Governmentwide Acquisition Contract (GWAC)
Also called: GWAC, government-wide acquisition contract, OASIS, SEWP, CIO-SP, Alliant, Polaris
A GWAC is a multiple-award IDIQ for information technology that one agency awards and manages and every federal agency may order from, under an authority delegated by OMB.
The term is defined in FAR 2.101, and the authority is section 5112(e) of the Clinger-Cohen Act, which is why GWACs are IT-only; the services vehicles that look similar, such as OASIS+, are multi-agency contracts under the economy act rules in FAR 17.5 rather than GWACs. The executive agents are GSA (Alliant, 8(a) STARS, Polaris, VETS), NIH NITAAC (CIO-SP) and NASA (SEWP). Orders follow FAR 16.505 fair opportunity, and the sponsoring agency charges a contract access fee on each order.
What to check: whether the vehicle is open to new offers (most open once every several years), the small business pools and their certification requirements, the ordering volume in your labor categories, and the proposal scorecard, which on recent GWACs is largely self-scored on past projects and certifications.
What it is not: a sales channel on its own. A GWAC holder still has to find the order, shape it and win the task order competition.
See also: Indefinite Delivery, Indefinite Quantity (IDIQ) contract, Task order and delivery order, Contract vehicle, 8(a) Business Development Program
Questions that use this term
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