GSA reveals first round of awards for Alliant 3 contract

After a series of protests that led to a protracted evaluation period, the General Services Administration is moving forward with the Alliant 3 procurement, announcing Friday the first round of awards for the governmentwide IT services contract.

The GSA said in an online award notice that it received 133 proposals for the Alliant 3 Governmentwide Acquisition Contract (GWAC) solicitation and selected 43 winners for the first phase. Those not chosen are still eligible for future award phases until the agency has selected all 76 recipients, per the notice. 

The announcement comes more than a year after the GSA issued the request for proposals for the next iteration of the GWAC award, which has no maximum dollar ceiling, due to unsuccessful bid protests from multiple vendors. The latest iterations of the vehicle is a multiple-award, indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity contract for a variety of IT-based services that builds upon the GSA’s Alliant and Alliant 2 GWACs.

With these awards, agencies can issue task orders for services including cybersecurity, data solutions, systems engineering and cloud services, the GSA said. 

Longtime government contractors like Maximus, Booz Allen Hamilton, General Dynamics Information Technology, and Leidos were among the 43 phase one winners. 

Josh Gruenbaum, the commissioner of the GSA’s Federal Acquisition Service, said in a press release Friday that Alliant 3 offers a “streamlined approach to IT procurement” and will help reduce duplication and administrative costs while strengthening the government’s overall purchasing power. 

While Alliant 3 is the next chapter for the Alliant GWACs, the GSA previously said it differs in that it is a “new unrestricted enterprise GWAC” with a greater focus on emerging technologies, performance-based contracting measures, and small-business subcontracting, among other changes. 

“The Alliant 3 contract expands on the legacy of previous Alliant vehicles by providing a broad, unrestricted pool of industry partners evaluated for technical capability and past performance,” GSA wrote in a statement. 

Though Alliant 3 has no ceiling, it carries a minimum contract guarantee of $2,500, per the RFP. The GSA previously said it is evaluating proposals from the highest total claimed score to the lowest, and will select the 76 highest scores as the preliminary qualifying proposals. 

Lawrence Hale, the assistant commissioner for the GSA’s Office of Information Technology Category, said the contracts will be “simplifying how agencies access critical IT services through a single, governmentwide contract.”
Its predecessor, Alliant 2, was considered a success, with a $50 billion ceiling and an estimated value of $36 billion spent as of 2022, prompting the quicker start of Alliant 3. The GSA extended the proposal timeline for Alliant 3 multiple times, with the final due date last April.