First Set-Aside GWAC to Expire COMMITS NexGen, the first governmentwide acquisition contract for small businesses, will likely die when current contracts expire early next year. Michael O’Neill, deputy director for GWAC Programs at GSA, said the agency has decided not to recompete the IT contract vehicle. But he said there is support for finding a way to continue one feature of COMMITS: a three-tiered structure in which small businesses of different sizes compete separately for orders. The original COMMITS contract opened for business in 1999 under the Commerce Department. GSA took over management of the GWAC in 2008. Since then GSA has created another set-aside GWAC, Alliant Small Business, with 73 contracts awarded. The agency also manages set-aside GWACs for 8(a) and service-disabled veteran-owned companies. The 8(a) STARS GWAC has been a runaway success, with $2.8 billion in sales since its inception in 2004. Awards for the follow-on 8(a) STARS II will be made soon. O’Neill said GSA is considering whether to establish a GWAC for woman-owned firms after the new set-aside program is up and running next year. However, woman-owned businesses will not have spots on the National Institutes of Health’s CIO-SP3 GWAC, which is due to be awarded next year. Mary Armstead, director of NIH’s IT Acquisition and Assessment Center, said the final RFP for the GWAC was released before the final rule for the women’s set-aside program was adopted in October. “That train had already left the station,” she said. O’Neill and Armstead spoke Dec. 7 at AFCEA’s small business forum in Bethesda, MD.