What the SSA ITSSC Recompete Is Competing For
For firms selling IT modernization, cybersecurity, cloud or applied AI services into civilian agencies without an ITSSC seat, the SSA ITSSC recompete is a live capture decision with a fixed date. The Social Security Administration is replacing three contracts it awarded on Aug. 21, 2017, and it plans to select as many as seven firms this time. Proposals are due Sept. 28, 2026. The three contracts being replaced carry a combined $7,800,708,139.02 ceiling, not obligated spend. Against that ceiling the agency obligated $3,009,844,934.32, or 38.6 percent, over nine years. Bid strategies should be based on historical obligated spend rather than the vehicle ceiling, which significantly exceeded realized utilization.
| Field | Answer |
|---|---|
| Signal | A multiple-award recompete replacing three 2017 contracts, expanding to as many as seven seats, proposals due Sept. 28, 2026 |
| BD implication | Every seat is recompeted, so up to seven are open, on a vehicle whose record shows a seat converts to work unevenly |
| Customer | SSA Office of the Deputy Commissioner, Systems, the named customer organization on all three 2017 contracts |
| Buyer | SSA Office of Acquisition and Grants, contracting office code 283213 |
| Funding | Order by order. Each 2017 contract obligated $500,000 at award, the contract minimum |
| Vehicle / path | Multiple-award IDIQ, one base year plus up to nine option years, solicitation 28321326R00000022 |
| Incumbents / ecosystem | Leidos, Peraton and CGI Federal hold the three 2017 seats |
| Access strategy | Prime for any of the seven seats, or subcontract to a seat holder on the applied-AI and fraud-analytics scope |
| Timing | Proposals Sept. 28, 2026, then a cybersecurity supply chain risk assessment before awards are final |
| Confidence | High on the 2017 vehicle’s own figures, Moderate on the recompete’s published particulars |
| Pursuit posture | PURSUE without a seat, DEFEND for Leidos and CGI Federal, PURSUE for Peraton |
| Upgrade triggers | A disclosed ceiling on the new vehicle, or the first task order competed under it |
| Downgrade triggers | A protest of the award, or a set-aside structure that excludes your size standard |
Three facts about the outgoing vehicle should shape how you price this pursuit:
- Its combined ceiling overstates its realized work by roughly a factor of two and a half.
- One of the three seats has no task order recorded after 2018.
- Two of the three seats changed hands by corporate transaction rather than by competition.
The Vehicle Used 38.6 Percent of Its Own Ceiling
A ceiling on a multiple-award acquisition vehicle is permission to order, not a forecast. SSA set three of them in August 2017 and drew down a little over a third. Above the guaranteed minimum, every dollar moved order by order.
| Contract | Holder | Ceiling, not obligated spend | Obligated | Share of ceiling used |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| SS00-17-60016 | Leidos, Inc. | $2,319,113,031.10 | $1,806,949,825.95 | 77.9% |
| SS00-17-60017 | Peraton | $3,077,036,020.85 | $874,830,477.09 | 28.4% |
| SS00-17-60018 | CGI Federal Inc. | $2,404,559,087.07 | $328,064,631.28 | 13.6% |
The utilization gap shows that ceiling size alone does not determine the value of a seat. The largest ceiling produced the second-smallest obligation. The smallest ceiling was drawn down hardest, at 77.9 percent. Ceiling size and utilization do not track each other here.
That ratio is the input for a capture lead’s revenue model. If the new vehicle draws down at the same rate, a seat is worth about 39 cents of realized work for every ceiling dollar the market talks about. Build your bid-and-proposal budget off the utilization rate, not off any circulating estimate of what the new contract is worth.
A Seat on This Vehicle Has Not Meant Work
Peraton holds the largest ceiling of the three at $3,077,036,020.85 and has obligated $874,830,477.09 against it. All five of its task orders were issued in 2018. The last of them completed on Nov. 4, 2022. No task order has been recorded against SS00-17-60017 in the years since.
Leidos and CGI Federal look nothing like that. Leidos runs two orders awarded June 30, 2022, one for systems support at $1,063,049,268.31 obligated and one for infrastructure at $137,963,522.97 obligated, both running to March 31, 2028. CGI Federal received a new order on March 17, 2026 carrying $109,851,652.84 obligated so far, and another on Sept. 25, 2025 at $40,377,811.99 obligated, both running to March 28, 2028.
What that asymmetry tells a bidder:
- A seat is entry to a task-order competition, not a share of a pool.
- Task-order capture on this vehicle is a separate campaign from the seat itself, with its own cost.
- Three holders produced a vehicle that behaves, on current activity, like a two-holder vehicle.
Winning a seat should be viewed as the first step in a task-order competition strategy, not as guaranteed revenue.
Two of the Three Incumbents Bought Their Seats
Only CGI Federal has held its ITSSC seat under its own name since award. The other two arrived by transaction:
- Aug. 21, 2017: SSA awards SS00-17-60016 to Lockheed Martin Corporation and SS00-17-60017 to Northrop Grumman Systems Corporation, alongside CGI Federal’s SS00-17-60018.
- June 18, 2018: Modification P00001 changes the performing company on SS00-17-60016 to Leidos Innovations Corporation, following Leidos’s acquisition of Lockheed Martin’s information systems business.
- Sept. 11, 2019: Modification P00009 updates the holder of that same contract to Leidos, Inc.
- Feb. 1, 2022: Modification P00011 incorporates the novation agreement moving SS00-17-60017 to Peraton, which had acquired Northrop Grumman’s federal IT and mission support business.
Two firms that never competed for this work have spent years described as its incumbents. The recompete is the first time since 2017 that all three have to win it on a proposal. For a BD lead weighing incumbency as a barrier, the past-performance record on two of three seats was inherited, not earned here. Price incumbency by what each firm has done since it took the seat, not by who won in 2017. Leidos won the vehicle’s two largest orders after inheriting its seat. Peraton has no order recorded since it inherited its own.
Competitive Landscape: Utilization Separates the Three Seat Holders
Leidos, Peraton and CGI Federal are the named competition, and their positions are not equivalent. Leidos holds the vehicle’s two largest active orders. CGI Federal is the only holder to win a new order in 2026. Peraton has nothing active.
The seat count itself has moved in both directions. The 2010 generation ran task orders to at least four performers: Computer Sciences Corporation on SS00-10-60107, Lockheed Martin on SS00-10-60108, Accenture National Security Services on SS00-10-60113, and Northrop Grumman. SSA narrowed that to three seats in 2017 and is now opening as many as seven.
Every one of the three current seats is being recompeted, so as many as seven prime positions are open. SSA has not published a bidder list. Who the open seats favor:
- A mid-market systems integrator with civilian benefits-scale past performance, competing for a seat rather than against an entrenched task-order position.
- An AI product firm, against scope that now names generative AI and fraud analytics on top of the work the 2017 vehicle carried.
- A commercial-first firm with no prior SSA prime award. The 2017 competition ran as a FAR negotiated procurement, so this is not a nontraditional entrant pathway in the statutory sense. A commercial firm competes as an ordinary offeror.
The Ordering Periods Already Moved, and One Did Not
All three 2017 contracts originally carried a last date to order of Sept. 28, 2026. SSA changed that for two of them. On July 1, 2026, modification P00023 to Leidos’s SS00-17-60016 exercised the option to extend services, moving its ordering period to March 28, 2027. On July 8, 2026, modification P00023 to CGI Federal’s SS00-17-60018 did the same. Peraton’s SS00-17-60017 carries a last recorded action of P00018, signed Aug. 18, 2025, and its ordering period still ends Sept. 28, 2026.
The SSA ITSSC recompete carries no service cliff for two of the three holders, and no urgency premium to bid against. SSA can keep issuing work to two holders six months past Sept. 28, 2026, and existing orders run to March 2028 whatever the award decides. The pressure a new entrant should model is the reverse. CGI Federal’s own gap between its 2018 orders and its next one ran to September 2025.
Work through your own position before you commit proposal hours:
- Founder or BD lead at a firm without a seat: confirm your past performance includes a civilian benefits-scale systems program and covers the added generative-AI and fraud-analytics scope.
- Capture lead at Leidos or CGI Federal: your existing orders run to March 2028, so model the recompete as protecting the next order competition rather than protecting current revenue.
- Capture lead at Peraton: your ordering period ends Sept. 28, 2026 and your last order completed in 2022, so treat this as re-entry and price the proposal accordingly.
- Any bidder: map your past performance to the SSA organizations that have actually bought under this vehicle, among them the Office of the Chief Information Officer, the Office of Software Engineering, the Chief Information Security Officer and the Disability Case Processing System program.
What Eight Offers and Three Awards Say About Your Odds
In 2017, SSA received eight offers on solicitation SSA-RFP-17-1001 and made three awards under full and open competition, with no set-aside. That is a 37.5 percent hit rate on the last competition for this work. SSA now plans as many as seven awards, so the seat count more than doubles against scope that adds generative AI, fraud prevention and analytics.
For firms without a seat, the expanded award structure creates a stronger entry opportunity than the previous three-seat model. The proposal cost is real, but seven seats is a better ratio than three-from-eight if the bidder pool resembles 2017’s. SSA has not published the recompete’s offeror count. Historical utilization suggests that winning a seat should be viewed as the beginning of a task-order competition strategy, not as guaranteed revenue. A disclosed ceiling, or the first competed order under the new contract, turns this from a seat play into a revenue forecast. A protest or a narrowing set-aside takes it off the board.
FAQ
How much has SSA obligated under the ITSSC vehicle, and to which firms?
$3,009,844,934.32 across the three 2017 contracts. Leidos accounts for $1,806,949,825.95, Peraton for $874,830,477.09, and CGI Federal for $328,064,631.28. Those are obligations, not ceilings, and they represent 38.6 percent of the combined $7,800,708,139.02 ceiling.
Does the current ITSSC vehicle expire before the recompete is awarded?
Not for two of the three holders. Leidos and CGI Federal had their ordering periods extended to March 28, 2027 by modifications signed July 1 and July 8, 2026. Peraton’s ordering period still ends Sept. 28, 2026. Separately, task orders already issued under the vehicle run to March 2028.
How many prime seats does the expansion actually open?
As many as seven. No current holder keeps a seat by right. All three are in the competition. Four is the maximum for a new entrant only if all three current holders win again, and SSA has not committed to filling all seven.
Which SSA contracting office runs this vehicle?
The SSA Office of Acquisition and Grants, contracting office code 283213. Every recorded action on the three 2017 contracts and their task orders carries that code.
Does winning an ITSSC seat mean winning ITSSC work?
No. Peraton’s contract carries the largest ceiling of the three, $3,077,036,020.85, and its last task order completed on Nov. 4, 2022. Work moves through separate task-order competitions among seat holders, each with its own proposal cost.
What NAICS code and set-aside structure did the 2017 ITSSC award carry?
NAICS 541519, Other Computer Related Services, with product service code D399 and no set-aside. Each of the three awards carried a ten-year base-and-options ordering period.
What would change this reading of the recompete?
A disclosed dollar ceiling, a set-aside structure, or a published minimum order guarantee above $500,000 would each change how a bidder should size the opportunity. So would SSA moving its existing 2028-dated orders onto the new vehicle instead of letting them run out.
