USDA's Rural Housing Service awards $1.35 million cybersecurity contract to Anchorage's Koniag IT Systems

The U.S. Department of Agriculture's Rural Housing Service awarded $1,346,351 to Koniag IT Systems LLC of Anchorage for cybersecurity, compliance and quality assurance support services, with performance beginning Sept. 4 and ending July 3, 2027. The award record does not specify which systems or data the contract protects.

Koniag IT Systems is an 8(a)-certified subsidiary of Koniag, Inc., the ANCSA regional corporation for the Kodiak Island region, representing more than 4,000 Alaska Native shareholders indigenous to Kodiak Island.

The award follows other federal work booked by Koniag subsidiaries: a $781,125 Social Security Administration print-services contract, a State Department writer and editor order, and an Indian Health Service billing contract.

Since 1986, Alaska Native Corporations have been eligible for the Small Business Administration's 8(a) program, which lets qualifying small, disadvantaged businesses receive federal set-aside contracts and, with agency justification, sole-source awards of any dollar value. The award record, filed as 12SAD126F0011, does not state whether this contract was competed or awarded sole-source.

In 2007 testimony to Congress, the Government Accountability Office said Congress has extended ANC firms "the ability to receive sole-source contracts for any dollar amount and to own multiple subsidiaries in the 8(a) program," and called for tailored oversight.

Defenders call the program important to Native economic development. Nicole Borromeo, at a Commonwealth North panel, said Alaska Native corporations and tribes long faced steep barriers because "the prime contractors, the Boeings, the Raytheons of the world, held a lot of the contracting space," and that the resulting set-aside resembles those for veterans and women-owned businesses.