In a decision issued September 3, 2026, GAO sustained the protest of Ares Enterprise, LLC, a small business that challenged a task order issued by the United States Space Force under the Air Force’s Enterprise Information Technology as a Service (EITaaS) Wave 1 Blanket Purchase Agreement (BPA) to Vision Information Technology Consultants, LLC. The decision addresses two independent grounds, which are both somewhat obvious and rather important: whether the task order exceeded the scope of the BPA (it did) and whether the order was within the scope of the awardee’s Federal Supply Schedule contract (it was not). This case is a sound reminder to all that the scope of ordering vehicles must be taken seriously and a warning as to the perverse incentive for the government to attempt to fudge scope determinations to place non-competitive orders.
Background
The EITaaS BPA is a $5.7 billion, single-award BPA established in 2022 with a term of 10 years. The BPA was awarded to a contractor teaming arrangement (CTA) of ten FSS contractors, led by CACI NSS, LLC. Vision Information Technology Consultants LLC was one of the CTA members. On May 29, 2026, the Space Force issued a task order to Vision for information technology services at Los Angeles Air Force Base that Ares had been performing as a subcontractor under a separate contract. Ares protested, claiming that the order was an improper sole-source contract because it exceeded the scope of the BPA and Vision’s FSS contract.
The scope of the BPA is important because the competitive award of the BPA under the FSS is the way in which the Space Force satisfied the Competition in Contracting Act’s requirement for full and open competition. Thus, if the order is not within the scope of the awarded BPA, there had not been adequate competition for that order. If the order is not within the scope of the awardee’s FSS contract that work cannot be awarded under the FSS program. Through this argument, Ares, which was not a party to the EITaaS BPA, became and interested party because if successful the Space Force would have to compete the requirement under full and open competition.
Scope of the BPA
The EITaaS BPA’s performance work statement described Wave 1 as a vehicle to transform “End User Device Services.” The full scope of the BPA included “Enterprise Services,” “End User Device Management,” and “Protect,” each in the context of end user devices. GAO found that “end user devices” in EITaaS fell into the categories of computing devices, printers, voice devices, and bring-your-own-approved-device items. The task order issued to Vision, however, involved maintaining systems and networks, including a Wi-Fi network, external web servers, wide area networks, storage area networks, virtual desktops for non-classified and classified networks, backup power systems, and database, file, print, application, and web servers. The Space Force argued unsuccessfully that the BPA did not specify any specific device as “end user devices,” the scope included services to operate and maintain anything that could be classified as “endpoints,” and thus, support for the entire range of agency infrastructure.
GAO also rejected the agency’s effort to read task area 9 engineering services scope of “support tasks not otherwise defined” as a general exception to the BPA’s scope, citing its prior decision in DynCorp International LLC, B-402349, Mar. 15, 2010, for the principle that broad catch-all language does not expand a contract’s scope beyond what competitors reasonably would have anticipated at the time the BPA was established.
Scope of the Awardee’s FSS Contract
GAO also sustained the protest on a second, independent ground. When an agency places a task order under an FSS contract, all ordered services must be within the scope of the contractor’s own schedule. The agency argued that because the EITaaS ordering guide allowed labor categories from any CTA member’s schedule, Vision’s own schedule need not cover the ordered services. GAO disagreed. Each CTA member is a prime contractor in privity with the government on its own FSS contract. The existence of a CTA does not dissolve the requirement that the awardee’s schedule must cover what is ordered. The agency had not mapped the LAAFB order’s labor requirements to Vision’s schedule, and in fact took the position that no such mapping was required. GAO found that position legally untenable. In short, the Space Force was required to orders services within the scope of the awardee’s specific FSS contract.
Remedy
GAO recommended that the Space Force terminate the LAAFB order and issue a new solicitation using full and open competition. GAO also recommended that Ares be reimbursed its protest costs, including attorneys’ fees.
The Lesson
Agencies using BPAs and CTAs must still satisfy the basic legal requirement that task orders fall within the scope of both the BPA and the specific contractor’s FSS contract. Despite this, agencies have an incentive to read a BPA as broadly as possible to avoid the significant burden of a competitive procurement. As seen above, the Space Force took a position that a BPA for end user services could be used for the totality of base-wide infrastructure. However, the scope of a BPA is—and must be—limited to the scope that was reasonably foreseeable when the BPA was competed. Further, simply being in a CTA does not expand the scope of a CTA’s member FSS contract.
Out-of-scope orders are broadly challengeable. Even in instances where the Government utilizes an ordering vehicle where interested parties would normally be limited to those party to the vehicle, every potential offeror of the contemplated goods and services is likely to be an interested party to protest that the order is out of scope. As here, protesting out of scope orders may open those requirements to full and open competition.
Source
Ares Enterprise, LLC, B-424548; B-424548.2; B-424548.3 (Sept. 3, 2026).