Dismas Locaria was quoted on March 14, 2018, in the Washington Business Journal in an article about the Department of Defense's decision to structure a large lucrative cloud computing contract as a single award.
"I'm not surprised because I’ve seen the government do this in other contexts," said Mr. Locaria. "At the end of the day it just doesn't make a lot of sense to award a contract of this size to a single vendor."
IDIQ contracts work so well, Locaria added, because the government doesn't always know what it needs to buy and technology is always changing. By awarding something like JEDI to multiple contractors, those vendors are constantly "sharpening their pencils" for task orders. It takes more work to assess responses to requests for proposals but in the end the buyer gets better service.
"I'm not surprised because I’ve seen the government do this in other contexts," said Mr. Locaria. "At the end of the day it just doesn't make a lot of sense to award a contract of this size to a single vendor."
IDIQ contracts work so well, Locaria added, because the government doesn't always know what it needs to buy and technology is always changing. By awarding something like JEDI to multiple contractors, those vendors are constantly "sharpening their pencils" for task orders. It takes more work to assess responses to requests for proposals but in the end the buyer gets better service.