SOURCES SOUGHT
D -- Professional Forum Software Tool
- Notice Date
- 11/20/2008
- Notice Type
- Sources Sought
- NAICS
- 541511
— Custom Computer Programming Services
- Contracting Office
- Department of the Army, Army Contracting Agency, North Region, ACA, Fort Leavenworth, ACA, North Region Contracting Center - Fort Leavenworth, 600 Thomas Avenue, Unit 3, Fort Leavenworth, KS 66027-1417
- ZIP Code
- 66027-1417
- Solicitation Number
- W91QF4-09-R-BCKS
- Response Due
- 11/28/2008
- Archive Date
- 1/27/2009
- Point of Contact
- Tammy Davis, (913) 684-1892<br />
- Small Business Set-Aside
- N/A
- Description
- This is not a Presolicitation or Solicitation announcement. This is a sources sought notice only. The purpose of this sources sought notice is to gain market knowledge of potential small business sources and their size classifications; HUBZone, 8(a), Small Disadvantage Business, Woman Owned Business, Veteran Owned Business, Service Disabled Veteran Owned Business relative to NAICS Code 541511, with a small business size standard not to exceed $25,000,000.00 gross annual receipts. Responses to this sources sought synopsis will be used by the Government to make appropriate determinations about potential sources only. No solicitation is currently available at this time. After review of the responses to this sources sought announcement a synopsis and/or solicitation announcement may be published at a later time. Responses to this notice shall include company name, address, point of contact, size of business pursuant to North American Industrial Classification Code (NAICS) and must respond to the following questions: 1) Is your business a small business under NAICS code 541511? 2) Does your firm qualify as a small disadvantaged business? 3) If disadvantaged specify if your firm is certified under Section 8(a) of the Small Business Act? 4) Are you a certified HUBZone firm? 5) Are you a woman-owned or operated business? 6) Are you a certified Service-Disabled Veteran Owned or Veteran Owned business? 7) Is your business a large business? Please provide a capability statement addressing your organizations ability to perform as a prime contractor the work described in the draft PWS below. Please provide only general capabilities relative to the work in the PWS as this is not a solicitation and no responses will be considered as proposals to perform the work. This is market research information only. This Sources Sought Notice does not pertain to Competitive Outsourcing under A-76. This is not request for proposal and in no way obligates the Government to award any contract. Please provide responses to this notice to: tammy.davis4@us.army.mil Telephone responses will not be accepted. Please provide responses in writing no later than 1 December 2008. Responses to this sources sought announcement will not be considered as a response to any solicitation, a request to be added to a prospective offerors list, or to receive a copy of any solicitation. No solicitation is currently available at this time. Please send an email to david.westall@us.army.mil for a copy of the software performance characteristics. Draft Performance Work Statement (PWS) 1.TITLE: The U. S. Army Battle Command Knowledge System (BCKS) Communities of Practice 2.BACKGROUND: BCKS is tasked with the development and support of a federated system of Professional Forums to support U. S. Army soldiers, civilians and contractors in the dissemination and sharing of knowledge. A Professional Forum (PF) is a group of people who share a concern, set of problems, or a passion about a topic or topics; who deepen their knowledge and expertise in their area(s) of interest by sharing their knowledge and experience on an ongoing basis. The Army formed the Battle Command Knowledge Systems Knowledge Networks Division (KND) to develop and support the growth of Professional Forums at all leadership levels to support the sharing of tacit knowledge and experiences. The goal of Army Professional Forums is to develop individual leadership and enhance unit combat capabilities through the sharing and leveraging of knowledge and experiences already learned. Battle Command Knowledge System currently supports five levels of Professional Forums: -Strategic Leaders -Field Grade Officers -Company Grade Officers -Non-Commissioned Officers -Army Civilians The Leader Network, that hosts approximately 45,000 members, currently supports over 20 professional forums in various stages of development. Professional Forums are informal by nature and allow members to discuss whatever topics are deemed important to enhancing professional development, job performance, and leadership skills. These conversations are monitored (not censored) to maintain an appropriate focus and operational security (OPSEC) requirements; they are not scripted or dictated by the chain of command. To support Professional Forums a software tool is required that provides connections of its members through asynchronous conversation around relevant and timely content. The software tool must provide maximum flexibility and ease of use to the user to facilitate the transfer of knowledge. 3.SCOPE: Conceptual requirements The solution absolutely must facilitate vibrant conversations among practitioners. Conversations are essential to community-of-practice (CoP) members ability to share and generate knowledge. CoP members must be able to pose their own questions and comments as new knowledge objects, and must be able to participate in conversations on existing knowledge objects (documents, discussions, videos, polls, etc.). The solution must support both threaded discussions (asynchronous, nonlinear conversations) and instant messaging (synchronous, linear conversations), although there is no need to save IM conversations as knowledge objects. Moreover, the solution must allow community facilitators to share knowledge objects with other communities, enabling conversations across boundaries. The solution must encourage participation. Since participation in Professional Forums should be voluntary, the software solution must make participation easy, efficient, and non-threatening. Navigation through the software must be intuitive, requiring no train-up for users. It should enable users to quickly identify the most recent and most popular contributions, as well as allow contributors to send their products quickly and without complication to the Professional Forums content managers. The software must be tailorable to allow each Professional Forums layout and appearance to meet the needs and preferences of the particular community. The solution must support user-friendly access to knowledge and information. To support one-to-one knowledge exchange, it must enable participants to identify and contact subject-matter experts. It must also have a robust search capability that enables participants to locate relevant resources such as current and archived knowledge objects (e.g., tools, threaded discussions), reference materials (e.g., FMs, TMs), and internal and external information sources (e.g., Internet). Although the enterprise system should have a common database, the solution must allow for community-specific searches (to save time). The solution must provide flexibility of structure. Vibrant Professional Forums are self-organizing, self-directed, and constantly evolving to meet the needs of their members. Within the Army, there are many diverse Professional Forums with diverse needs, some of which have not yet been identified. Therefore, the software solution must be flexible and adaptable. It must be able to support the rapid development of nested sub-communities. It must allow for private and public spaces, since some Professional Forums will have a legitimate need to require by-name access. It should also allow for some knowledge objects, even ones within public Professional Forums, to be accessible only to those with security clearances, to permit the posting of sensitive information. Finally, the solution must be able to support growing communities without inconveniencing those communities (i.e., it must be scalable). 4.APPLICABLE DOCUMENTS: DoD Web Site Administration Policies & Procedures - 11 JAN 2002 Army Regulation 25-1 Army Knowledge and Information Technology Management - 30 Jun 2004. Army Regulation 25-2 Information Assurance 14 NOV 2003 5.SPECIFIC TASKS: a.The contractor shall provide web-based collaborative software that will support the expansion of current Professional Forums built on Tomoye ECCO, as well as, the development of future Professional Forums. i.The application must be open, scalable, extensible and flexible to provide for the development of a system that can be maintained and evolve as the needs of Professional Forums change. 1.Open class of application software that provides some combination of interoperability, portability and industry-wide software standards. 2.Making software fully extensible means you can include code modules at run time without recompilation. 3.Application flexibility means modular, customizable and easily configured software. ii.The application shall provide worldwide availability for users via the Army standard browser applications, Internet Explorer and FireFox, or other World Wide Web Consortium compliant web browsers. iii.The system must support 24/7 operations and have an uptime in excess of 99%. iv.If required, migration of data and database objects must be 98% to 100% accurate within one day. 1.The data source is an MS SQL 2005 database created by the BCKS implementation of Tomoye Ecco 2.1. 2.The database servers are located at Ft. Leavenworth KS. b.The application should contain the following Web-based application features: i.Reading/Viewing Features - See Exhibit 1 for list of details ii.Posting Features - See Exhibit 1 for list of details iii.Administrative Features - See Exhibit 1 for list of details iv.Content Management - See Exhibit 1for list of details c.The contractor shall provide technical and functional expertise to BCKS and supporting personnel at Fort Leavenworth and Radford, VA. i.This expertise shall include the technical support of installing, operating and maintaining the application. ii.This functional expertise shall include the business process knowledge, skills and ability to establish, grow and maintain professional forums. iii.This expertise shall include change management techniques and training for the trainers at Fort Leavenworth for the adoption and use of online communities by their members. iv.This expertise shall include analysis of the existing security model and migration of the security model if required. v.This expertise shall include analysis of the existing database and migration as required to retain 98% of the knowledge objects, associations and member profiles. d. The government may require customization of the software or additional technical support to ensure the operability of the software. Contractor shall demonstrate the capability of providing this additional support should the government have a requirement for the additional support. Any additional programming/support requirements shall be accommodate through bilateral modification to the contract. 6.DELIVERABLES AND DELIVERY SCHEDULE: a.Web based collaborative software with server based subscription for unlimited members on primary sites of two network enclaves with remote disaster recovery for each to be delivered NLT 30 days after award of contract. b. All application source code and supporting documentation. c One year software maintenance agreement that provides for on-call technical support, software patches, service packs and version upgrades. d. Quarterly technical and functional training support for users of the software to support training on software updates and to maintain government trainer competency. i.This training shall include the technical support of installing, operating and maintaining the application. ii.This functional training shall include the business process knowledge, skills and ability to establish, grow and maintain professional forums. iii.This training for the BCKS trainers at Fort Leavenworth shall include change management techniques for the adoption and use of online communities by their members. iv.This training shall include applications security model. e Quarterly (or upon release of software patches, service packs or versions) update documentation to support the modification and tailoring of the software to meet the needs of individual professional forums. f Updated software application documentation manuals to train users and support staff to use the software. 7.GOVERNMENT-FURNISHED EQUIPMENT AND INFORMATION (GFE/GFI) a.Government will include information technology infrastructure, to include hardware and associated operating system software. Microsoft Windows Server and MS SQL are supported. Software that does not work within a Microsoft based environment is not suitable or appropriate. b.Considering the background and scope above the contractor shall include in the proposal the hardware and software infrastructure required to support a minimum of 75 concurrent users and 250,000 members. 8.PERIOD OF PERFORMANCE: The performance period for all tasks is for one year from date of award, with four option years to be exercised based on operational need and funding availability. 9.SECURITY: The Key Management System must support network-level security, encryption, session-management, and authentication services to safeguard sensitive information and prevent unauthorized access. a. Secure Sockets Layer (SSL). This solution must utilize SSL, version 4 or later, to secure all data transmissions between the client and server. The Army will provide the server certificate. b. Role-Based Permissions. The solution must employ role-based permissions to prevent unauthorized users from gaining access to restricted data or applications. This security scheme will be enforced to the object level. The user may be denied access, granted read-only access, or the ability to publish, modify or delete an object. c. Auditing and Logging Services. Auditing and logging services will provide administrators the tools to analyze the knowledge sites usage and potential unauthorized access attempts. d. User Authentication. The knowledge site will utilize a username and password authentication, in accordance with AR 25-2 and shall validate through the Army Knowledge Online (AKO) user authentication process. e. This work includes unclassified and classified Secret operations of software approved for use on the DoD, SIPRNet. Does this require that the contractor personnel have clearances or does this just mean that the software has to be certified for use on classified networks?
- Web Link
-
FedBizOpps Complete View
(https://www.fbo.gov/?s=opportunity&mode=form&id=88a1429254fb02e89e8b057360c92cc1&tab=core&_cview=1)
- Place of Performance
- Address: ACA, North Region Contracting Center - Fort Leavenworth 600 Thomas Avenue, Unit 3 Fort Leavenworth KS<br />
- Zip Code: 66027-1417<br />
- Zip Code: 66027-1417<br />
- Record
- SN01708148-W 20081122/081120220258-88a1429254fb02e89e8b057360c92cc1 (fbodaily.com)
- Source
-
FedBizOpps Link to This Notice
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