The Department of Defense’s Joint Artificial Intelligence Center has issued a solicitation for a multiple-award AI test and evaluation contract vehicle worth potentially $249.5 million.
A notice posted Thursday on the beta SAM website says JAIC plans to collect proposals through March 5 and anticipates awarding 15 to 25 blanket purchase agreements to procure the services.
Each BPA will have an ordering period of five years and will cover data set development and curation, test harness development, model output analysis, test planning, documentation and reporting, among others. Contractors should align and interoperate AI test and evaluation services and tools with the Joint Common Foundation, according to the performance work statement.
The projected award date for the BPAs is July of this year, according to a question-and-answer document uploaded along with the solicitation.
Jane Pinelis, testing and evaluation chief at JAIC, mentioned the BPA and an upcoming multiple-award contract for data readiness reviews during an AFCEA NOVA webinar Wednesday, Nextgov reported.
“One of the ways to avoid the valley of death and one of the ways to get this technology into the warfighters’ hands is to be able to at least readily connect those vendors, those industry partners that have the technology to the warfighter,” Pinelis said. “And that connection is funding and that connection is a contract vehicle, and that’s the connection that we’ve been working really hard on providing to the rest of the department.”
She said the two contracts and the center’s new Tradewind program focused on building an acquisition ecosystem to accelerate the delivery of AI capabilities will help improve AI readiness.
