Miss Out on SEC’s $2.5 Billion IT Contract? Here’s a Second Chance.

Last month, the Securities and Exchange Commission announced the winners of the last 15 spots on its broad enterprise IT contract worth $2.5 billion over 10 years. Now, with all the awards made, the agency wants to expand the contractor base and is opening an on-ramp period to add more vendors.

In June, the SEC awarded three spots on the ONE IT contract—designed to help the agency unify its IT systems under a single architecture using a trusted pool of vendors—to large companies: Accenture, Attain and Booz Allen Hamilton. Those awards were followed by 15 more in October under the restricted pool for small businesses.

With all the initial awards made, the SEC now plans to reopen the contract with an on-ramp period for the restricted, small business pool before the end of the month.

The commission originally announced plans in October to reopen the contract by mid-December. An updated notice on FedBizOpps now states the on-ramp period could open as soon as Nov. 30. SEC contracting officers did not give an estimate on the number of vendors that would be added through this period.

“This procurement action intends to add a reasonable number of multiple award contractors to the existing ONE IT pool, dependent on business needs and/or quality proposals received,” according to a presolicitation notice posted three days after the small business awards were announced.

While the total number of vendors will likely increase, officials said the $2.5 billion ceiling is expected to hold.

The addition of an on-ramp period so quickly after the awards does not appear to signal anything about the quality of the vendors that already garnered spots on the contract. According to the original solicitation, SEC had always planned to hold an on-ramp event shortly after the initial awards. The commission also planned on 18 initial awards—three unrestricted and 15 set aside for small businesses—from the start.