The Government Accountability Office (GAO) has denied General Dynamics Information Technology’s [GD] protest of DISA’s award of the potential $11.5 billion Defense Enclave Services contract to
Leidos [LDOS].
GDIT had filed its protest on March 10 and GAO made its announcement on Wednesday, with the office set to release a forthcoming final redacted report on the decision.
DISA in late February awarded the Defense Enclave Services deal to Leidos, which aims to consolidate the Pentagon’s ‘Fourth Estate’ agencies’ network capabilities and could cover up to 10 years of work (Defense Daily, Feb. 28).
“We are pleased the Government Accountability Office has affirmed the Defense Information Systems Agency’s award,” Gerry Fasano, president of Leidos’ defense group, said in a statement to Defense Daily. “Leidos is deeply committed to DISA’s critical mission, and never stopped preparing for the program’s success. Our robust and continuous preparation has positioned us to start delivering benefits to the user base on or ahead of current planned schedule, and we look forward to leveraging our decades of technological expertise to support mission success.”
GDIT declined to comment on the GAO’s decision.
Under the Defense Enclave Services program, Leidos is specifically tasked with bringing together the Pentagon’s 22 defense support agencies and nearly 400,000 users onto a single modernized networking platform.
DISA officials previously told reporters the decision to go with a single vendor acquisition approach for Defense Enclave Services was necessary to build in maximum cost efficiency and accountability into the massive program (Defense Daily, Dec. 10 2020).
“When you’ve got varying IT networks at varying levels of maturity and security and with the goal being integration, this is the way to get after it to make sure that we had cost efficiency, accountability and to bring us up to standard,” Don Means, director of DISA’s Operations and Infrastructure Center, said when DISA released the Request for Proposals for Defense Enclave Services in December 2020.