Loren Data's SAM Daily™

FBO DAILY ISSUE OF JANUARY 30, 2002 FBO #0059
MODIFICATION

D -- REVISED NOTICE OF INTENT TO ISSUE A SOLE SOURCE PURCHASE ORDER. Revision due to change to SOW and due date.

Notice Date

1/28/2002
 

Notice Type

Modification
 

Contracting Office

HQ USAINSCOM, Directorate of Contracting, ATTN: IAPC-DOC, 8825 Beulah Street, Fort Belvoir, VA 22060-5246
 

ZIP Code

22060-5246
 

Solicitation Number

DASC012017N142
 

Response Due

2/8/2002
 

Archive Date

3/10/2002
 

Point of Contact

Margaret K. Herring, 703-706-2258
 

E-Mail Address

Email your questions to HQ USAINSCOM, Directorate of Contracting
(mkherri@vulcan.belvoir.army.mil)
 

Small Business Set-Aside

N/A
 

Description

NA REVISED NOTICE OF INTENT TO ISSUE A SOLE SOURCE PURCHASE ORDER. This is a combined synopsis/solicitation for commercial items prepared in accordance with the format in Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) Subpart 12.6, as supplemented with additional information included in this notice. This announcement constitutes the only solicitation ? a written solicitation will not be issued. There is no solicitation number; for reference use PR Number DASC012017N142. Headquarters, US Army Intelligence and Security Command, Fort Belvoir, VA is soliciting a sole source commerci al purchase order (under FAR Parts 12 and 13.5) with Applied Technical Systems, Inc., Silverdale, Washington. The Government intends to solicit and negotiate with only one source under the authority of FAR Part 13.106-1 and 10.U.S.C. 2304 (c) (1)as cited in FAR 6.302-1. This action is for the purchase of an enhanced computing architecture, including both hardware and software, that will allow the Contiguous Connection Model (CCM) performance to scale to the expanded data environment of INSCOM?s Informati on Dominance Center (IDC). Applied Technical Systems, Inc. holds two patents on the CCM and is the only entity, commercial or government, with the right or ability to modify the CCM technology source code. This solicitation document incorporates provisio ns and clauses that are those in effect through Federal Acquisition Circular 97-04. The provision at FAR 52.212-1, Instructions to Offerors Commercial, applies to this acquisition. A completed copy of the provision at FAR 52.212-3, Offeror Representations and Certifications Commercial Items must be included with the offer. The clause at 52.212-4, Contract Terms and Conditions Commercial Items, applies to this acquisition. The clause 52.212-5, Contract Terms and Conditions Required to Implement Statutes or E xecutive Orders Commercial Items, applies to this acquisition including 52.203-6, Restrictions on Subcontractor Sales to the Government with Alt I (41 U.S.C. 253g and 10 U.S.C. 2402); 52.219-8, Utilization of Small Business Concerns (15 U.S.C. 637 (d)(2) a nd (3); 52.219-14, Limitations on Subcontracting (15 U.S.C. 637(a)(14); 52.222-19, Child Labor--Cooperation with authorities and Remedies (E.O.13126); 52.22-21, Prohibition of Segregated Facilities; 52.22 2-26, Equal Opportunity (E.O. 11246); 52.222-35, Af firmative Action for Disabled Veterans and Veterans of the Vietnam Era (38 U.S.C. 4212); 52.222-36, Affirmative Action for Workers with Disabilities (29 U.S.C. 793); 52.222-37, Employment Reports on Disabled Veterans and Veterans of the Vietnam Era (38 U. S.C 4212); 52.232-33, Payment by Electronic Funds Transfer -- Central Contractor Registration (31 U.S.C. 3332). The DFARS clause 252.212-7001, Contract terms and conditions required to implement statutes or Executive Orders applicable to Defense acquisitio ns of commercial items, applies to this acquisition, including 252.225-7001, Buy American Act and Balance of Payment Program (41 U.S.C. 10a-10d, E.O. 10582); 252.247-7024, Notification of Transportation of Supplies by Sea (10 U.S.C 2631). The DFARS Clause 252.204-7004, Required Central Contractor Registration applies. Full FAR/DFARS text may be obtained at website http://www.arnet.gov/far. IMPORTANT--Only offerors who are registered in the Central Contractor Database are eligible for award (reference DFARS Clause 52.204-7004 or see web site http://ccr.edi.disa.mil). This NOTICE OF INTENT IS NOT A REQUEST FOR COMPETITIVE QUOTATIONS. Interested parties may identify their interest and capability to respond to the requirement or submit quotations. NO PRODUCT SU BSTITUTIONS/EQUIVALENT PRODUCTS WILL NOT BE ACCEPTED. All quotations (with capability statements) received by 8 February 2002 will be considered by the Government; however, a determination by the Government not to compete this proposed purchase order based upon responses to this notice is solely within the discretion of the Government. Information received will normally be considered solely for the purpose of determining whether to conduct a competitive procurement. The Statement of Work for this action has been determined to be severable and is revised as follows: Contiguous Connection Model (CCM) Refinements, Integration and Support 1.0 Objective The objective of this effort is to provide technical and engineering support to the Intelligence and Security Command (INSCOM) Information Dominance Center (IDC) in the refinement of the Contiguous Connection Model (CCM) to focus its capabilities on real-t ime Indicators and Warnings (I&W). 2.0 Background Intelligence and counter-intelligence support to force protection, and for protection of all US persons at home and abroad, continues to pose an immediate and perplexing problem. This has been re-emphasized by the recent terrorist attacks. Events such as this ultimately lead to the suggestion of some intelligence failure. In fact, given the diversity of the threat and the staggering amount of information available, the intelligence analyst is often too overloaded with a wide variety of diverse data to be able to perform comprehensive and, most significantly, timely analysis. The problem is compounded by the likely fact that there will not be one key piece of information. The more likely situation will be a pattern of small, seemingly unrelated events th at, unfortunately, will be recognized only after the fact during the inevitable extensive investigations and postmortems. The same scenario applies to less violent, but equally dangerous threats posed by foreign intelligence organizations and those who wo rk for them. The counterintelligence activities of the United States protect not only our physical and military security, but our economic security as well. But, as in trying to predict where and when terrorist acts may occur, trying to detect possible o r likely counterintelligence threats often falls victim to the massive amounts of information that daunt the most diligent analytical efforts. Furthermore, in both cases, information will likely be dispersed in many different locations and stored in many databases. CCM is one of the cornerstone technologies that the INSCOM IDC is using to address these problems. It is used to organize, store and correlate both structured and unstructured information. CCM organizes structured information based on the natural relationships among the data it contains. In contrast to the relational model, CCM stores both data and the multidimensional relationships that together comprise information. Correlation of this s tructured information is based on common data values and relationships. For example, terrorist groups using the same cover terms in relationship to selected planning activities would be automatically grouped together by CCM. The end result is a persisten t information space that supports intuitive navigation. Starlight, a 3D visualization application developed by Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, is one example of the IDC applications used to examine this information space. CCM uses a similar approach in working with unstructured, or free text, information. The information is parsed and semantic relationships between words retained in the CCM structure. Correlation takes place and documents are grouped by word usage. The r esult is a detailed vocabulary specific to the corpus of documents being analyzed. Sets of algorithms are then run against this structure to identify similarities in the way words are used. Conceptual queries against the corpus of documents are now possi ble. For example, a query requesting documents containing the concept of ?terrorist bombings? will return documents containing the phrase ?Shining Path dynamited a bus?. This ?tactical? level concept query compliments the more strategic level queries pos sible with other IDC tools such as Autonomy. 3.0 Tasks The contractor shall furnish the necessary personnel, material, equi pment, and data to successfully perform the following tasks. Specific task deliverables are identified with each task. 3.1 Task 1 - Develop Target Architecture and Specification The contractor shall determine the modifications necessary to scale CCM to support continuous processing and discovery of real-time Indicators and Warnings (I&W), for both local and global environments. The focus of this effort will be on near real time d etermination of the concepts contained in an information stream (i.e. streaming concepts). The relationships identified using the current version of CCM are sufficient for most of the questions asked about traditional military forces. However, supporting present full spectrum conflict indicates that additional ?simple but implied? semantic conce pts need to be developed (e.g. ?is related loosely too?, ?could possibly be?, etc?). The strength of the implication must also be quantified. Documents can be decomposed into keyword phrases with up to two words preceding each keyword and two words after e ach keyword and the results represented by an object described by a set of hierarchically arranged attributes. Using Syntactical Role Analysis (SRA) it is possible to compare the attributes of each object with all other objects and find a set of words with similar hierarchically arranged attributes. This comparison provides a means for finding a set of best-fit rel ated words that perform a similar syntactical role based on the data domain. Similarity between two words is established by comparing the number of shared phrases for the two words divided by the larger of the total number of phrases in the document corpus that contain the words being compared. This approach has the effect of weighting word similarity higher if they share more similar usage and share fewer dissimilar usages. This analysis is language-independent, because it examines the sequential relations hip between words in sentences, independent of the language grammar. Such modifications/enhancements shall not be limited to software but shall also consider use of different hardware platforms. The objectives of this task are: (1) Define the tasks necessary to make CCM the cornerstone for launching the IDC?s high performance, inferencing and parallel computing efforts with emphasis on streaming concepts. (2) Describe the target architecture in terms of a hardware/software specification mapped to the tasks defined in (1) above. 3.1 Task 2 - Continuous Processing and Discovery of Real-Time Indicators and Warnings (I&W), Local and Global Environments (i.e. streaming concepts). The government shall review the report produced under task 1. Based on those approved portions of the target architecture, the contractor shall make the required modifications to the CCM . 3.3 Task 3 - Integration and Testing Support The contractor shall provide continuous subject matter expertise for Integration and Testing Capability of the CCM throughout the modifications. This will include support for installation, system administration, upgrade and troubleshooting of CCM installa tions. 3.4 Task 4 - Training The contractor shall provide ten training sessions lasting one to three days. Training will be conducted at the location determined to be most cost effective to the Government (HQ INSCOM; contractor facility; or software developers/maintainers locations). 4.0 Deliverables. The contractor shall provide the following deliverables in support of this SOW: 4.1.1. Technical Report (including proposed architecture) defining the tasks necessary to perform Task 1. 4.1.2. CCM Software modified IAW the government approved tasks. 4.1.3. Algorithms required to create domain specific vocabularies that support near real time determination of the concepts contained in an information stream. 4.1.4. Software that implements algorithms identified in 4.1.3. 4.1.5. Domain Specific Vocabularies. 4.1.6. Monthly Progress Report to include description of wor k accomplished, status of funds, hours expended and any issues. 5.0 Period of Performance. The total period of performance for this effort is 18 months from date of award. 6.0 Optional Task 1. The contractor shall evaluate existing and emerging technology and identify candidate hardware platforms that offer the potential to scale CCM to meet future projected data transfer rates. Following government selection of a candidate platform, the contr actor shall make the necessary modifications to the CCM software to allow it to function on the selected hardware. 6.1 Deliverables. 6.1.1 Technology Evaluation Report 6.1.2 Scaled version of the CCM software. 6.2 Period of Performance. The period of performance for Optional Task 1 is 12 months from award. 7.0 Optional Task 2. The contractor shall examine the existing CCM algorithms used in structuring and manipulating discrete data and identify ppotential changes and/or new algorithms that potentially will define implicit relationships among correlated data. Based on governm ent approval, the contractor shall implement these algorithms in the existing CCM engine. 7.1 Deliverables. 7.1.1 Algorithm Evaluation Report 7.1.2 CCM Based Inference Engine Software 7.2 Period of Performance. The period of performance for Optional Task 2 is 12 months from award. (End of Statement of Work.) This is a 100% set-aside for small business, NAICS Code 541330, Small Business Size Standard $4M. All responsible sources should submit a quote to fax number (703) 806-1156 or by email to Margaret Herring, Contract Specialist, mkherri@vulcan.belvoir.army .mil. Numbered Note: 1
 

Web Link

Army Single Face to Industry
(http://acquisition.army.mil)
 

Place of Performance

Address: HQ USAINSCOM, Directorate of Contracting ATTN: IAPC-DOC, 8825 Beulah Street Fort Belvoir VA

Zip Code: 22060-5246

Country: US
 

Record

SN20020130/00019440-020128210320 (fbodaily.com)
 

Source

FedBizOpps.gov Link to This Notice
(will not be valid after Archive Date)

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