The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) held a launch event today for its STRATUS program – a suite of government-wide basic ordering agreements (BOAs) to provide rapid access to cloud capabilities – and teased an annual forecasting tool for the program.
USDA first announced the STRATUS vehicle in April 2023, noting that it will offer three different pools to customers. Pool 1 offers hyperscale cloud infrastructure services, Pool 2 offers cloud labor and integration services, and Pool 3 offers commercial software provided as a service.
“This is exciting. I’ve been working throughout government for close to two decades now, and I’ve never seen something that gives us accessibility to technology partners as much as STRATUS,” USDA Chief Technology Officer Don Bitner said at Friday’s launch event.
“The only way we’re going to get better is by learning from industry, by learning from the commercial sector, by learning from even academia, to a certain extent, of how we can be more efficient,” Bitner added.
USDA conceived STRATUS to address expiring and fragmented cloud contracts. STRATUS allows the agency to offer a modernized cloud contract, but also bring solutions to USDA’s mission areas as fast as possible.
The agency said it received feedback from its customers to come up with the “BOA strategy.” BOAs are similar to blanket purchase agreements (BPA), but they offer more flexibility and are scoped to a 10-year time frame.
“STRATUS stands out from other cloud vehicles in several significant ways. It is not just a cloud acquisition vehicle, but a comprehensive platform and full-service cloud acquisition program designed specifically for USDA and its partners,” said Fernando Gomez, the STRATUS program manager at USDA.
“The team behind STRATUS aims to create a flexible vehicle that would empower the USDA to build a future-ready cloud infrastructure … it’s about the future. It’s about trying to predict, trying to establish best practices,” Gomez said.
Emily Strunk, the USDA’s contracting officer for Pool 2, said that the agency is actively doing data collection to publish an “annual forecast” tool to help customers better predict the future.
“You will likely be seeing that here shortly,” Strunk said. “We are collecting information now for our annual forecast, so you guys will be seeing that shortly.”
Similarly, Strunk explained that USDA is still sorting through the request for information (RFI) responses to determine the best course of action to produce a “pipeline forecast” as well.
“One of the problems that we’re running into is that we do have the flexibility of decentralized ordering. So, it is a little bit difficult to forecast out requirements for all of the mission areas, because we may not have them, we may not see them yet. So, we are working on that,” Strunk said.
“We have not figured out how to work out the kinks … but we are still looking at doing something like that if we can. Otherwise, we will be doing the annual forecast,” she concluded.
Those looking to begin their task order solicitation on STRATUS can contact USDA’s Digital Infrastructure Services Center (DISC) Customer Engagement team at AIOG-CO-DISC-Customer-Engagement@usda.gov.
For those looking to become a STRATUS vendor on Pool 2 or 3, they can contact the STRATUS Program Management team at STRATUS@usda.gov.
