WASHINGTON - The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is seeking industry input under a challenge-based acquisition for its Accelerated Transformation of Legacy Applications and Systems (ATLAS) initiative, which is aimed at modernizing and consolidating a portfolio of roughly 200 applications and 3,000 databases.
The effort, led by the FAA’s Information and Technology Services organization, seeks innovative, secure, and resilient IT solutions to rationalize, modernize, and sustain the agency’s mission support application environment. The FAA anticipates a potential 10-year period of performance, including options, for any resulting contract.
The ATLAS program is intended to reduce technical debt, improve user experience, enhance cybersecurity and resiliency, and deliver long-term cost efficiencies while ensuring continuity of operations and safety across the National Airspace System. The scope initially focuses on applications supporting inspections, investigations, and regulatory compliance, with the possibility of expanding to additional FAA systems.
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Legacy upgrade
The agency is transitioning from legacy sustainment models to cloud-native architectures, artificial intelligence-enabled workflows, and automated DevSecOps pipelines. Offerors are encouraged to propose innovative technical approaches aligned with eight program objectives, including portfolio modernization, high-availability mission operations, enterprise data integration, and proactive cybersecurity.
Under the modernization objective, the FAA seeks migration of legacy systems to modular, scalable, cloud-native architectures, elimination of redundant business functions, and application of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) tools to accelerate code refactoring, automated testing, and system analysis.
Mission systems must maintain availability of 99.9 percent or higher, with resilient disaster recovery capabilities meeting defined recovery time and recovery point objectives. The agency also calls for automation and AIOps-based predictive resource management to reduce total cost of ownership and cloud consumption over time.
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The solicitation emphasizes integration of generative AI into development workflows, and continuous Authorization to Operate through embedded security controls aligned with Zero Trust principles and federal cybersecurity standards.
ATLAS also calls for enterprise data consolidation to establish a single source of truth across applications, the elimination of data silos, and AI-enabled analytics to support aviation safety oversight and resource optimization.
The current legacy environment includes a heterogeneous mix of Microsoft .NET, Java, ColdFusion, batch processing systems, relational databases such as Oracle, PostgreSQL, and Microsoft SQL Server, and a combination of on-premises data centers and public and government cloud environments, including AWS and Azure. The architecture is predominantly monolithic, with limited service decomposition and inconsistent adoption of containerization and modern CI/CD practices.
Constraints include full adherence to the FAA Acquisition Management System, NIST 800-53 security controls, and FAA Order 1370.121. All work products, including source code and documentation, will remain the exclusive property of the FAA.
The agency stated that formal performance work statements will not be required until a later phase of the acquisition process, tentatively planned for Phase 4.
Phase 1 responses are due 13 March 2026 by 5 p.m. Eastern time. The agency named Daniel Farrell as the primary point of contact for this inquiry. They can be reached via email at [email protected]. More information is available at https://sam.gov/workspace/contract/opp/cdf854eaac2f4b139e78bfbfbb2df58d/view.
