The Office of Personnel Management awarded four contracts to help stand up its new background investigation unit on Sept. 12.
The indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity contracts ensure a guaranteed minimum of $1 million per contract and were awarded to CACI Premier Technology, Inc.; CSRA LLC; KeyPoint Government Solutions, Inc.; and Securitas Critical Infrastructure Services, LLC.
The contracts will help support the Federal Investigative Services—which currently processes the government’s background investigations—and its successor, the new National Background Investigations Bureau.
The NBIB was announced in January as a new office that would absorb the FIS, following the 2015 OPM hack that exposed the personal information of more than 21 million people, including federal employees and family members. The new bureau would handle all federal background checks, be managed by OPM, but have its cybersecurity overseen by the Department of Defense.
A statement from OPM said the contracts were awarded based on the four bids it received to help stand up the NBIB, which is scheduled for early October 2016.
“I look forward to continuing our relationship with CACI and KeyPoint, and to partnering with CSRA and Securitas Critical Infrastructure Services,” said Acting OPM Director Beth Cobert, in a statement.
The way it reads it appears that it will be a revolving contract. Each company has an equal dip into the bowl of work. You grab $1mil worth of work, finish that and grab some more. It is going to be more cutthroat that it already is. The workers will be rowing that ship and the CEO will not only want ramming speed but water ski too.
I think that the nature of the business and OPM stacking the deck against a fair wage for the contractor’s employees forces all 4 companies to find ways to cut costs. Remember they are for profit, as is OPM. I don’t think any one company workload will be better than the other but we know Keypoint is rapidly becoming a clone of USIS. The CEO told everyone they are not anticipating any raises and they are hiring big time. They are demoting higher paid employees and having lower level FI doing higher level work. They pay bonus for production and timeliness but not quality, so that shows where their priorities are. Find one of the others that treat their employees better and go with the one that pays the most.
So also have heard CACI is now USIS, which must be a Body Snatcher firm for reals. Never died.
On Contracting side I know a sub-prime for one of the new players is giving $15 more for a TESI while other firms don’t give premium. And did I hear one new player, forgot which one, now giving cars to FT workers for $150/month? So maybe this competition may be good for contractors and FT just a little bit.