The Pentagon on Wednesday abruptly canceled a draft solicitation to compete its Advana platform, the enterprise data and analytics system run by the department’s Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office.
The Defense Department first awarded a five-year, $674 million contract to Booz Allen Hamilton in 2021 for Advana, which was launched that year to enhance departmentwide data sharing.
Then-CDAO Radha Plumb previewed plans last September to open up the contract to other companies, calling the planned Advancing Artificial Intelligence Multiple Award Contract program “the largest data and AI government acquisition action in history.”
DOD unveiled the draft request for proposals for the potential 10-year, $15 billion AAMAC last November, although the SAM.gov posting now says it has been terminated.
“This draft solicitation has been canceled as the Advancing Artificial Intelligence Multiple Award Contract (AAMAC) program is currently on hold,” the document said.
It is unclear what will happen next with the recompete effort. Since the solicitation never made it out of the draft RFP stage, there will need to be a new draft request if DOD continues its push.
The Pentagon previously faced some difficulties rolling out the data-analytics platform, including pausing development of Avana in June 2024 to make infrastructure improvements.
When asked about the future of the platform and the reason for the solicitation’s termination, a defense official said “the Department will initiate activities in the coming months to leverage best of industry support to meet Department requirements.”
“Advana continues to mature technically and programmatically,” they added in an emailed statement. “It serves as a foundational enterprise capability.”
The AAMAC solicitation was terminated the same day that the Trump administration released its AI Action Plan, which outlined a number of specific recommendations for DOD to drive the adoption of emerging capabilities across its operations.
