GSA, USAF launch partnership on IT to replace NetCents

The General Services Administration and the Air Force are working to set up a multiple-award blanket purchase agreement for IT hardware and products that will replace the $7 billion Network Centric Solutions-2 contract.

Kay Ely, assistant commissioner at the GSA's Office of Information Technology Category, said in a Sept. 7 blog post that her agency signed a memorandum of understanding with the Air Force this past summer to set the Netcents-2  IT Products BPA. The BPA, she said, is based on her agency's IT hardware category team and IT Schedule 70.

The Air Force's Netcents-2 IT indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity contract is up in November 2019.

The IT Products BPA will to be available to all federal government agencies and  state, local and tribal entities through the agency's cooperative purchasing program, Ely said.

"The solution we develop will streamline the Air Force's acquisition process -- and, the federal government's, more broadly -- as well as reduce contract duplication, while saving time, resources, and taxpayer dollars," she said.

Netcents-2 is a family of contracts that includes IT products, network operations and infrastructure as well as applications services and application services small businesses.

The effort to replace the Air Force's Netcents-2 Application Services Small Business contract is bogged down in preaward protests, FCW's sibling publication Washington Technology reported on Sept. 4. It is set to expire in June 2019, to be replaced by the Small Business Enterprise Applications Solutions IDIQ, or SBEAS. Over the last 10 months, there have been 14 protests filed at the Government Accountability Office.