The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) intends to negotiate a firm-fixed priced purchase order for collaborative governmentwide blockchain research support services.
In a notice of intent, NIST described its purchase order on a sole source basis with Prometheus Computing, LLC and will be “for a base period of six months from date of award and one subsequent six-month option period.”
“Blockchain and DLT [distributed ledger technologies] systems are inherently collaborative solutions, where multiple parties work together towards the system’s goals,” the notice said. “As such, it is necessary to understand the complexities that such systems would hold when collaborating between different U.S. government agencies, and as well as multiple layers of government and external organizations.”
According to the notice, NIST is responsible for developing management, administrative, and technical standards and guidelines for new technologies like blockchain and DLT. It must also “evaluate and develop guidance for how multiple U.S. agencies can conduct collaborative, peer-to-peer blockchain and DLT systems.”
Since January 2020, NIST has been for collaborating with the Department of Treasury and the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) to develop a proof of concept governmentwide blockchain application for grant tracking. This R&D process has been supported by Prometheus since it began and previous work with the company has informed this notice of intent as Prometheus has met requirements that cannot be duplicated without duplicating previous efforts.
