SOURCES SOUGHT
D -- RFI-DSAMS
- Notice Date
- 6/29/2007
- Notice Type
- Sources Sought
- NAICS
- 541519
— Other Computer Related Services
- Contracting Office
- Other Defense Agencies, Defense Security Cooperation Agency, Defense Budget and Contracts, 201 12th Street Suite 203, Arlington, VA, 22202-5408, UNITED STATES
- ZIP Code
- 00000
- Solicitation Number
- Reference-Number-HQ0013-RFI-062907
- Response Due
- 7/9/2007
- Archive Date
- 7/24/2007
- Description
- THIS IS A REQUEST FOR INFORMATION (RFI) ONLY. This request is for planning purposes only, and does not constitute an Invitation for Bids, a Request for Proposals, a Solicitation, a Request for Quotes, or an indication the Government will contract for the items contained in the RFI. This notice is not to be construed as an acquisition Request For Proposal (RFP), nor is any commitment on the part of the Government to award a contract implied, nor does the Government intend to pay for any information submitted as a result of this request. The Government does not reimburse respondents for any cost associated with submission of the information being requested or reimburse expenses incurred to interested parties for responses to this RFI. Any responses received will not be used as a proposal. DSCA, formerly known as the Defense Security Assistance Agency (DSAA), is a joint Defense Agency under the purview of the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy. DSCA manages a family of activities collectively known as Security Cooperation (or Security Assistance) programs. Among these, the largest is Foreign Military Sales (FMS) where the U.S. Government sells or leases weapons, ammunition, spares, training, and other defense-related services to over 150 countries and special organizations (e.g., NATO) on a government-to-government basis. These sales and leases are formalized in contract-like documents known as Letters of Offer and Acceptance (LOA). In addition to selling military training via FMS, DSCA also manages the provision of foreign military training under other programs that receive U.S. appropriated funding. These include International Military Education and Training (IMET), the Counter-Terrorism Fellowship Program (CTFP), and the International Narcotics and Law Enforcement (INL) program. While DSCA manages these programs in support of the U.S. Departments of Defense and State, the MILDEPs perform most of the detailed work and are the main users of DSAMS. The DSAMS Program DSAA, now known as DSCA, initiated the DSAMS program in 1995. Its objective was to replace numerous duplicative legacy information systems supporting the Security Assistance mission with a single modern information system and to enforce Security Assistance standard business processes (to the extent possible) across the three MILDEPs. The program was planned to proceed incrementally in four modules, with each successive module adding functionality to a single DSAMS system and eliminating the need to use the legacy systems for that purpose: 1. The Case Development Module (CDM) would support the development of Letters of Offer and Acceptance (LOAs) for Foreign Military Sales (FMS) cases. 2. The Case Implementation Module (CIM) would support the initial funding of FMS cases 3. The Training Module (TM) would support the management and execution of international military training 4. The Case Execution Module (CEM) would support the execution of logistics and acquisition support, as well as case closure. The team that developed and maintained DSAMS consisted of a contractor and DSADC. DSADC was formed in 1997 by transferring 100 personnel responsible for maintaining some of the MILDEP legacy systems from the Army, Navy and Air Force to DSCA (then DSAA). DSADC is a field component of DSCA under primary program direction from DSCA?s DSAMS Program Management Office (PMO) within the Information Technology Directorate. In addition to having DSAMS responsibilities, DSADC personnel continue to maintain the Army and Navy legacy systems that they originally developed when part of the Army and Navy. The DSAMS program succeeded in deploying the CDM incrementally in 1998-1999 and CIM in August 2000 to all the MILDEPs and relevant Defense Agencies. In October 2000, the new DSCA Director issued a decision memorandum to (1) continue the TM to completion and (2) cancel the CEM. Although the TM was originally designed to be deployed simultaneously to the Army, Navy, and Air Force (to support cross-Service training as well as standard operations for overseas U.S. Security Assistance Offices (SAOs)), large Air Force requirements changes in the financial functionality area ultimately led to a September 2005 decision by the DSCA Director to initially deploy only to the Army and Navy, with deployment to the Air Force occurring at the earliest realistic opportunity following a successful Army/Navy deployment and appropriate stability thereafter. Going from a tri-Service deployment scenario to a two-Service deployment scenario (with Air Force remaining on its legacy system) required building what is known as the ?Black Box?, and the Black Box logic will have to be removed once deployment to the Air Force is accomplished. The TM was successfully deployed to the Army and Navy in October 2006 and is expected to still be undergoing above-average maintenance at the inception of this contract in approximately September 2007. The TM consists of two broad areas of functionality: Operations/Pricing and Financial functionality. For the Air Force, Operations/Pricing functionality has largely been completed, but the Financial functionality is not yet complete. An intensive Air Force financial requirements review effort had been completed in May 2005, and reconstruction of this new financial functionality against those requirements was suspended on 16 September 2005 when the decision was made to initially deploy only to the Army and Navy. All code completed to that point in time was integrated into the code base, and further analysis, design, coding, and testing after that point continued only to the extent that the targeted Army and Navy deployment was not adversely impacted. The successful contractor will need to assess the partially completed work, complete the development and initial system testing, and allow for sufficient rounds of user testing with converted data to enable it to be safely deployed at the earliest opportunity. As the system is best deployed at the beginning of a fiscal year following prior close-out actions for the previous fiscal year, the earliest opportunity is currently late October 2008 (and thus late October 2009 is the next earliest opportunity). Training Module Functionality Functionality in the TM is broadly subdivided into two major areas, each with two sub-areas: a. Operations & Pricing Area - The Operations sub-area involves maintaining lists of courses, creating notional series of courses (called tracks) for future foreign military students, obtaining quotas for courses from DoD schools, assigning students to courses, planning travel and living allowances (TLA) for the students and their dependents, and monitoring and reporting student progress. - The Pricing sub-area involves establishing costs for various sub-components of every course. Multiple prices are involved for each component, depending on the nature of the funding, the country?s economic situation, and the nature of the country?s relationship with the U.S. Government. b. Financials Area - The Pre-Performance sub-area deals with planning and obligating funding for courses. It establishes obligations in the MILDEPs? accounting systems. - The Post-Performance sub-area deals with billing and reimbursements. It liquidates the obligations created in the Pre-Performance sub-area. It also provides data to the MILDEPs? accounting systems. Another major TM function is to interact with overseas U.S. Security Assistance Officers (SAOs) who vet, test for English proficiency, and collect information (e.g., name, rank, unit, and passport number) on foreign students needed to produce the Invitational Travel Order (ITO). The SAOs do this using a client-based application called the Training Management System (TMS) that, effective with DSAMS TM deployment to Army/Navy in October 2006, communicates with DSAMS via an intermediate server known as the Security Assistance Network (SAN) server. When the TM is deployed to the Air Force, a single two-way interface between DSAMS and the SAN for all MILDEPs will exist. Until that happens, the ?Black Box? logic will be employed to take into account that the Air Force remains on its legacy system. The Black Box allows the complex interaction among DSAMS, SAN and TMS to occur while only two MILDEPs are in DSAMS and one remains in its legacy environment. Some partial benefits are achieved for the Air Force, and SAOs interacting with Air Force, as a result of TM being deployed to Army/Navy and the associated moves to DSAMS-enhanced versions of SAN and TMS. The full benefits will be realized once Air Force is brought into TM. Accounting System Interfaces The TM was designed to replace the individual legacy Army, Navy and Air Force systems used to manage foreign military training, and to continue to interface with the legacy accounting systems used by those Services. For the Army and Navy, those accounting systems are the standard legacy systems long used throughout the Army and Navy, the Standard Army Financial System (STANFINS) and the Standard Accounting and Reporting System (STARS) respectively. For the Air Force, the command responsible for foreign military training (Air Force Security Assistance Training squadron (AFSAT)) has long used an accounting system, the Training Control System (TRACS) Financial System (TFS) unique to the Air Force?s foreign military training program. DSAMS was originally planned to interface with TFS. In March 2002, the Air Force decided to move the accounting for foreign military training from TFS to the Air Force?s standard legacy General Accounting and Finance System (GAFS) in concert with the replacement of the Air Force?s foreign military training execution system by DSAMS TM. The Air Force made this decision because it would meet Air Force strategic automation goals and objectives in the longer term, acknowledging the adverse impact to the DSAMS cost and schedule in the shorter term. DSCA concurred with this decision. However, in the continuation of DSAMS?s development to completion, significant changes to the Air Force financial requirements and the interaction with GAFS forced the September 2005 decision to initially deploy to just the Army and Navy, with deployment to the Air Force occurring later at the earliest opportunity. Case Development Module and Case Implementation Module Functionality The CDM functionality in DSAMS is used by the MILDEPs and Defense Agencies to create Letters of Offer and Acceptance (LOAs). This is not a simple word processing function, but rather a complex data-driven process that includes pricing, enforcing diplomacy-based business rules such as sanctions, creation of payment schedules, enforcement of workflow rules, maintenance of timeline metrics, maintenance of lists of permissible military articles and services (MASLs), and document preparation. The CIM functionality in DSAMS includes receiving notification from the DFAS Defense Integrated Financial System (DIFS) that customer funds have been received and conveying LOA data and funding status to the legacy case execution systems of the MILDEPs. The principal objectives are to acquire software development and maintenance services necessary to: a. Modify portions of the software functionality in response to critical requirements changes or software defects discovered in production after TM was deployed to the Army and Navy in October 2006, as well as requirements deferred for initial deployment but needed as soon as possible following deployment; b. Design, build, modify and test portions of the functionality needed to ultimately allow the TM to be deployed to the Air Force at the earliest opportunity; c. Provide a portion of the defect reduction and enhancements after TM deployment to the Air Force; d. Provide certain associated support (e.g., data conversion, reports development, user test support, database administration, release/configuration management, interface development) to the TM development and production maintenance effort; and e. Provide portions of general maintenance and enhancement support to all aspects of DSAMS as needed. The responses to this RFI will provide the basis for updating the PWS and support subsequent government decisions. Respondents to this RFI are encouraged to provide a capabilities briefing demonstrating they have skills and proficiency to perform all aspects of the requirement. Companies are encouraged to respond if they have the capability and capacity to provide the above identified services with little or no disruption of services. Respondents to this RFI should identify their company name, address, email, telephone number and a name and telephone number of a point of contact having the authority and knowledge to clarify responses with government representatives. To the maximum extent possible, please submit non-proprietary information. Any proprietary information submitted should be identified as such and will be properly protected from disclosure. The potential NAICS code is 541519 with a size limitation standard of $23M. In the response, firms must provide their business size status in accordance with the Small Business Administration (www.sba.gov) website for the above referenced NAICS Code they fall within (i.e. small business, 8(a), HUBZones, Small Disabled Veteran Owned Business, etc.). Submissions are due within 10 days, NLT 9 Jul 2007, 2:00 P.M. EST of this announcement and may be made by emailing the capabilities response to: Mrs. Lisa Davis, (703) 604-0893, lisa.davis@dsca.mil, Defense Security Cooperation Agency (DSCA) 201, 12th Street, Ste. 203, Arlington, Virginia 22202. Offerors should use the title "RFI-DSAMS" in their submission heading. DISCLAIMER In accordance with FAR 15.201(e), responses to this RFI are not offers and cannot be accepted by the Government to form a binding contract. This RFI is issued for information and planning purposes only and does not constitute a solicitation. All information received in response to this RFI that is marked Proprietary will be handled accordingly. Responses to the RFI will not be returned. Information provided in response to this RFI will be used to assess tradeoffs and alternatives available for determining how to proceed in the acquisition process. This notice is part of the Governments Market Research, a continuous process for obtaining the latest information.
- Place of Performance
- Address: 201 12th Street South, Ste 203, Arlington, VA 22202
- Zip Code: 22202
- Country: UNITED STATES
- Zip Code: 22202
- Record
- SN01332012-W 20070701/070629231929 (fbodaily.com)
- Source
-
FedBizOpps Link to This Notice
(may not be valid after Archive Date)
| FSG Index | This Issue's Index | Today's FBO Daily Index Page |