The Government Accountability Office has denied a protest from General Dynamics Information Technology targeting an $11.5 billion contract awarded to Leidos to unify the Pentagon's Fourth Estate IT environments, ending what amounted to a holding pattern for the Defense Enclave Services effort.
The denial, which came Wednesday following officials’ three-month review, will kick-off a resumption of activity between the Defense Information Systems Agency and Leidos that company executives hope will amount to “an even more robust and positive start-up.”
DISA awarded the potential 10-year Defense Enclave Service contract to Leidos at the end of February, and GDIT filed its protest the following month, leaving a few weeks in between for the agency and Leidos to complete some “initial planning conversations” before work between the two stalled, Gerry Fasano, the president of the company’s defense group, told Inside Defense in an interview today.
But among Leidos employees and its partners, Fasano said, efforts “did not pause,” as executives completed onboarding processes, reviewed lessons learned from “other large, mission-critical networks and digital modernization environments,” and began work on certain contract deliveries that will have to be submitted as part of the process to spin-up work post-protest.
“We didn't sit down and just wait for the protest,” he said. “We kept on moving the whole time.”
As part of what Fasano characterized as the “standard turn-on process to contracting” moving forward, Leidos and DISA will hold a series of planning meetings to review the contract and “reset the baseline” over a 90-day transition window.
Over that period, Fasano said officials will have to meet “a series of documented deliveries,” many of which he noted executives have already written as the protest was being reviewed.
Once the transition portion is completed, he said executives would begin working with agencies on site-planning and migration activities, as well as modernization work to harden the existing cyber environment.
As part of the initial phase of work, DISA is focused on migrating two agencies this year: the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency and the Defense Technical Information Center, an agency official previously told reporters. In all, the Pentagon has said that 22 defense agencies and field activities within the Fourth Estate, which covers various Defense Department management outfits, are part of the DES effort.
Fasano said executives expect that there could be “some swaps” or changes in timing regarding the initial order of agencies that are set to be migrated.
But overall, he called the effects of the protest on the overall schedule as minimal when considering the length of the deal.
“In a 10-year contract, you should think of it as a blip,” he said. “We kept working. . . . 100 days over 10 years is not significant. We wish we had started earlier, but we’re going to catch up soon.”
The contract carries an initial four-year order period, spanning through February 2026, in addition to three two-year optional periods that, if exercised, would extend the contract to February 2032.
That initial period, executives said today, is focused not just on migration and the associated planning cycle but also showcasing Leidos’ solution works.
Fasano said part of the migration cycle “will be rinsing and repeating with each of the agencies,” as executives go from planning and design to executing the migration to accreditation, migration servicing, onboarding new users, providing support to end users, operating and securing that service and then delivering modernization and improvements.
The push, however, could again reach a standstill if GDIT decides to challenge the award in court. A company spokesman declined to comment on the decision.
But Fasano, asked about how another challenge could impact forward movement, said GDIT’s decisions are “not going to change what we do.”
“We’re going to continue to work,” he said.
GAO hasn’t yet posted its redacted protest decision, but another company executive noted during the call with Inside Defense that outside counsel is continuing to review the approximately 28-page document.