The FBI is in search of a contractor that will offer technical expertise and personnel to support the agency’s data centers and key sites of IT operations, according to a June 7 request for information (RFI).
Currently, the FBI operates five data centers at different locations across the United States, supporting thousands of systems that require technical experts to operate. The FBI hopes the RFI will determine the technical capabilities needed to support the five data centers for a new IT services contract the agency’s Data Center Hardware and Operating Systems Section (DCHOSS) is developing. The contract’s period of performance is expected to start August 1.
“Current FBI technology environment consists of complex systems and advanced configurations which require technical engineering and expertise to operate,” the RFI says. “The FBI depends on a reliable information technology infrastructure to meet its mission responsibilities to produce and use intelligence to protect the nation from threats, and to bring to justice those who violate the law. FBI productivity depends on having these systems available on a 24/7/365 basis.”
The chosen vendor’s work “will consist of full time on-site technical staffing requirements” to deliver IT services. The vendor will have two key areas of focus:
- “Ensuring the FBI’s unclassified and classified computer systems consisting of several thousand servers, storage, compute, switches, blade centers which provide hosting services for the enterprise are maintained in a secure, reliable manner with minimum disruption and productions systems shall have a 99 percent uptime;
- New projects, including but not limited to, data center relocations, technical deployments of new or additional technologies, and technical refresh of IT systems. Hardware and software refresh includes the migration of systems from legacy hardware to new platforms to include cloud.”
The five data sites where the vendor will be required to have an on-site presence include Huntsville, Ala.; Clarksburg, W.Va.; Washington, D.C.; Pocatello, Idaho; and Vienna, Va.
Responses to the RFI are due June 21.
