The Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office wants small businesses to get a piece of a 10-year, $15 billion indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract supporting Advana, the Department of Defense’s enterprise-wide data analytics platform.
Announced at an industry day in September, the plans to bring small businesses into the Advana fold are designed to help nontraditional vendors showcase their individual capabilities.
“You don’t have to do every part of the tech stack … if you do a single piece and you do it really well, you can have a contract,” Bonnie Evangelista, deputy chief digital and AI officer for acquisition, told Breaking Defense at the event.
Find out more about the ways in which the DOD is leveraging data to transform its decision making capabilities at the Potomac Officers Club’s 2025 Defense R&D Summit on Jan. 23. Secure your spot at the 2025 Defense R&D Summit to meet public and private sector defense technology experts and help pave a pathway for future mission success.
What is Advana?
Managed by the CDAO, Advana is a DOD-wide, multi-domain data analytics and artificial intelligence platform that delivers information to both military and civilian analysts and decision makers. With data drawn from over 400 DOD business platforms, Advana is currently the department’s largest enterprise data system.
Through the upcoming IDIQ, the CDAO aims to scale the platform to reach a wider range of users and cater to new demands that have sprouted from its expansion.
An Evolving Approach to Advana
The introduction of this IDIQ marks a shift toward a new way of contracting for Advana. For the past seven years, Booz Allen Hamilton was the sole company operating the platform, but a senior defense official told Breaking Defense that a single-provider strategy can no longer support Advana’s expanding service offerings and user base.
The new contract will embrace the principles set forth by CDAO’s Open Data and Applications Government-owned Interoperable Repositories, known as Open DAGIR, a “multi-vendor ecosystem with supporting business models that enables industry and government to integrate data platforms, development tools, services and applications in a way that preserves government data ownership and industry intellectual property.”
Announced in May, Open DAGIR’s current objective is to support the Combined Joint All-Domain Command and Control initiative — the Pentagon’s comprehensive effort to elevate communications capabilities across the U.S. military, allies and other partners.
“Open DAGIR ensures the department can leverage the innovative solutions from the world-class software developers in both the traditional and nontraditional industrial base to create capabilities for our warfighters and decision makers,” CDAO Radha Plumb said.
According to the DOD, the upcoming Advana IDIQ will follow the ideals of interoperability and vendor competition that have characterized Open DAGIR.
Plumb called the contract the “largest acquisition of digital and AI enabling capabilities” in DOD history and an “unprecedented opportunity for industry to get involved.”
Get an inside look at the ways in which the Pentagon is exploring new contracting approaches at the 2025 Defense R&D Summit, where you will have the opportunity to hear defense technology experts discuss topics such as AI, data and more. Register for the 2025 Defense R&D Summit to join the conversation.
