The Department of Defense is seeking information on potential industry sources capable of providing staffing support for its artificial intelligence, machine learning and data science initiatives.
The Pentagon’s Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office, together with the Army Contracting Command-Rock Island, is exploring options for a new AI Talent blanket purchase agreement, according to a notice posted Thursday on SAM.gov.
AIT 2.0 seeks to address some roadblocks identified in the original BPAs awarded in September 2020 to scale up the procurement process for AI and data science staffing support.
CDAO determined that the labor pool established for the initial AIT contract does not provide enough scope to support the Pentagon’s all AI activities.
The $7.5 million call order ceiling of the existing contract has impaired orders from larger agencies and limits existing orders to less than five-year periods of performance.
In addition, AIT 1.0 is not a fully decentralized agreement, resulting in lengthy procurement timeline.
CDAO aims to remove these challenges by allowing DOD agencies to ask for any positions within the task scopes, eliminating limit on call order amounts and making AIT 2.0 fully decentralized from award.
