5, 2021. Bloomberg Government.
