For those who may be unaware, Unissant is the IT company that was contracted by the DoD in 2018 to supply data management services for the Defense Medical Surveillance System (DMSS), which is the back-end database for the Defense Medical Epidemiology Database (DMED). Mathew Crawford at Rounding the Earth substack has done an excellent job of chronicling the issues he has found with DMED - namely, that it is essentially a fake database at this point due to changes in datasets that occurred sometime between 2019 and 2021:
Although it took me much longer than I care to admit to wrap my head around the implications of data fraud involving DMED, once the light bulb switched on I understood Mathew’s emphatic position on this issue. I thought I’d try to help in this article by examining in detail the DoD’s contracts with Unissant. I haven’t seen anyone break this information down yet, so perhaps it may be useful. One contract award, in particular, stands out like a sore thumb, and may be a good target for a FOIA request. First, though, let’s just try to figure out the actual name of the company…
My name is Unissant, but you can call me Bimethods
One of the first things I noticed upon searching for Unissant contracts on FPDS is that the company is also known as Bimethods, Inc. There are quite a few hits which list Bimethods, Inc. as the Legal Business Name and Unissant, Inc. as the Ultimate Parent Legal Business Name. This made me think that Bimethods, Inc. must be a subsidiary of Unissant, but this does not appear to be the case. The website for the State of Virginia’s Corporate Commission reveals that Bimethods, Inc. officially changed its name to Unissant in 2010. Before that, the company was known as ZMinds, Inc. and TrainEdge, Inc.
What seems strange to me is that there are contracts issued after the name change to Bimethods, Inc. Moreover, it appears that the Defense Health Agency (DHA) was the only agency within the DoD to retain the Bimethods, Inc. name for its contracts. All of the other DoD agencies name Unissant, Inc. as award recipient.
Find the one that is not like the others
The DHA issued five primary contracts to Bimethods, Inc. between 2014 and 2019 with a total value of $71M:
The contract with the green star next to it is HT001518F0026, and it’s the one we are most interested in because it’s the one that covered Unissant’s work on DMED. Let’s take a look at all the payments made on this contract over its lifetime:
Do you see that payment on September 19th, 2019 for an amount of $999,979? Yeah, that one is not like the others. Check it out in FPDS and you’ll see that this contract modification was for a supplemental work agreement with the description “Technical Support Services Strategic Communication Support”.
If you are wondering what Strategic Communication means, Wikipedia defines it roughly as the communication of data in a way that satisfies a long-term strategic goal of an organization. Interesting.
The other thing I find curious about this contract modification is the dollar amount, which is awfully close to $1,000,000. The thought occurred to me that by staying just shy of this amount, the contract official would not have to include the “Notification of Changes” clause as dictated by FAR 43.107:
The contracting officer may insert a clause substantially the same as the clause at 52.243-7, Notification of Changes, in solicitations and contracts. The clause is available for use primarily in negotiated research and development or supply contracts for the acquisition of major weapon systems or principal subsystems. If the contract amount is expected to be less than $1,000,000, the clause shall not be used, unless the contracting officer anticipates that situations will arise that may result in a contractor alleging that the Government has effected changes other than those identified as such in writing and signed by the contracting officer.
What is the purpose of this clause? It obligates the contractor to notify the government within a specified time period if the contractor believes that the contract modification represents a change to the base contract. The contractor is obligated to report all sorts of things including the names of any and all government contacts associated with the change and any and all written or oral communications related to the change.
So, this is just an educated guess, but if you were a government official seeking to get some work done on a contract that was really outside of the scope of the contract, you might do well to keep those changes under $1M, else you run the risk of getting reported. That’s not a big deal if you are trying to do honest business, but it is a VERY big deal if you are trying to conceal your activities.
Summary
The modification P0002 to HT001518F0026 is highly suspicious in my opinion and may hold important information relating to Unissant’s purported fraudulent activities in regard to DMED data integrity. I think it is a good target for a FOIA request.