Pentagon’s $13 Bn “Encore II” RFP Gets Revised, Extended

The Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) said it will extend the due date for proposals on its 5+5 year, $13 billion Encore II enterprise services contract. An internal Defense Department review will require revisions to the December 5, 2005 RFP, and DISA expects to release a new deadline within a week. Encore II is the result of a journey that began during Desert Storm, and is itself a way-station of sorts along the path to another key DISA project, Net-Centric Enterprise Services. What’s all this about? Air strike… priceless. The example of the US Army soldier reduced to using his cell phone and credit card to call Ft. Bragg for air support in Grenada was a watershed moment for the US military’s drive for common communications between the services. Ten years later, Operation Desert Storm was a similar turning point for computing, and the next step along the road to full C3I integration was begun. The services and agencies had many good capabilities, but they founf that they couldn’t be leveraged across service or agency boundaries. Result? so intelligence was fragmented, coordination costs were high, and joint operations were hampered. The response was one seen often in the private sector, […]