Notice of Intent to Sole Source for the Open Geospatial Standards (OGS)

Under the authority of FAR 6.302-3, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) intends to issue a sole source contract to Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC), LLC for the Open Geospatial Standards (OGS), formerly known as Open Geospatial Web Service Standards Follow-On (OGWSS-II).

Purpose: The overall purpose of this contract is to ensure international geospatial standards are fully tested and vetted against NGA and partner agency requirements prior to their recommendation as a mandated standard in the IC/DoD IT Standards Registry (ICSR/DISR). This ensures these standards are fully evaluated and ready for inclusion as requirements within NGA and partner agency acquisition programs.

Scope: The contract’s scope includes support to advance the development of voluntary, consensus-based international geospatial standards. These standards will facilitate adoption of worldwide interoperability and data exchange among different geospatial products and services into mandated standards in the IC/DoD IT Standards Registry (ICSR/DISR). The efforts under this contract will also provide guidance and direction on standard implementations supporting operational capabilities of NGA and its partner agencies.

OGS will be established as a Single-Award Multi-Agency Indefinite Delivery Indefinite Quantity (IDIQ) contract vehicle with a five (5) year ordering period. Individual task orders may be issued at any time during the ordering period and may extend no more than 365 calendar days from the end of the IDIQ ordering period. The anticipated period of performance is 01/18/2026 to 01/17/2031.

As stated in FAR 6.302-3(a)(2)(ii), full and open competition need not be provided for when it is necessary to award the contract to a particular source or sources to establish or maintain an essential engineering, research, or development capability to be provided by an educational or other nonprofit institution or a federally funded research and development center. Furthermore, as stated in FAR 6.302-3(b)(2)(ii) the use of this authority may be appropriate when it is necessary to establish or maintain an essential capability for engineering or developmental work calling for the practical application of investigative findings and theories of a scientific or technical nature.

OGC is the only non-profit geospatial web service standards development organization to meet the OGS requirement. OGC enables a platform for NGA and its partner agencies to form international partnerships and work collaboratively with industry, academia and other government agencies. The contractor is capable of providing a neutral environment in which developers and data suppliers work together to validate the ability of their products to interoperate with other offerings and implement interoperable geospatial standards. In addition, the contractor provides a process for users of geospatial technology to collaborate and share the costs of advancing technologies for future enterprise architectures.

This notice is in accordance with FAR Subpart 5.2, and is not a request for competitive proposals. The Government intends to solicit and negotiate with the only known source, OGC. A determination by the Government not to compete this proposed contract based upon responses to this notice is solely within the discretion of the Government. Information received will normally be considered solely for the purpose of determining whether to open competition to businesses other than OGC.