NOAALink

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) established NOAALink, an 11-contract Master IDIQ vehicle for enterprise-wide IT products and services, on August 31, 2010, with a final ordering deadline of September 16, 2020—now closed for more than five years. This vehicle is no longer active for new task order placement.

The vehicle executed 343 task orders with a combined potential value of $998.2 million, of which $852 million (85 percent) has been obligated. Task-order frequency declined sharply in its final years: 18 orders in 2016, 27 in 2017, 20 in 2018, then only 3 in 2019 and 2 in 2020, with the most recent award on June 24, 2020. Activity concentrated heavily on NOAA's internal IT infrastructure and fisheries management systems—examples include AWIPS cloud conversion design, NOS oceanographic IT support, NMFS database and security services, and system engineering for IOOS and Enterprise Directory Services. Pricing structures varied widely: Firm Fixed Price orders accounted for smaller, discrete tasks; Time and Materials orders dominated larger infrastructure and development efforts, typically ranging from $500 thousand to $15 million in potential value.

Earth Resources Technology dominates the vendor base, holding 83 orders worth $332.9 million combined potential value (33 percent of the vehicle's total). The next tier—2020 Company ($172.1 million), Cyberdata Technologies ($113.4 million), and Actionet ($86.1 million)—collectively account for another 40 percent. The top five vendors represent 79 percent of combined potential value, indicating significant concentration among a narrow set of established NOAA IT integrators. Fourteen distinct primes competed under the vehicle overall, though a long tail of smaller 8(a) and small-business awardees filled specialized niches.

Set-aside distribution across task orders was split: 52 percent carried no set-aside (180 orders), 28 percent were Total Small Business (95 orders), and 20 percent were Competitive 8(a) (68 orders). NOAA was the sole customer across all task orders.

All work funded NOAA programs exclusively, with heavy concentration in NOAA Fisheries (NMFS), the National Weather Service, the National Environmental Satellite Data and Information Service (NESDIS), the National Ocean Service (NOS), and the Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research (OAR). Place of performance included domestic facilities in Silver Spring, Maryland; Miami, Florida; Seattle, Washington; Ann Arbor, Michigan; and other NOAA regional and field offices, reflecting the agency's geographic footprint.

The NOAALink Program, launched in 2008, is an innovative approach to NOAA'ss enterprise-wide strategic Information Technology (IT) planning and management. The 11 NOAALink Indefinite Delivery Indefinite Quantity (IDIQ) contracts are IT acquisition tools which leverage purchasing power for common enterprise IT products and services.