NSA QUIETLY AWARDED A CLASSIFIED $2.4 BILLION TECH CONTRACT WITH MORE TO COME

NSA's headquarters in Fort Meade, Maryland. // Patrick Semansky/AP The National Security Agency has awarded tech firm CSRA the first of three portions of its classified Groundbreaker contract, which could potentially be worth as much as $2.4 billion over the next decade if all options are exercised. CSRA announced the award through aSecurities and Exchange Commission filing, where it acknowledged the value and duration of the contract without naming the customer agency or the contract’s name. Neither CSRA nor NSA offered comment to Nextgov for this story. Details on Groundbreaker are sparse, but the NSA program dates back to a 2001 effort to outsource its IT operations. At the time, then-NSA director Michael Hayden said the contract would allow NSA to “refocus assets on the agency’s core missions of providing foreign signals intelligence and protecting U.S. national security-related information systems by turning over several information technology infrastructur...