18F issues second agile contract — for ID management

The General Services Administration’s 18F is contracting for an agile vendor team to help with the build-out of its in-development single citizen sign-on, login.gov. 

The contract is the second 18F has launched under its agile delivery services blanket purchase agreement, which pools vetted vendors with experience developing IT in an rapid, incremental and user-centered way to serve agencies’ needs governmentwide.

18F plans to launch a workable iteration of its identity management platform login.gov —”a consumer facing shared authentication platform that can be used by different government agencies” — by November 2016, and it needs “a contractor to deliver a number of technical features” to reach that goal, its request for proposals says.  

“This particular task order is to procure an agile engineering team to support the implementation of this tool with the code bases of agencies that plan to use the tool,” the RFP, hosted on GitHub, says. “This team will work with the team at 18F Team to do the following: Integrate the 18F identity solution with agency code bases; Support 18F in solving identity issues faced by agencies; [and] Improve the 18F identity solution to help meet agency needs.”

The period of performance for the award is three months with an option to extend another three months. Under the agile BPA, the eventual awardee is required to deliver work in two-week sprints. 

[Read more: 18F awards first agile task order — a FedRAMP dashboard]

18F awarded the first task order under the agile BPA to Reston, Virginia-based TrueTandem LLC to help GSA build a Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program dashboard. Though 18F and its parent agency GSA have been the first teams to test the waters of the agile BPA, the vehicle is open to agencies governmentwide.

The agile BPA is a key part of 18F’s plan to diversify from building digital services for federal agencies and instead begin providing ways for agencies to procure those services from contractors. 

[Read more: 18F wants to move past building digital services for agencies.]

“The long-term play has always been, let’s figure out how to help agencies connect with vendors who will use modern tools and methodologies and get work done for the right price, at high value and low risk,” 18F Executive Director Aaron Snow said at a recent event hosted by Bloomberg Government. 

“The BPA is our way of filtering forward companies that are going to do that.”