The National Institutes of Health announced plans for a new governmentwide acquisition contract as a follow-on to its Electronic Commodity Store III contract.

The new vehicle, tentatively called Chief Information Officer-NEW, is intended as a complement to the Chief Information Officer Solutions and Partners 3 GWAC, which will be awarded soon.

In a Feb. 6 announcement on FedBizOpps, NIH’s Information Technology Acquisition and Assessment Center sought comments from industry on its acquisition plan. It said it will be seeking “vendors who can provide the range of firm fixed price goods and services for health IT and biotechnical research and include all the standard IT products and services that every agency requires.”

The scope of the contract will be broken into four product groups:

*Health/Biotechnical Research IT: research/analytical equipment and instruments that require a PC or attached workstation to display, acquire, manipulate and transmit data.

*Security IT: products and services that go beyond standard IT offerings to include information assurance, and specialized hardware and software.

*General IT: products and services used in the normal operation of government business.

*Commodity IT Services: a robust menu of commodity IT service solutions.

NIH said it plans to award contracts to both manufacturers and value-added resellers. It asked for comment on the proper balance between large and small businesses on the multiple-award contract.

More details are available on FedBizOpps under the solicitation number NIHJT2012005.