FBI Needs a Vendor to Help Manage Data Centers

The FBI maintains critical data centers at five locations across the U.S. and is looking for a vendor to provide technical and engineering support under a new contract set to start this summer.

“Current FBI technology environment consists of complex systems and advanced configurations which require technical engineering and expertise to operate,” according to a request for information posted Monday to SAM.gov. “FBI productivity depends on having these systems available on a 24/7/365 basis.”

To support this effort, the FBI’s Data Center Hardware and Operating Systems Section, or DCHOSS, is developing a contract for IT Professional Engineering Services. While the procurement is still in the market research phase, officials expect to have the contract awarded and active by Aug. 1, 2021.

The chosen vendor will be tasked with supporting DCHOSS maintenance and operation of FBI servers, as well as “storage and networking engineering and support, operating system, virtualization and backup systems engineering and support.” The contract will also include tier three desktop support.

An accompanying statement of work breaks the tasks into two main focus areas:

• Ensuring the FBI’s unclassified and classified computer systems consisting of several thousand servers, storage, compute, switches, blade centers which provide hosting services for the enterprise are maintained in a secure, reliable manner with minimum disruption and productions systems shall have a 99% uptime.
• New projects, including but not limited to, data center relocations, technical deployments of new or additional technologies, and technical refresh of IT systems. Hardware and software refresh includes the migration of systems from legacy hardware to new platforms to include cloud.

The statement of work includes a full list of 32 tasks expected of the winning vendor.

That work will be spread across five FBI-owned data centers.

“Some of the specific requirements of this scope of work are to have a full-time on-site presence in all data center locals and primary technology centers to interact daily with the local FBI systems and teams, in addition to having the ability to maintain a consistent pool of technical expertise, and can demonstrate the ability to manage contractor staff in multiple locations,” the RFI states.

The initial set of sites include Pocatello, Idaho; Clarksburg, West Virginia; Huntsville, Alabama; Vienna, Virginia; and Washington, D.C.; with Pocatello as the primary location.

Contracting officers are looking at using an existing governmentwide acquisition contract, or GWAC, though “the FBI will consider alternatives based upon responses to this RFI.”

The contract is set to start Aug. 1, 2021 and run for one year, with two one-year options. Contracting officials are also considering including two incentive option years.

Responses to the RFI are due by noon June 21. Questions must be submitted by noon June 14.