The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) recently announced the 30 awardees on its Transformation Twenty-One Total Technology Next Generation Two (T4NG2) contract vehicle to provide a range of information technology (IT) services. The 10-year, $60.7 billion contract is the third iteration of the vehicle run by the Technology Acquisition Center (TAC) in Eatontown, NJ and is significant because most of the VA’s IT spend runs through this vehicle.
This means that if you want to do IT services work in the VA and you are not on T4NG2, these awardees may be your new best friends. 😊 Keep reading for Part One of our T4NG series!
Who are T4NG incumbents?
The previous iteration of this vehicle, T4NG, consisted of 21 contractors and was awarded in 2016 with a $22.3 billion ceiling value. Let’s consider how much actual spend has been with the VA by T4NG prime contractor since FY2018.
As demonstrated by the chart, Booz Allen Hamilton (in large part through its acquisition of Liberty IT Solutions in 2021) is currently dominating this vehicle with a combined $5 billion received to date across 81 task orders. GovCIO, also on T4NG2, is the next highest vendor receiving 9% of actual spending across the T4NG market, over $1.3 billion. GovCIO benefited from significant M&A activity to create their current footprint in part through the acquisition of Salient CRGT. The company is followed closely by SAIC, who gained its presence through the acquisition of Halfaker and Associates in 2021 and Cognosante, who initially gained access through Business Information Technology Solutions (BITS) in 2016. IBM is on this list mostly through the acquisition of Octo Consulting who also acquired B3 Group (original T4NG awardee). GDIT made its way into T4NG by way of acquiring CSRA who had already been formed as the merger of CSC’s Government Services business and SRA International. Of course, Leidos bought their way on via the acquisition of Lockheed Martin’s IS&GS business who had acquired Systems Made Simple.
Understanding how T4NG ended demands understanding how to follow the bouncing ball of mergers and acquisitions.
If at first you don’t succeed in winning a contract, buy a winner!
– Anonymous
Let’s peruse a breakdown of the top 10 T4NG performers. Note some short notes on each as listed below:
| Company | Sample Task Order | Total Received FY2018-FY2023 | Number of Task Orders |
| Booz Allen Hamilton | Five-year, $1 billion IT Operations and Services (ITOPS) task order to provide cybersecurity, enterprise management framework, system and data migration, cloud computing, program management, strategy, enterprise architecture and planning support. | $4.9B | 81 |
| GovCIO | Five-year, $390 million Health Portfolio Program Management Office (PMO) and Technical Support contract to provide IT program management, technical management and strategic solutioning support for the VA OIT’s Health Services Portfolio, comprised of approximately 450 products within nine product lines and two product offices. | $1.3B | 36 |
| SAIC | Five-year, $185 million Cyber Security Operations Center Next Generation (CSOC-NG) task order to provide enterprise information, cyber and network defense services to augment the VA’s cyber workforce to ensure scalable and sustainable resilience across its cyberspace ecosystem. | $803M | 16 |
| IBM (via legacy B3 Group) | Five-year, $481 million task order for the creation, maintenance, enforcement, analysis and updates of the standards and governance established by the current Digital Transformation Center, and provide technical and operational support for SaaS, PaaS and emerging technologies. | $770M | 40 |
| Cognosante | Three-year, $189 million task order to provide cloud operations and migration services (COMS). They have operated this contract over two iterations. | $731M | 13 |
| Leidos | Three-year, $70 million task order to provide paper mail conversion and management services for the Veterans Benefits Administration. | $632M | 12 |
| Accenture Federal | Nine-year, $453 million task order to modernize and improve GI Bill claims processing for veterans, service members and their dependents. Includes automation, user interface / user experience design, service transformation, analytics and other modern IT services. | $621M | 6 |
| TISTA Technology | Five-year, $733 million task order to provide Franchise Fund Support Services. The VA Franchise Fund is a full-service provider of common administrative support services which are broken into three major segments: IT, financial management and security and law enforcement. | $620M | 21 |
| Favor TechConsulting | Four-year, $191 million task order to provide management consulting services and healthcare revenue workflow management and business IT tools. | $591M | 39 |
| GDIT | Five-year, $110 million task order to provide Tier 0 / Tier 1 Information Technology Service Management Incident and Service Level Agreement (SLA) thresholds to include technical, logistical and programmatic services. | $508M | 14 |
T4NG vs. T4NG2 – Who made the cut?
T4NG2 is likely to be every bit as critical to penetrate and dominate VA IT services spending as T4NG has been. Let’s compare the T4NG list vs. T4NG2.
| T4NG Prime Contractor | Moved to T4NG as a prime contractor? | T4NG2 Prime Contractor | New to T4NG? |
| Accenture | No | 1TechJV, LLC | Yes |
| American Communications Solutions, LLC | No | A2E Digital Solutions, LLC | Yes |
| Booz Allen Hamilton | Yes | Alpha Communications Services LLC | Yes |
| By Light IT | No | ATL-NG LLC | Yes |
| Cerner Federal Solutions | No | Booz Allen Hamilton | No |
| CGI Federal Inc. | Canopy Health, LLC | Yes | |
| CivitasDX LLC. | No | Clear Vantage Point Solutions II, LLC | No |
| Clear Vantage Point Solutions LLC (CVPS) | Yes | Cognosante | No |
| Client First Technologies | No | Credence Management Solutions, LLC | No |
| Cognosante | Yes | Deloitte Consulting LLP | Yes |
| Decisive Point Consulting Group | No | Digipathy, LLC | No |
| DexteriTech Solutions, LLC | No | Dynamic Government Resources 2, LLC | No |
| Dynamic Government Resources, LLC | Yes | ECS Federal, LLC | Yes |
| Favor TechConsulting | No | Galapagos-IntelliDyne Solutions, LLC | Yes |
| GDIT | No | GovCIO, LLC | No |
| GovCIO, LLC | Yes | H2 Technology Group, LLC | Yes |
| IBM | No | JTech LLC | Yes |
| Insignia Technology Services | No | ManTech Advanced Systems International, Inc | No |
| King Street Technology Partners, LLC | No | NxG Solutions, LLC | Yes |
| Leidos | No | Optimal Link LLC | Yes |
| ManTech | Yes | RP and Partners, LLC | Yes |
| Maveris, LLC | No | SAIC | No |
| Mind Computing, Inc. | No | SCIO JV LLC | No* |
| Peraton | No | Sierra7 | No |
| Peregrine Digital Services | No | SiloDynamics, LLC | Yes |
| ProSphere | No | Starlo Innovation, LLC | Yes |
| SAIC | Yes | T4 Designs, LLC | Yes |
| Sierra7 | VCH Partners LLC | Yes | |
| SprezzaturaGCIO Joint Venture, LLC | No* | Veterans EZ Info, Inc. | No |
| Thunderyard Liberty JV LLC | No | Zetta Solutions, LLC | Yes |
| Tista | No | ||
| Veteran Technology Integrators, LLC | No | ||
| Veterans EZ | No |
The incumbents from T4NG who made the list of awardees as a prime contractor on T4NG2 include Booz Allen Hamilton, GovCIO, SAIC, Cognosante, VetsEZ, CGI Federal, Clear Vantage Point Solutions JV, ManTech and Dynamic Government Resources. As a prime contractor, only eight (8) returned as a prime contractor in T4NG2.
**BUT, the SCIO JV, LLC is again a joint venture of Sprezzatura Management Consulting and GovCIO so if we want to think more flexibly, we have nine returning prime teams.
Then there was nine.
Further, of the newly awarded entities, 18 are new(technically) new entities to T4NG2.
Considering the imminent potential disruption that is afoot, a certain quote from Game of Thrones comes to mind.
“Chaos isn’t a pit. Chaos is a ladder”
Petyr ‘Littlefinger’ Baelish
Who are these new prime contractors? Stay tuned for our next post to explore the new T4NG2 prime contractors. 😊
Would you like to know more on how the VA makes IT contracting decisions? Check out our FedAgency Insight that was specifically designed to analyze the VA’s IT contract bid evaluation practices.
The FedSavvy Strategies Takeaway
- Prominent T4NG contractors will maintain significant knowledge of the VA, its IT environment and how to bid task orders and win.
- Several T4NG incumbents did not make it to T4NG2 which may cause disruption (even if some are in joint ventures that did win).
- Booz Allen Hamilton is heavily dialed into VA applications and business processes.
- GovCIO, SAIC and Cognosante also bring deep knowledge of the VA’s IT environment with expertise across IT program management, cybersecurity and cloud migration specifically for the customer.
- Competitors with a strong market share on the last vehicle’s iteration who are noticeably absent from T4NG2 include IBM (via Octo Consulting’s acquisition of B3 Group), TISTA Science and Technology, Accenture Federal, and Leidos (via Systems Made Simple).
- Is the new list of prime contractors indicative of potentially significant disruption? That seems very likely.
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