ED Moves NextGen Procurement to Phase II; Changes Rules of the Game

In case you had not seen it, there is an update on the Department of Education’s (ED) Next Generation Financial Services Environment (NextGen). ED has completed Phase I, and has announced those vendors eligible to participate in Phase II of the procurement. insideARM readers will be primarily interested in those on the list for Components E/F, which covers Business Process Operations:

ED has also announced that for Phase II, Components E and F (Solutions 2.0 and 3.0 Business Process Operations) have been combined, and that in accordance with the Business Process Operations Phase II solicitation, the Past Performance volume shall be submitted by October 9, 2018. A final proposal due date for the remaining volumes may not be established until after the award of the NextGen Transitional Core Processing and Related Support Activities (previously referred to as Component D) and the Enterprise-Wide Digital Customer Care Platform (previously referred to as Components A & B). Offerors will be notified about the proposal due date(s) via a solicitation amendment. 

Debt collection contractors in the federal student loan space will be watching this procurement closely, as it has developed in parallel with on-going litigation over the delay, award, and cancellation of the Solicitation for Unrestricted Private Debt Collection Agencies.