The Government Accountability Office (GAO) put out a request for information (RFI) on April 30 for blanket purchase agreements (BPAs) to support cloud technology within its Innovation Lab.
The Innovation Lab, a part of GAO’s Science, Technology, Assessment and Analytics (STAA) unit, supports an independent sandbox for emerging tech experimentation. With a user-centric focus, the lab supports tech such at robotic process automation, the Internet of Things, and general IT modernization to understand how it may influence future audit methodologies.
GAO wrote that it is currently “deploying, configuring, and securing additional capabilities” within a Federal Information Security Management Act-moderate framework to support between 25 and 100 users on the cloud. According to the request for information, GAO is planning to establish multiple blanket purchase agreements to support the Innovation Lab and other teams over a five-year period.
The BPAs will support cloud acquisition in five categories, as outlined in the RFI. Cloud will function as infrastructure-as-a-service, acquisition support for procurement of emerging tech, cybersecurity-as-a-service with a 24/7 security operations center, full-stack development to support advanced analytics capabilities, and data science surge support with on-demand advisory services.
Responses to the RFI are due May 7.
