In May, a short note appeared on the U.S. Agency for International Development’s website letting the world know that it had awarded the first in a much-hyped, much-delayed, multibillion-dollar series of global health contracts — the Next Generation Global Health Supply Chain Suite of Programs, known as NextGen, which is a suite of nine awards worth a maximum of $16.8 billion over 10 years.
That first contract, worth $106 million, is the Control Tower Award — so named because the winning firm will play a coordinating role between the contractors that win the remaining awards.
The award — made almost two years after originally intended — went to Deloitte, the prominent financial services firm which has dedicated significant resources in recent years to winning development contracts with the U.S. government.