DISA seeks COCOM migration input after GDIT protest dismissed
A six-day response window on a migration covering 231,000 users looks less like market research than a box-checking exercise.
TL;DR
DISA issued a sources-sought notice July 27 for migrating 11 combatant commands, roughly 231,000 users across 200 sites, to DoDNet by September 2028. Responses are due August 4. The six-day window follows GAO's dismissal of GDIT's protest after DISA promised market research and a new acquisition approach. But the agency previously obtained a waiver to skip market research, and the notice doesn't mention the protest. Whether DISA is genuinely reconsidering or checking a box is the open question.
The corrective action DISA promised GAO included conducting market research, making a new acquisition approach decision, and developing a new acquisition plan. The sources-sought notice checks the first box. It's not clear the exercise is genuine.
The six-day window, from July 27 to August 4, is unusually tight. Responses of the kind DISA is requesting (covering migration methodologies and technical dependencies for 231,000 users across 200 sites) typically require weeks to prepare, not days. A source familiar with the matter told Federal News Network that iterative engagement, including RFIs, industry days, and consultation with the combatant commands themselves, would signal a real willingness to reconsider.
The notice doesn't mention the protest at all. It frames the market research as driven by a May 22 directive from DoD CIO Kirsten Davies. DISA had previously secured a waiver from the head of contracting activity allowing it to forgo market research when it decided the DES contract was "the only viable contracting alternative." That waiver, and the reasoning behind it, is now being tested. But it's hard to read the testing instrument as anything other than an attempt to confirm the prior answer.
It's GDIT's second protest involving the DES contract. GAO denied GDIT's 2022 challenge to the original $11.5 billion award to Leidos. The current protest was dismissed after DISA promised corrective action, not decided on the merits.
For the combatant commands waiting on migration, the timeline pressure isn't abstract. The May directive requires all 11 commands on DoDNet by September 30, 2028. That's two fiscal years to move nearly a quarter-million users at a pace DISA itself described as accelerated enough to make the DES contract the only viable vehicle. If market research surfaces alternative approaches, DISA will have to reconcile them with a deadline that was used to justify skipping this step in the first place.
Published ·Deep Fathom