Specific mentions of the Joint Information Environment on the conference circuit these days are scarce – officials prefer to discuss specific key programs, like the critical joint regional security stacks – but the new Encore III request for proposals is all about JIE.
Encore III is the long-awaited, $17.5 billion Defense Department follow-on contract for IT goods and services in 19 different performance areas over the next five years. The multiple-award contract, which was released by the Defense Information Systems Agency, will issue task orders on an indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity basis – and yes, it’s a lowest price technically acceptable contract, something vendors expressed concern about at DISA’s Forecast to Industry last fall.
Language in the RFP, released late March 2, makes clear that the Pentagon is looking to Encore III to transition fully to JIE amid an “emerging revolution” in DoD business affairs.
“The JIE is the globally-interconnected, end-to-end set of information capabilities, associated processes and personnel to manage and provide information on demand to warfighters, policy makers and supporting personnel,” the RFP states. “It will enhance combat effectiveness through greatly increased battlespace awareness, improved ability to employ weapons beyond line-of-sight, employment of massed effects instead of massed forces and reduced decision cycles. It will also contribute to the success of non-combat military operations.”
The goal: standardized technology, seamless communications and accessibility, better security, improved command and control, more flexibility and less overhead and operational costs, among others objectives. But the bottom line, the documents suggest, is superior support to troops on the ground and on the move.
“DoD is transitioning from a collection of stovepipe systems and architectures to an integrated and interoperable environment,” the RFP states. “Many costly redundancies and duplications of functionality exist within the current legacy environment (including applications, data and other infrastructure elements) and recent DoD mobilizations have proven that the current legacy environment is inadequate to meet the evolving mission needs of the user.”
Determining how to meet those needs, however, has proven difficult for DoD. The scope and complexities beyond the preceding Encore II contract are at least partly to blame for the RFP’s delays, DISA officials have said.
“The performance areas are consistent across the board except we’ve added cyber, mobility and cloud as performance area capability for services to be provided,” Doug Packard, DISA procurement executive, said at the agency’s Forecast to Industry in November. “It’s so large and the performance areas are so broad it takes multiple pages to describe what each of those performance areas are.”
Responses to the RFP are due April 4.
