Army CHESS holds ITES-4S Roundtable Symposium

U.S. Army Program Executive Office Enterprise Information Systems’ (PEO EIS) Computer Hardware, Enterprise Software and Solutions (CHESS) product office held a virtual industry event Feb. 13 in collaboration with Army Contracting Command – Rock Island (ACC-RI) and the Army Information Systems Engineering Command.

CHESS’ Information Technology Enterprise Solutions – 4 Services (ITES-4S) Roundtable Symposium provided industry with lessons learned from the existing ITES-3S contract vehicle and insights into the impending follow-on ITES-4S. The contract vehicles are designed to provide a full range of IT services and solutions to customers from the Army, DOD and other federal agencies.

According to PEO EIS’ Project Director for Enterprise Services, Reginald Shuford, EIS is determining how to best get innovative technologies delivered to Soldiers more quickly.

“The way I like to think about ITES-4S is that’s our competition for China,” said Shuford, noting that China has a dual-use policy for technology development. “Our ITES-4S contract needs to be flexible; it needs to be Agile; it needs to adhere to our Digital Transformation to bring cutting-edge technology to Soldiers.”

In some respects, ITES-4S will be similar to its predecessor, 3S, which runs through September 2027 and is in the process of transitioning from ACC-RI to ACC – Aberdeen Proving Ground. Like 3S, 4S will have an approximately $12.1 billion contract ceiling, similar period of performance and no contract administration fees. It also will have similar task orders and enable ordering by all Army, DOD and federal customers.

From there, however, 4S ventures into new territory. Unlike 3S, the new contract vehicle will offer an 8(a) set-aside, said CHESS product officer Keith Copeland. Additionally, 4S will potentially have new labor categories, new NAICS codes at the task order level, and new ways of conducting proposal evaluations to streamline the process, according to CHESS Enterprise Solutions Division director Stacy Watson.

Another new element to 4S is its division of task areas into high-level tasks — those which involve complex development of new knowledge solutions — and low-level tasks, which tend to be more scripted and use existing knowledge. Vendors can bid on one or both types of tasks as long as they avoid conflicts of interest, said Watson.

Other new additions to the contract vehicle include FedRamp standards and responsibilities for cloud services, metrics for both request for information (RFI) and request for proposal submissions, and requirements for vendors to have forward-facing websites.

To gain industry input and feedback on 4S, ACC-RI has posted a request for RFIs on SAM.gov, which industry can respond to by March 2. ACC-RI contracting officer Ashley Smith said CHESS is looking for creative ideas from industry on how to speed up the evaluation and source selection processes. RFI responses also should include feedback on pricing and labor categories, said Smith.

Following the RFI, next steps will include the release of the draft ITES-4S RFP by summer 2024, an in-person industry day and release of the final RFP by fall 2024. As of right now, said Smith, there is no pre-determined number of awards.

In coming months, the CHESS organization will be evolving, according to CHESS product lead Sarah Mullins, in alignment with the Army’s Digital Transformation and Agile journey. To support the Army’s continuous transformation, CHESS will be re-positioning itself as the destination of choice for end-to-end procurement services with a vision of serving as an Army Center of Excellence for managing software and services for the acquisition community. As part of this transformation, CHESS plans to enhance its customer and industry engagement and training, develop more intuitive web interfaces and tools, and roll out a new name and branding for the organization, said Mullins.

CHESS continues to be a vital part of the Enterprise Services business at EIS, said PEO EIS Program Executive Officer Bill Hepworth in a video message accompanying the industry event.

“In particular, the ITES-3S contract vehicle has been successful,” he said. “But we know we can do better … ITES-4S is going to be strengthened with the help of industry partners to provide access to a deeper set of technical capabilities, and that begins with you all.”

The briefing deck from the CHESS ITES-4S Roundtable Symposium can be found on the PEO EIS website.