The story of how one small business is barely hanging on to its hopes of winning a spot on NITAAC’s CIO-SP4

The $50 billion IT services and software procurement known as CIO-SP4 reached new lows on July 19 with the National Institutes of Health IT Acquisition and Assessment Center (NITAAC) release of amendment seven.

Not only did the changes throw bidders into a new frenzy, but continued modifications to the rules to the small business teaming arrangements is putting the entire procurement at risk of collapsing under its own futility.

To understand just how problematic the changes brought on by amendment seven are, let’s look at a company, I’ll call Technology Company X (TCX). The real company agreed to share its story under condition of anonymity because it still plans to bid on the program and didn’t want to impact its relationship with NITAAC.

TCX is a small business, a CIO-SP3 contract holder and the person leading the bid effort, let’s call them Pat, has been in the federal market…

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