GSA to take ‘corrective actions’ on DEOS after protest

The General Services Administration is going to take corrective actions on issues brought to light in a recent protest against General Dynamics IT’s win of the Pentagon’s $8 billion Defense Enterprise Office Solutions cloud services contract.

Multiple sources familiar with the DEOS bid protest confirmed to FedScoop that GSA, leading the acquisition on behalf of the Department of Defense, will rework parts of the contract and likely open it back up to its original bidders: GDIT and Perspecta, which filed a protest of the award with the Government Accountability Office in September.

GSA’s decision will alleviate the need to move forward with the protest, which has a December deadline for action, sources said.

Through DEOS, the Department of Defense is looking for an industry partner to provide a cloud-based, back-office collaboration environment. GDIT (listed as its subsidiary CSRA on the contract award), Dell and Minburn, a Virginia-based Microsoft reseller, created a contractor teaming agreement to secure the winning bid for DEOS and ultimately provide Microsoft Office 365 cloud-based collaboration and email services to the DOD under a blanket purchase agreement, GSA announced in August.

GDIT and Perspecta declined to comment. The details of Perspecta’s protest have not been made public. A GSA spokesperson was unable to comment because the matter is still pending.

DEOS is just one of two high-profile cloud contracts the Pentagon has up for bid. The $10 billion Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) cloud contract has already faced numerous bid protests and reviews, including one still ongoing from DOD Secretary Mark Esper, that have precluded any award until they’re resolved.

NextGov first reported news of GSA’s actions.