DISA Prepping Three Contracts to Manage All Its Mobility Services

The Defense Information Systems Agency will continue to supply the military with mobility solutions but, under a new crop of pending procurements, plans to get out of managing those contracts.

DISA officials are planning to release the final request for proposals in the next two weeks for the classified portion of the Mobility Enterprise Services, with the unclassified portion on schedule for release early next year. These contracts together with the Mobile Content Management RFP expected to be released soon will encompass all of DISA’s mobility solutions offerings. As part of the award, a single vendor will manage the contracts and services being provided.

“To date, my team does a lot of the detail work and working with 16 different vendors,” Jacob Marcellus, portfolio manager for the Defense Department’s mobility program office, said Monday during DISA’s Forecast to Industry day.

“With this new contract—once it’s awarded—we will expect that the actual awardee does those things for us,” Marcellus said. “We expect that they can do it more efficiently so that my government team can work on things more like requirements and the enhancements—moving at that speed of mobility.”

For the classified network contract, MES-C, Marcellus’ office expects to award a single indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity contract to support the department’s secret and top secret Defense Mobility Classified Capability programs. After the final RFP is released in a couple weeks, DISA officials plan to announce the award in the third quarter of fiscal 2019.

The program office also expects to make a single award for the unclassified portion, MES-U, though the acquisition strategy is yet to be determined, Marcellus said. DISA plans to issue an RFP for the contract in the second quarter of fiscal 2019 and make awards by the end of the fiscal year.

The final pillar of DISA’s mobility strategy is the Mobile Content Management contract, which will be available to users at all of the service branches to help move and manage large amounts of data.

The solution will center on a “commercial-based cloud mobile content management that will be a catalyst for new applications,” Marcellus said. The program office is already aware that mission partners at the Pentagon and branches will be looking to this contract for support using applications that require large amounts of storage on end devices, such as electronic flight bags or digital libraries.

The MCM contract will offer managed services for both sides of the coin, Marcellus said, whether managing a data repository that devices can access or pushing content out to an endpoint.

The mobility program office plans to release the final RFQ this quarter for a single-award IDIQ, with an award announcement expected in early 2019.