The Alliant & Alliant Small Business Governmentwide Acquisition Contracts (GWACs) have been a remarkable success for our customers, for our industry partners, and for GSA. Over the last eight years, more than 60 federal agencies have awarded over $36 billion in work to Alliant & Alliant SB partners.
Alliant has also taught us the importance of partnerships, education, training, and customer service in developing and delivering successful contract vehicles.
The Alliant success story is demonstrated in the loyalty we see from our customers. The U.S. Department of Navy, Defense Health Agency, and U.S. Special Operations Command selected the Alliant GWACs as their primary vehicles for IT services.
Having a broad-based scope built on Federal Enterprise Architecture (FEA) that allows for “anything IT anywhere” plus the ability for all contract types to be performed, the Alliant GWACs streamline the acquisition process for federal agencies, resulting in time- and cost-efficient acquisitions that lead to savings for U.S. taxpayers.
Shaping the Future Alliant
Looking to the future, GSA’s GWAC Program, is working on the next-generation GWACs: Alliant 2 (A2) and Alliant 2 Small Business (A2SB).
A2/A2SB will continue to build on our success supporting federal agencies that have mission-critical, complex IT services requirements for long-term programs.
The A2/A2SB’s pre-solicitation phase has raised the bar in terms of transparency, collaboration, and innovation, by engaging with and involving both federal agencies and industry partners in each step of the process. The A2/A2SB team performed thorough market research for over three years and laid significant groundwork in the pre-planning phase with efforts including:
- An A2/A2SB Interact community with more than 8,200 members
- A publically reviewed business case on OMB MAX
- Hundreds of meetings/presentations for interested agencies
- Customer and industry working groups
- Seven Requests for Information (RFIs) through FedBizOpps (FBO) with two official industry days, and two separate fully comprehensive and complete draft Requests for Proposals (RFPs)
- Five separate pre-proposal conferences attended by over 1000 people
We’re excited when we consider the future for our GWACs. The collective input and feedback toward developing A2/A2SB this past year has been our major contribution to an outstanding product.
What’s New
Here are some of the notable improvements included in A2/A2SB that will give our customers greater value:
- scope improvements,
- new information technology (IT) service labor categories,
- new cybersecurity standards,
- new environmental standards,
- incorporation of required Defense Federal Acquisition Regulation Supplement (DFARS) regulations/provisions into the master contract so they automatically flow down to the task order level on any/all task orders issued by a Department of Defense (DOD) agency
Collaboration is Key
I’ve always been impressed by the amount of collaboration that goes into the Alliant GWACs among all parties: GSA, the procuring agencies, and the companies performing the work under Alliant task orders. The relationships we’ve built with our government and industry partners have been, and will be, critical to the GWAC program’s continued success.
I’m confident that our stakeholders will be pleased and I cannot overemphasize how important the collaboration is to ensuring we develop and provide a superior GWAC solution for the government. While doing market research and in planning future solicitations and innovations we want to be sure that our intentions are vetted, are on the right track, and cover all angles. The collaboration from customer agencies and industry partners helps us do that.
The final official Request For Proposals (RFPs) for A2/A2SB are on FedBizOpps now with deadlines of September 13 (A2) and September 12 (A2SB), 2016
More information is available at the A2/A2SB website and the A2/A2SB Interact Community page.
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