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Vendors: Don’t step back from FLASH
Although the Department of Homeland Security’s decision to cancel its $1.5 billion Flexible Agile Support for the Homeland contract earlier this year caught many bidders off-guard, several companies recently praised the agency for trying something new.
In a July 26 letter to DHS Chief Procurement Officer Soraya Correa, eight of the 11 vendors that had been in line to participate in FLASH thanked the agency for taking a risk in the risk- averse federal procurement arena.
DHS cancelled the contract in May because of “significant errors and missteps in the procurement process,” according to a letter from the DHS Office of the General Counsel to the Government Accountability Office, which oversees bid protests. The contract faced two rounds of protests, including one from 12 vendors that
were unsuccessful in the second round. After the cancellation, DHS issued an unusually self-reflective letter to vendors that states, among other things, that the procurement had flaws
that couldn’t be fixed.
FLASH was developed in the DHS
Procurement Innovation Lab as a way to contract with small businesses for agile development and related services.
The July 26 letter — signed by executives from Navitas Business Consulting, STSI, Ad Hoc, LinkTec, Karsun Solutions, Innovations JV, SemanticBits and SimonComputing — states that the contract had the potential to transform them. By “aggressively seeking a new path, instead of working within the status quo,” DHS offered a chance to learn “in this grand experiment,” they wrote.
The letter is just another example of
the unusual candor that has followed the contract’s cancellation. At an ACT- IAC conference in June, Correa said the cancellation provided key lessons as DHS seeks to inject more innovation into its acquisition processes. DHS Acting Undersecretary for Management Chip Fulghum joined her in taking responsibility. Both said they were proud of the innovative work that went into FLASH.
“As happens with experiments, some things go well and some things don’t,” Correa said. “The last thing I’ll say is that I own it. I lived it because it’s my project and my failure.”
The vendors’ letter encourages DHS not to retreat. “FLASH represents the future, even with a few minor tactical flaws,” it states. “We encourage DHS to learn from FLASH and push forward.”
of agency IT leaders in a recent survey planned to expand private cloud investment
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