USDA Environmental Review As a Service (ERAS) Platform

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) intends to issue a solicitation for a Firm Fixed Price (FFP) contract to design, develop, and deploy a cloud-hosted Environmental Review As a Service (ERAS) platform. The ERAS platform will modernize and automate USDA’s environmental review and permitting processes under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and related statutes.

The contractor shall provide full lifecycle agile software development services, including planning, design, coding, prototyping, testing, documentation, and configuration. The initial deliverable will be a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) with the following core components:

• Policy-as-Code Rules Engine to translate NEPA regulations into machine-readable logic.


• AI-Driven Triage for rapid classification of environmental review requests (CatEx, EA, EIS).


• Multi-Tenant Case Management System with robust API integration.


• Categorical Exclusion (CatEx) Library and geolocation checks using ESRI and NEPAssist.


• Automated Document Generation for CatEx documentation (FANEC).

Post-MVP enhancements may include:

• Document repository (public and internal)


• Executive dashboards


• AI-enabled public comment analysis


• Payment handling via Pay.gov

Technical Requirements:

• Cloud.gov hosting compatibility


• Modern open-source technologies (Python, Ruby, JavaScript, React, etc.)


• Secure coding practices (OWASP standards)


• Section 508 accessibility compliance

Security & Compliance:

Contractor must adhere to USDA security policies, Zero Trust Architecture, encryption standards, and handle PII and Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI) per NIST guidelines.

Place of Performance:

Remote; occasional travel to USDA facilities may be required.

Set-aside Status: Competition among USDA STRATUS BOA Holders