FBODaily.com | FedBizOpps: MOD | A | Service Oriented Information Management

FBO DAILY - FEDBIZOPPS ISSUE OF JULY 19, 2013 FBO #4255
MODIFICATION

A -- Service Oriented Information Management

Notice Date: 7/17/2013
Notice Type: Modification/Amendment
NAICS: 541712 — Research and Development in the Physical, Engineering, and Life Sciences (except Biotechnology)
Contracting Office: Department of the Air Force, Air Force Materiel Command, AFRL/RIK - Rome, 26 Electronic Parkway, Rome, New York, 13441-4514, United States
ZIP Code: 13441-4514
Solicitation Number: BAA-10-08-RIKA
Point of Contact: Lynn G. White, Phone: (315) 330-4996
E-Mail Address: Lynn.White@rl.af.mil
(Lynn.White@rl.af.mil)
Small Business Set-Aside: N/A
Description: The purpose of this modification is to republish the original announcement, incorporating all previous modifications, pursuant to FAR 35.016(c). This republishing also includes the following changes: (a) Section II: Added information about the rights to select or not select based on funding; (b) Section III.3: Deleted CCR information and added new SAM requirements; (c) Section IV.1: Added new URL for BAA Guide to Industry; (d) Section IV.6: Added information about possible compromise of classified information; (e) Section VI.3: Added Data Rights information; and (f) Changed all "rl.af.mil" email addresses to "us.af.mil" to reflect new changes to the standard Air Force email addresses. No other changes have been made. NAICS CODE: 541712 FEDERAL AGENCY NAME: Department of the Air Force, Air Force Materiel Command, AFRL - Rome Research Site, AFRL/Information Directorate, 26 Electronic Parkway, Rome, NY, 13441-4514 TITLE: Service Oriented Information Management ANNOUNCEMENT TYPE: Initial Announcement FUNDING OPPORTUNITY NUMBER: BAA-10-08-RIKA CFDA Number: 12.800 I. FUNDING OPPORTUNITY DESCRIPTION: The Information Directorate of the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL/RI), Rome Research Site, is soliciting white papers under this announcement for innovative technologies to enable the effective management of information for military operations. AFRL/RI has been conducting research in the areas of information dissemination and management. Resultant approaches have focused on the creation of services-based information management techniques. This research has led to the development of a series of information dissemination and management reference implementations based on an abstract architecture for information management. The continued development of innovative concepts and enhanced services that maximize the value of information to support the objectives of the military enterprise is the primary focus of this BAA. Background: The Information Management Branches of the Information Directorate of the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL), Rome Research Site, are researching and developing techniques and services for information sharing and management. Information Management (IM) is defined as a set of intentional activities to maximize the value of information to support the objectives of the military enterprise. These activities include the promulgation of standards, control of information and the administrative activities that support it. Data capture and discovery, data shaping, dissemination, manipulation for exploitation, persistence and destruction of information supporting the entire enterprise information lifecycle, all provide an information advantage and allows the proficient sharing of information across the Department of Defense (DoD) and with mission partners. An information centric technology view is central to the AFRL Information Management vision. Understanding how concepts for sharing information amongst multiple producers, consumers and operational domains and the technologies that can be applied in the unique military operational and tactical domains are of critical importance. These information sharing techniques will be established based on multiple factors such as geographic regions, functional requirements, organizational boundaries, and network topology/infrastructure. The necessary modes of interaction will require higher-level services where service agreements help manage the interactions in a seamless and efficient manner. The objective of IM is to discover, contextualize, and share quality information among producers and consumers within available resources and policy constraints. This must be accomplished across network and enclave boundaries to enable true information dominance. Information deemed "quality" information is trusted, pertinent and relevant while adhering to temporal constraints. Trusted information is of known provenance, evaluable, confidential and available with integrity. The pertinence of information is determined by the appropriate granularity, format, fidelity, and transfer rate of the information. Relevant information conforms to the role and mission of the consumer and is significantly related to information criticality. The timeliness of information ensures temporal relevance to support an action or decision. The quantum of managed information, referred to as a Managed Information Object (MIO), is comprised of a payload (e.g., document, imagery, or video clip) and metadata that characterizes the payload context (e.g., topic, time, and location). Information repositories and an information catalogue represent major entities within the information space that assist both consumers and producers in assuring their information requirements are satisfied. The MIO metadata is used in the information catalog to describe what information is currently available or may become available in the future. The four major technical areas addressed in this BAA, Federated Information Spaces, Mission-Driven Quality of Service, Survivable Information Services and Dynamic Information Relationship Exploitation are of current interest to the Information Directorate and support the development and operation of AFRL Information technology goals. Federated Information Spaces: Information management involves a set of actors who interact with the information infrastructure and are categorized as producers, consumers, federates and managers. Producers are information space clients that add information to the information space. That information will reside in either persistent or transient information repositories. Producers may publish information, advertise capabilities, process feedback from consumers, receive requests for information or retract inaccurate information. Consumers are information space clients that request and utilize information within the information space via a subscription or by issuing a search. Consumers can browse, query, subscribe, transform and assess the suitability of information within the information space. Multiple-connected information spaces are referred to as "federated information spaces." Federates virtually extend the contents of an information space by appropriately sharing information among other federation members. The federation interfaces to the information space encompass trust management, confidentiality and integrity management, policy mediation, content filtering, information replication, and pass-through processing activities. Federation managers are software components responsible for policy, resource management, maintenance services and processes that permit the information space to process information demands in a secure, timely, and reliable manner. Manager responsibilities are as follows: monitor and control the information; navigate and understand the syntactic relationships among MIO types; dictate, understand and delegate prevailing security policies on MIO types; monitor and control resource allocation and performance; ensure accurate data mediation; configure and monitor effectiveness of information support; establish and maintain federated space relationships; maintain information space currency; and audit information infrastructure transactions. A single universal information space is unlikely to be achieved in any sufficiently complex military endeavor and it will be necessary to have multiple information spaces where clients need to breach both logical and physical boundaries to retrieve the information they require. The desire is to have the information itself foster a connection forming a federation that allows an information space to be ‘extended' by the contents of another. The advantage provided by this class of federation is providing consumers a "single" information space. Producers merely share information within their ‘native' information space and federation services ensure that it is shared appropriately with other federate members. Having the information spaces interact directly will require service agreements between the respective information spaces. Mission-Driven Quality of Service: The layers of services that form the information management infrastructure empower an information space wherein information is managed directly, rather than delegating all information management responsibilities to applications that produce and consume information. Actors interact with one another indirectly through the information space and the layers of services that manage the information within the information space. The activities of information management can be organized into multiple service layers. These service layers include security, workflow, Quality of Service (QoS), transformation, brokerage, and information space maintenance. The security layer includes access control, transaction and audit logging, security policy with federated information spaces, identity protection and an ability to sanitize content. The primary functions that enable effective enterprise workflows are managing workflow configurations, which encompass instantiating and maintaining workflows and assessing and optimizing their performance. The QoS layer is responsible for ensuring that an information management system can best serve the needs of its consumers, producers and federated information spaces when faced with changing operating conditions in the communication and information levels within available resources. Activities that can be performed in an information space to increase service quality in the information domain are: respond to client context, allocate resources to clients, prioritize results and replicate information. The primary activities within the transformation layer are contextualizing information, transforming MIOs (e.g. interoperability), state- and context-sensitive information processing and supporting user and manager defined processing functions. The role of the brokerage layer is to match available (or potentially available) information to information needs. The brokerage layer is responsible for processing queries, supporting browsing, maintaining subscriptions, notifying consumers, processing requests for information, and supporting federated information space proxies. The maintenance layer interacts directly with the underlying information space. It is responsible for posting new information to the information space repositories, verifying the format of posted information, informing the brokerage layer of the introduction of new MIOs, managing the lifecycle of MIOs in the repositories, managing internal information space performance, providing support for configuration management of models stored in the information space (e.g., work flow models and MIO types) and for retrieving specific MIOs from the information space repositories. Survivable Information Services: Current IM services lack sufficient protection against malicious attacks, planned and unplanned disruptions, corruption and leakage of information. Improving the survivability for the next generation of (IM) services can be accomplished by extending current architecture and design techniques to include Information Assurance (IA)-cognizant and survivable methodologies. Mechanisms for preserving system availability, integrity, and confidentiality will support continued operation through sustained cyber attacks while avoiding a single point of failure. Further development of information-centric activity monitoring mechanisms, which allow capture of activities across distributed services, will provide a greater level of insight into service capability and real-time state information. Dynamic Information Relationship Exploitation: The role of the Information Catalogue is to maintain meta-information representative of information inherent to use of the information space. The meta-information may include the stored information index, models (the taxonomy of the different MIOs supported by the information space) and producer and consumer client status. The information repositories receive, maintain, and provide the actual pieces of information or MIOs. An important factor driving the effectiveness of IM services is the degree to which metadata describes available information. Static, document-centric IM solutions have led to inefficiencies in relational semantics and the absence of the ability to adequately correlate dynamic information sources. This has created a fundamental requirement to create a more adaptive and organic information model. The exploration of techniques for establishing autonomic information relationships will aid in exploiting related information between information instances and classes. Developing solutions for dynamic information grouping, group management and exploitation capabilities will enable cross and multi-type subscription and query provisioning. Refining the flexibility in the model and enabling any existing information to be managed while exploiting its native format and processing algorithms is vital. Enabling transparent mechanisms that exploit interrelationship between multiple types of information to dynamically create new, more comprehensive information should also be explored. Additional reference information: 1. "Phoenix: SOA based information management services" http://link.aip.org/link/?PSISDG/7350/73500P/1 2. "A Reference Model for Information Management to Support Coalition Information Sharing Needs" http://www.dodccrp.org/events/10th_ICCRTS/CD/papers/274.pdf For more information about information management, the DoD Information Management & Information Technology Strategic Plan 2008-2009 can be found at: http://www.defenselink.mil/cio-nii/docs/DoDCIO_Strat_Plan.pdf All white papers should address solutions based on the development of non-proprietary, modular components (including the delivery of source code) that will be capable of integrating into existing or emerging IM infrastructures. The objectives of this BAA is to solve the technical problems inherent to moving beyond manipulation of information as a set of singular objects and focus on information quality, relationships, and fault tolerance. FY10 Focus Areas: Survivable Information Management Survivable systems are capable of adapting their behavior, function, and resource allocation in response to a variety of intermittent and permanent disruptions to maintain adequate levels of mission functionality. Understanding the operational range of expected deployment configurations and survivability requirements is a necessary condition to instrumenting a responsive survivable system. This task focuses on the development of operationally relevant, mission focused, deployment scenarios and survivability requirements. This task also requires the specification of an assessment framework for evaluating the efficacy of approaches to address survivability requirements within the context of varied deployment configurations. Offerors are encouraged to: • identify operational deployments for Information Management (IM) services focusing on tactical environments. • identify and describe missions and mission scenarios within tactical operational deployments that capitalize on the use of IM services. • define mission centric survivability requirements that identify and describe required levels of IM service quality and availability. • define, design and implement an assessment framework which will be used to test and assess survivability techniques in mission oriented, operationally relevant contexts. Tactical Information Management Tactical Information Management (TIM) has many of the same objectives as IM as discussed in the master BAA 10-08-RIKA announcement, but with the added focus on dismounted users, improved radio-based communications and resource constraints that aren't present in enterprise-class defense applications. Emphasis for this research will be on a series of demonstrations with feedback from real users to learn practical lessons and improve the overall system. Offerors are encouraged to focus on the exploration of techniques applicable to tactical situations for: • improving effective/reliable communications in low bandwidth (as low as 2 kbps) situations • service discovery and prioritization • TIM interfaces in a resource-constrained environment • effective management of various tactical data types in a manner that is relevant to dismounted users • effective, prioritized reach-back to federated systems in a bandwidth-aware manner Offerors are also encouraged to build upon existing IM and QOS components for this work, including the AFRL-developed Advanced Information Management System (AIMS), Marti, and Phoenix/Fawkes, in order to maximize productivity for the research, and to provide maximum benefit to the Government. (2) The recommended date for submittal of FY 11 white papers for the two topic areas above is 24 June 2010. FY12 Focus Areas: Offerors should be conscious of our increasing focus on the use of Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) to maximize interoperability and reusability of AFRL-developed technologies. Offers should demonstrate an understanding of service development and, to the extent reasonable and possible, propose deliverables that are readily deployed as services (i.e., discoverable, well-defined, self-contained modules that are independent of state or context of other services). Where SOA is a viable part of an offeror's technical approach, offeror should be prepared to discuss SOA infrastructure requirements at program kickoff and updates to decomposition and implementation status discussed at technical program reviews. Potential SOA deliverables might include Web Service Description Language (WSDL) service definitions, documented service behaviors (dependencies, sequence diagrams, stateful assumptions), and configurable virtual machine service deployments. INFORMATION MANAGEMENT (IM) IN THE CLOUD Growing capabilities to collect intelligence data are quickly outpacing our ability to manage and exploit this information. Current collection capabilities produce an incredible amount of data that needs to be contextualized, organized, and stored for the purposes of efficient information retrieval and analysis. While there is no formal definition of what a "cloud" is, cloud computing is essentially a means to provide access to services over the Internet on the fly without a significant investment in new infrastructure, training, or licensed software. A trend toward the adoption of cloud computing is being observed within the DoD and Federal sectors as a means to save costs. IM services will need to be designed to operate in this new environment and leverage cloud resources to ingest messages at a rate that is proportional to the size and frequency of data coming off of surveillance platforms. Once ingested, this large volume of data needs to be indexed and catalogued so that hundreds of external users can find the information they need for forensic analysis. Internal to the cloud, the data must be quickly delivered to large object processing and exploitation services for the production of actionable information for subsequent dissemination to users external to the cloud. Cloud computing is a natural evolution of the widespread adoption of virtualization, SOA, and utility computing where software and hardware capabilities are delivered as services to customers. Next generation IM services will need to exploit the elasticity properties of the cloud, that is, the ability to scale-up capacity on demand and scale-down and release that capacity when it is no longer needed. We seek to assess cloud computing technologies for "best of breed" features to host, build and deploy economy-of-scale IM services, identify the technical challenges associated with deploying IM services to the cloud, and architect, build and deploy cloud capable IM services that are affordable, scalable and meet mission and information assurance requirements. Offerors are encouraged to: • Identify how to optimize the use of the resiliency, scalability, and flexibility features offered by various cloud solutions (e.g., private, public and hybrid) to best deploy scalable IM services. • Investigate and develop mechanisms that cloud resource monitoring and control that are adequate for influencing required Quality of Service (QoS) and information delivery prioritization policies. • Investigate the ramifications of cloud-based services on information and mission assurance (e.g., security, survivability, availability, and consistency). • Design and implement cloud-ready IM services that can fully exploit the promises of increased elasticity, performance, availability and reliability offered by the cloud. OpenPod OpenPod will provide a significant net-centric capability to many existing AF platforms without modification to their Operational Flight Programs (OFPs) - a significant hurdle for technology insertion. The objective of OpenPod is to increase pilot (and other user) effectiveness through: 1) the development of information management (IM) capabilities, 2) the instantiation of those capabilities in a tactical pod, and 3) the exposure of information and enabled applications via the multi-function displays (MDF). OpenPod will also facilitate connectivity to tactical collaborators and to those users in the broader enterprise with post-mission responsibilities. To accomplish this, we need a capability to rapidly evolve the mission software suite over time and to load and access a mission-appropriate subset of that suite in an open-standards-based manner. There are several key challenges to achieving this capability. The first is the protection of applications from one another (to be accomplished with SE Linux); the second is to be able to toggle between applications in an intuitive manner; the third is to be able to configure their respective data sources and sinks in a dynamic tactical environment. OpenPod will allow greatly enhanced processing of data in real-time on the pod, as well as the timely addition of new pod capabilities by third parties through the use of an OpenPod application programming interface (API), including the ability to leverage the embedded HPC in the pod. Offerors are encouraged to: • Investigate and develop mechanisms to enhance aircraft net-centric capability without relying upon or modifying the OFP of the host platform. • Design and develop modifications to existing pods (e.g. Litening) to expand Size, Weight and Power (SWaP) for computational elements.. • Build upon current AFRL-developed prototypes to modernize the MDF interface to support on-board information management services. • Demonstrate the ability to archive and retrieve data from pod repositories post-mission for construction of mission briefs and for pre-loading pod repositories pre-mission. • Design and integrate hardware modifications to a Litening or Litening-class pod to support onboard signal processing, archive, and retrieval with support for net-centric operations without reliance upon or modification of host platform OFP. • Develop software to present archived and real-time data hosted on the pod to the pilot for improved situation awareness. Secure Tactical/Enterprise Gateway A secure tactical-to-enterprise gateway is necessary to provide effective, efficient, and secure information exchange between tactical and enterprise systems, protecting both the warfighter from threats in the enterprise environment and the enterprise environment from threats in the tactical edge. In order to ensure timely situational awareness across the tactical battlespace, the Air Force needs a gateway that enables tactical systems to communicate with the enterprise systems that handle much of the protocol, security, and resource mediation. Ultimately, we seek to understand how every packet that passes through the gateway supports the mission, what priority it deserves, whether it presents a threat to the network, and what will break if it is dropped. Secure Tactical/Enterprise Gateway (STEG) will provide a robust and secure router for message traffic passed between the operations floor and tactical IP-based networks. This task focuses on the development of such a system to manage the boundary between the operations center networks and IP-based tactical networks that is robust, prioritized, and compatible with current mission planning tools. This task also requires the use of SOA services, in addition to any other instantiations required or desired, to maximize interoperability and usability. Offerors are encouraged to: • Investigate and develop intelligent SOA-based IM services that prioritize the information that is sent into the tactical environment. • Investigate and develop mediation frameworks for resource profiles, threat models, requirements, and constraints of the different environments, and the bridge from tactical to enterprise, enterprise to enterprise through the tactical edge, and tactical to tactical through the enterprise, to balance the amount of security that is needed and that one can afford. • Investigate and develop a connection abstraction between the tactical and enterprise environment with the appearance and functionality of one parameterized connection presented to the tactical side that map seamlessly to different parameterized connections to enterprise sides and their security requirements. • Investigate and develop mechanisms to maintain and improve functionality, performance, and reliability of constant connectivity even as resources, connectivity, and topology change dynamically, and a means for automatic reconnection in intermittent connectivity situations. • Investigate and develop how to limit the impact of devices that are compromised or fall into enemy hands. • Investigate and develop security solutions and configurations to address the vulnerabilities and threat models for composed tactical and enterprise environments and their integration points. FY 13 Focus Areas: Adaptive Mission Templates Information management revolves around a set of universal services (e.g., publish, subscribe, and query) that manage the exchange of information objects between producers and consumers. These services enable a wide range of solutions in multiple application domains where the safe and secure sharing of information is necessary. A Managed Information Object (MIO) contains the content of a message (payload), and has the required structure and metadata to allow that message to be decoded and understood. Metadata may be thought of as "data about data" (e.g., an attribute such as AircraftType might be used to specialize the meaning of the value Fighter). Other examples of the metadata information that may be present in an information object include: • Who sent the message (trust) • Who or what the subject that the content pertains to is about (identity) • What file format or media type applies to the content (application/protocol to be used) • What security classification applies (access/disclosure control) • When the content was created and the message sent (temporal context) • Where the subject that the content pertains to was located (geospatial context) • How the content was derived (provenance/pedigree) The metadata captured in a MIO may serve many purposes, and can be essential for ascertaining the criticality and relevance of information to missions, user roles, and tasks. The real challenge and ultimate goal is to ensure that the information being exchanged via information management services is of maximum value to the mission. The metadata provided by information objects, as well as the payload, combined with the services that manage them according to established policies make this goal achievable. In general, AFRL seeks to leverage (semantic) technologies to reason about the relevance, relatedness, and priority of information as it applies to missions and cyber resource constraints based in large part on the payload and metadata supplied by information objects. Specifically, AFRL seeks to build user friendly tools that can be used to define "meta-models" for information classes, mission types, common roles, and generalized assets from which domain specific mission and information model instances can be easily constructed. This "mission template" toolset can then be used to correlate missions, roles, and users to information classes, types, and instances, thereby specifying the linkages between mission users/roles and information types/instances. These linkages, in turn, would be interpreted by information management services in order to autonomously implement and enact mission relevant information flows. Semantic web technologies and standards such as the Resource Description Framework (RDF), Web Ontology Language (OWL), rule specification languages, and inference engines show great potential for the development of adaptive mission templates, provided user friendly tools that ride upon these standards can be developed. It is anticipated that this work will leverage Common Mission Definition (CMD) or other Community of Interest (COI) schemas and taxonomies, as well as operational Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) to develop meta-models and domain-specific use cases. The ability to automatically ingest mission models (e.g., from an Air Tasking Order (ATO)) is of particular interest to ease the development of meaningful mission and information model instances that provide the basis for realistic proof-of-concept implementations and demonstrable capabilities. Mission template toolset capabilities and generated outputs must be accessible (e.g., via a well-documented Application Programming Interface (API)or web service interface) and consumable (e.g., via open system standard data formats and protocols) in such a way that the information management services (e.g., AFRL Phoenix base implementation services, which can be made available as Government furnished software in the event of an award) can interpret and act upon them to enact mission relevant information delivery consistent with the semantics specified in the templates. For this focus area ONLY: Individual awards will not normally exceed 24 months with dollar amounts normally ranging between $250,000 to $500,000 per year. White papers for this focus area only will be accepted until 23 Aug 2012. Please send your white paper to: James.Milligan.2@us.af.mil. If you have questions please contact James Milligan at 315-330-4763. Responsive Information Prioritization and Relationships (RIPR) Project Information environments are becoming more integrated between functional areas, command echelons, armed services and coalition partners. The identification and delivery of mission relevant information is essential. We must reduce response latency and limit information overload, while increasing situational understanding to result in more timely and informed decision-making. These net-centric environments will become congested through heavy use, degraded by faults or contested by cyber adversaries, but are still required to support missions. The goal of the Responsive Information Prioritization and Relationships (RIPR) project is to develop and demonstrate resource-aware Information Management (IM) services that are responsive to the information needs of active missions. In contested and/or congested environments, information will be assessed and delivered in accordance to the relative importance of each mission. The roles of the individual information consumers in support of each mission must also be considered. The resulting capability will ensure that mission related/relevant information is dynamically identified, prioritized and given preferential access to available resources. These resources include, but are not limited to, network bandwidth, CPU and memory use that maximizes mission effectiveness. This project will build upon the AFRL Phoenix Prime information management services. Phoenix Prime leverages the Phoenix core services which act as the foundational baseline for the AFRL IM research. The RIPR objectives require the development and integration of services that can identify information relationships and relevancy, employ a multidimensional prioritization capability based on missions and roles and respond to resource availability changes. To varying degrees, initial prototypes of these features have been developed under previous projects and can serve as starting points for this work. In the AFRL Agile IM project, semantic reasoning components are currently being developed in a software branch of the Phoenix core services. This work is exploiting the semantic web W3C technologies such as Web Ontology Language (OWL) and Resource Descriptive Framework (RDF) allowing the automatic identification of information relationships. Further development of these semantic capabilities by adapting them for mission relevancy assessment and bringing them into the Phoenix Prime baseline as some form of a Semantic Reasoning Service (SRS) is desired. Quality of Service (QoS) Enabled Dissemination (QED) is a Phoenix core capability that is also available to be leveraged and matured during this project. QED assigns priorities to messages only by their type and enacts dissemination policies based on network performance. A Prioritized Information Dissemination (PID) capability will be required as an integral function of the Phoenix Prime delivery service. The PID assigns information priorities based on active missions and the users/roles that support those missions as well as by information type. The ongoing Survivable IM project of the AFRL Service Protection and Fault Tolerance program is developing a resource monitoring and reaction capability as part of the Phoenix core. Survivable IM's goal is to detect and respond to various faults and failures involving services, information and compute nodes. This capability will be available at the end of FY13 and can be leveraged by RIPR in FY14. AFRL seeks to have this capability combined with network monitoring technology resulting in a Resource Monitoring Service (RMS) and a Resource Reactor Services (RRS) to operate with Phoenix Prime. This mechanism allows information prioritization and delivery to be responsive to resource availability. Identity management is a critical component to meeting RIPR objectives since each information producer/consumer must be identified. This will allow producers/consumers to be given preferential access to information and resources based upon their role in the supported missions as established by the prioritization policies. An Identity Management Service (IDMS) is required within Phoenix Prime to support the AuthN/AuthZ requirements. It is important that the resulting resource aware, mission relevancy services are integrated into a consistent Phoenix Prime baseline. RIPR will conclude with an operationally relevant, end-to-end demonstration that proves the efficacy of the capabilities as well as identified measures to key performance parameters. Offerors are encouraged to provide a strong on-site (AFRL/RISA Rome, NY) presence to minimize development and integration risks through collaboration with the AFRL in-house development teams. Additional reference information: 1. "Phoenix: Service Oriented Architecture for Information Management - Base Implementation Document": http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a549822.pdf 2. "Integrated Information and Network Management for End-to-End Quality of Service": http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a556118.pdf 3. Agile IM, Survivable IM and Phoenix Prime interim documentation is available by sending a request to risa@us.af.mil For this focus area ONLY: Individual awards will not normally exceed 24 months with dollar amounts normally ranging between $350,000 to $700,000 per year. White papers for this focus area only will be accepted until 23 Aug 2012. Please send your white paper to: Timothy.Blocher@us.af.mil. If you have questions please contact Timothy Blocher at 315-330-3941. FY14 Focus Area Mission-Driven Tasking of Information Producers The objective of Mission-driven Tasking of Information Producers (MTIP) is to enable asynchronous collection requests and synchronous tasking control of information producers based on consumer mission information needs derived by tactical information management (IM) services. While applicable in many domains, the focus of this project is on ground users interacting over tactical networks with one or more piloted aircraft to collaborate on surveillance and targeting. Existing tactical information dissemination is limited to information that has been produced as a result of the sensor operator's actions, a labor intensive task that competes for the pilot's attention, slows down surveillance and target prosecution, and results in suboptimal sensor allocation. MTIP seeks to improve this process by using consumer information needs (as expressed through subscriptions and queries) to generate and prioritize tasking for information producers (e.g., airborne sensors) in order to optimize their value to multiple consumers (e.g., ground users). This project will also enable consumers to satisfy time-critical information needs through the synchronous tasking of producers, including closed-loop control. The MTIP objectives require development of technologies that enable opportunistic task generation, prioritization and scheduling of tasks among multiple sensors and multiple platforms based on mission needs, and synchronous tasking of sensors to include closed-loop control. Offerors are encouraged to: • Design and develop IM services that derive information needs from the subscriptions and queries registered with the IM platform as well as from an analysis of anticipated mission information needs for which there is no information in the IM repository, and present these needs as tasks to the proper information producer. • Investigate methods to aggregate requests for information into a single task (when those requests share data or when they can be partially fulfilled by existing information) to improve tasking efficiency for a shared resource. • Design and develop a task prioritization software prototype that continually evaluates opportunistic task requests against mission relevance as well as the cost of collection and dissemination. • Design and develop IM services that broker connections between information producers and consumers and investigate protocols that enable synchronous tasking and closed-loop control of producers by authorized consumers. • Build upon existing Tactical Information Management user clients for a Multi-Function Display, Android mobile devices, and FalconView to enable asynchronous collection requests, synchronous tasking, and sensor operator input and override. Offerors are encouraged to build upon existing IM and QOS components for this work, including the AFRL-developed Marti tactical information management services and Android Tactical Assault Kit (ATAK) [1], in order to maximize productivity for the research and to provide maximum benefit to the Government. For this focus area ONLY: Individual awards will not normally exceed 30 months with dollar amounts normally ranging from $250,000 to $600,000 per year. The recommended date for submittal of white papers for this focus area ONLY is July 31, 2013. Please send your white paper to: James.Metzler@us.af.mil. If you have questions please contact James Metzler at 315-330-4033. [1] Gillen, M.; Loyall, J.; Usbeck, K.; Hanlon, K.; Scally, A.; Sterling, J.; Newkirk, R.; Kohler, R., "Beyond line-of-sight information dissemination for Force Protection," MILITARY COMMUNICATIONS CONFERENCE, 2012 - MILCOM 2012, vol., no., pp.1,6, Oct. 29 2012-Nov. 1 2012 II. AWARD INFORMATION: Total funding for this BAA is approximately $24.9 Million. The anticipated funding to be obligated under this BAA is broken out by fiscal year as follows: FY 10 - $1 Million; FY 11 - $6 Million; FY 12 - $6 Million; FY 13 - $6 Million; and FY14 - $5.9 Million. Individual awards will not normally exceed 30 months with dollar amounts normally ranging between $150,000 to $500,000 per year. There is also the potential to make awards up to any dollar value. Awards of efforts as a result of this announcement will be in the form of contracts, grants and cooperative agreements depending upon the nature of the work proposed. The Government reserves the right to select all, part, or none of the proposals received, subject to the availability of funds. All potential Offerors should be aware that due to unanticipated budget fluctuations, funding in any or all areas may change with little or no notice. III. ELIGIBILITY INFORMATION: 1. ELIGIBLE APPLICANTS: All foreign allied participation is excluded at the prime contractor level. 2. COST SHARING OR MATCHING: Cost sharing is not a requirement. 3. System for Award Management (SAM). Offerors must be registered in the SAM database to receive a contract award, and remain registered during performance and through final payment of any contract or agreement. Processing time for registration in SAM, which normally takes forty-eight hours, should be taken into consideration when registering. Offerors who are not already registered should consider applying for registration before submitting a proposal. 4. Executive Compensation and First-Tier Sub-contract/Sub-recipient Awards: Any contract award resulting from this announcement may contain the clause at FAR 52.204-10 - Reporting Executive Compensation and First-Tier Subcontract Awards. Any grant or agreement award resulting from this announcement may contain the award term set forth in 2 CFR, Appendix A to Part 25 http://ecfr.gpoaccess.gov/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=ecfr&sid=c55a4687d6faa13b137a26d0eb436edb&rgn=div5&view=text&node=2 :1.1.1.41&idno=2#2:1.1.1.4.1.2.1.1 IV. APPLICATION AND SUBMISSION INFORMATION: 1. APPLICATION PACKAGE: THIS ANNOUNCEMENT CONSTITUTES THE ONLY SOLICITATION. WE ARE SOLICITATING WHITE PAPERS ONLY. DO NOT SUBMIT A FORMAL PROPOSAL AT THIS TIME. Those white papers found to be consistent with the intent of this BAA may be invited to submit a technical and cost proposal. See Section VI of this announcement for further details. For additional information, a copy of the AFRL "Broad Agency Announcement (BAA): Guide for Industry," May 2012, may be accessed at: http://www.wpafb.af.mil/shared/media/document/AFD-120614-075.pdf. 2. CONTENT AND FORM OF SUBMISSION: CONTENT AND FORM OF SUBMISSION: Offerors are required to submit 3 copies of a 2 to 3 page white paper summarizing their proposed approach/solution. The purpose of the white paper is to preclude unwarranted effort on the part of an offeror whose proposed work is not of interest to the Government. The white paper will be formatted as follows: Section A: Title, Period of Performance, Cost of Task, Name of Company; Section B: Task Objective; and Section C: Technical Summary. Multiple white papers within the purview of this announcement may be submitted by each offeror. If the offeror wishes to restrict its white papers/proposals, they must be marked with the restrictive language stated in FAR 15.609(a) and (b). All white papers/proposals shall be double spaced with a font no smaller than 12 pitch. In addition, respondents are requested to provide their Commercial and Government Entity (CAGE) number, a fax number, and an e-mail address with their submission. All responses to this announcement must be addressed to the technical POC, as discussed in paragraph six of this section. 3. SUBMISSION DATES AND TIMES: It is recommended that white papers be received by the following dates to maximize the possibility of award: FY 10 should be submitted by 24 May 2010; FY 11 by 02 Aug 2010; FY 12 by 01 Aug 2011; FY 13 by 01 Aug 2012; FY 14 by 01 Aug 2013. White papers will be accepted until 2pm Eastern time on 30 Sep 2014, but it is less likely that funding will be available in each respective fiscal year after the dates cited. The end date for this BAA will be 30 Sep 2014. FORMAL PROPOSALS ARE NOT BEING REQUESTED AT THIS TIME. 4. FUNDING RESTRICTIONS: The cost of preparing white papers/proposals in response to this announcement is not considered an allowable direct charge to any resulting contract or any other contract, but may be an allowable expense to the normal bid and proposal indirect cost specified in FAR 31.205-18. Incurring pre-award costs for ASSISTANCE INSTRUMENTS ONLY are regulated by the DoD Grant and Agreements Regulations (DODGARS). 5. All Proposers should review the NATIONAL INDUSTRIAL SECURITY PROGRAM OPERATING MANUAL, (NISPOM), dated February 28, 2006 as it provides baseline standards for the protection of classified information and prescribes the requirements concerning Contractor Developed Information under paragraph 4-105. Defense Security Service (DSS) Site for the NISPOM is: http://www.dss.mil/. 6. OTHER SUBMISSION REQUIREMENTS: DO NOT send white papers to the Contracting Officer. All responses to this announcement must be addressed to ATTN: Robert Flo AFRL/RISD, reference BAA-10-08-RIKA, 525 Brooks Road, Rome NY 13441-4505. Respondents are required to provide their Dun & Bradstreet (D&B) Data Universal Numbering System (DUNS) number with their submittal and reference BAA-10-08-RIKA. Electronic submission to Robert.Flo@us.af.mil will also be accepted. Please include the text "BAA-10-08-RIKA" in the subject line. In the event of a possible or actual compromise of classified information in the submission of your white paper or proposal, immediately but no later than 24 hours, bring this to the attention of your cognizant security authority and AFRL Rome Research Site Information Protection Office (IPO): Bob Kane 315-330-2324 0730-1630 Monday-Friday 315-330-2961 Evenings and Weekends Email: robert.p.kane.7@us.af.mil V. APPLICATION REVIEW INFORMATION: 1. CRITERIA: The following criteria, which are listed in following order of importance, will be used to determine whether white papers and proposals submitted are consistent with the intent of this BAA and of interest to the Government. Criteria, (1) through (3) are of equal importance and criteria (4) is of lesser importance than criteria (1) through (3): (1) Overall Scientific and Technical Merit - The extent to which the offeror's approach demonstrates an understanding of the problem, the approach for the development and/or enhancement of the proposed technology, integration approach, innovative and novel approach and appropriate levels of readiness at yearly intervals, (2) Related Experience - The extent to which the offeror demonstrates relevant technology and domain knowledge, (3) Openness/Maturity of Solution - The extent to which existing capabilities and standards are leveraged and the relative maturity of the proposed technology in terms of reliability and robustness and (4) Reasonableness and Realism of Proposed Costs - The overall estimated costs and fees (if any) should be clearly justified and appropriate for the technical complexity of the effort. No further evaluation criteria will be used in selecting white papers/proposals. Individual white paper/proposal evaluations will be evaluated against the evaluation criteria without regard to other white papers and proposals submitted under this BAA. White papers and proposals submitted will be evaluated as they are received. Cost sharing will not be considered in the evaluation. 2. REVIEW AND SELECTION PROCESS: Only Government employees will review the white papers/proposals for selection. The Air Force Research Laboratory's Information Directorate has contracted for various business and staff support services, some of which require contractors to obtain administrative access to proprietary information submitted by other contractors. Administrative access is defined as "handling or having physical control over information for the sole purpose of accomplishing the administrative functions specified in the administrative support contract, which do not require the review, reading, or comprehension of the content of the information on the part of non-technical professionals assigned to accomplish the specified administrative tasks." These contractors have signed general non-disclosure agreements and organizational conflict of interest statements. The required administrative access will be granted to non-technical professionals. Examples of the administrative tasks performed include: a. Assembling and organizing information for R&D case files; b. Accessing library files for use by government personnel; and c. Handling and administration of proposals, contracts, contract funding and queries. Any objection to administrative access must be in writing to the Contracting Officer and shall include a detailed statement of the basis for the objection. VI. AWARD ADMINISTRATION INFORMATION: 1. AWARD NOTICES: Those white papers found to be consistent with the intent of this BAA may be invited to submit a technical and cost proposal. Notification by email or letter will be sent by the technical POC. Such invitation does not assure that the submitting organization will be awarded a contract. Those white papers not selected to submit a proposal will be notified in the same manner. Prospective offerors are advised that only Contracting Officers are legally authorized to commit the Government. All offerors submitting white papers will be contacted by the technical POC, referenced in Section VII of this announcement. Offerors can email the technical POC for status of their white paper/proposal no earlier than 45 days after proposal submission. 2. ADMINISTRATIVE AND NATIONAL POLICY REQUIREMENTS: Depending on the work to be performed, the offeror may require a SECRET facility clearance and safeguarding capability; therefore, personnel identified for assignment to a classified effort must be cleared for access to SECRET information at the time of award. In addition, the offeror may be required to have, or have access to, a certified and Government-approved facility to support work under this BAA. This acquisition may involve data that is subject to export control laws and regulations. Only contractors who are registered and certified with the Defense Logistics Information Service (DLIS) at http://www.dlis.dla.mil/jcp/ and have a legitimate business purpose may participate in this solicitation. For questions, contact DLIS on-line at http://www.dlis.dla.mil/jcp or at the DLA Logistics Information Service, 74 Washington Avenue North, Battle Creek, Michigan 49037-3084, and telephone number 1-800-352-3572. You must submit a copy of your approved DD Form 2345, Militarily Critical Technical Data Agreement, with your Proposal. 3. Data Rights: The potential for inclusion of Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) or data rights other than unlimited on awards is recognized. In accordance with (IAW) the Small Business Administration (SBA) SBIR Policy Directive, Section 8(b), SBIR data rights clauses are non-negotiable and must not be the subject of negotiations pertaining to an award, or diminished or removed during award administration. Issuance of an award will not be made conditional based on forfeit of data rights. If the SBIR awardee wishes to transfer its SBIR data rights to the Air Force or to a third party, it must do so in writing under a separate agreement. A decision by the awardee to relinquish, transfer, or modify in any way its SBIR data rights must be made without pressure or coercion by the agency or any other party. Non-SBIR data rights less than unlimited will be evaluated and negotiated on a case-by-case basis. Government Purpose Rights are anticipated for data developed with DoD-reimbursed Independent Research and Development (IR&D) funding. 4. REPORTING: Once a proposal has been selected for award, offerors will be given complete instructions on the submission process for the reports. VII. AGENCY CONTACTS: Questions of a technical nature shall be directed to the cognizant technical point of contact, as specified below: TPOC: Robert Flo Telephone: (315) 330-2324 Email: Robert.Flo@us.af.mil Questions of a contractual/business nature shall be directed to the cognizant contracting officer, as specified below: Lynn White Telephone (315) 330-4996 Email: Lynn.White@us.af.mil The email must reference the solicitation (BAA) number and title of the acquisition. In accordance with AFFARS 5315.90, an Ombudsman has been appointed to hear and facilitate the resolution of concerns from offerors, potential offerors, and others for this acquisition announcement. Before consulting with an ombudsman, interested parties must first address their concerns, issues, disagreements, and/or recommendations to the contracting officer for resolution. AFFARS Clause 5352.201-9101 Ombudsman (Apr 2010) will be incorporated into all contracts awarded under this BAA. The AFRL Ombudsman is as follows: Ms. Barbara Gehrs AFRL/PK 1864 4th Street Building 15, Room 225 Wright-Patterson AFB OH 45433-7130 FAX: (937) 656-7321; Comm: (937) 904-4407 All responsible organizations may submit a white paper which shall be considered. Added: <input type="hidden" name="dnf_class_values[procurement_notice][description][1][added_on]" value="2013-07-17 10:41:01">Jul 17, 2013 10:41 am The purpose of this modification is to republish the original announcement, incorporating all previous modifications, pursuant to FAR 35.016(c). This republishing also includes the following changes: (a) Section II: Added information about the rights to select or not select based on funding; (b) Section III.3: Deleted CCR information and added new SAM requirements; (c) Section IV.1: Added new URL for BAA Guide to Industry; (d) Section IV.6: Added information about possible compromise of classified information; (e) Section VI.3: Added Data Rights information; and (f) Changed all "rl.af.mil" email addresses to "us.af.mil" to reflect new changes to the standard Air Force email addresses. No other changes have been made. NAICS CODE: 541712 FEDERAL AGENCY NAME: Department of the Air Force, Air Force Materiel Command, AFRL - Rome Research Site, AFRL/Information Directorate, 26 Electronic Parkway, Rome, NY, 13441-4514 TITLE: Service Oriented Information Management ANNOUNCEMENT TYPE: Initial Announcement FUNDING OPPORTUNITY NUMBER: BAA-10-08-RIKA CFDA Number: 12.800 I. FUNDING OPPORTUNITY DESCRIPTION: The Information Directorate of the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL/RI), Rome Research Site, is soliciting white papers under this announcement for innovative technologies to enable the effective management of information for military operations. AFRL/RI has been conducting research in the areas of information dissemination and management. Resultant approaches have focused on the creation of services-based information management techniques. This research has led to the development of a series of information dissemination and management reference implementations based on an abstract architecture for information management. The continued development of innovative concepts and enhanced services that maximize the value of information to support the objectives of the military enterprise is the primary focus of this BAA. Background: The Information Management Branches of the Information Directorate of the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL), Rome Research Site, are researching and developing techniques and services for information sharing and management. Information Management (IM) is defined as a set of intentional activities to maximize the value of information to support the objectives of the military enterprise. These activities include the promulgation of standards, control of information and the administrative activities that support it. Data capture and discovery, data shaping, dissemination, manipulation for exploitation, persistence and destruction of information supporting the entire enterprise information lifecycle, all provide an information advantage and allows the proficient sharing of information across the Department of Defense (DoD) and with mission partners. An information centric technology view is central to the AFRL Information Management vision. Understanding how concepts for sharing information amongst multiple producers, consumers and operational domains and the technologies that can be applied in the unique military operational and tactical domains are of critical importance. These information sharing techniques will be established based on multiple factors such as geographic regions, functional requirements, organizational boundaries, and network topology/infrastructure. The necessary modes of interaction will require higher-level services where service agreements help manage the interactions in a seamless and efficient manner. The objective of IM is to discover, contextualize, and share quality information among producers and consumers within available resources and policy constraints. This must be accomplished across network and enclave boundaries to enable true information dominance. Information deemed "quality" information is trusted, pertinent and relevant while adhering to temporal constraints. Trusted information is of known provenance, evaluable, confidential and available with integrity. The pertinence of information is determined by the appropriate granularity, format, fidelity, and transfer rate of the information. Relevant information conforms to the role and mission of the consumer and is significantly related to information criticality. The timeliness of information ensures temporal relevance to support an action or decision. The quantum of managed information, referred to as a Managed Information Object (MIO), is comprised of a payload (e.g., document, imagery, or video clip) and metadata that characterizes the payload context (e.g., topic, time, and location). Information repositories and an information catalogue represent major entities within the information space that assist both consumers and producers in assuring their information requirements are satisfied. The MIO metadata is used in the information catalog to describe what information is currently available or may become available in the future. The four major technical areas addressed in this BAA, Federated Information Spaces, Mission-Driven Quality of Service, Survivable Information Services and Dynamic Information Relationship Exploitation are of current interest to the Information Directorate and support the development and operation of AFRL Information technology goals. Federated Information Spaces: Information management involves a set of actors who interact with the information infrastructure and are categorized as producers, consumers, federates and managers. Producers are information space clients that add information to the information space. That information will reside in either persistent or transient information repositories. Producers may publish information, advertise capabilities, process feedback from consumers, receive requests for information or retract inaccurate information. Consumers are information space clients that request and utilize information within the information space via a subscription or by issuing a search. Consumers can browse, query, subscribe, transform and assess the suitability of information within the information space. Multiple-connected information spaces are referred to as "federated information spaces." Federates virtually extend the contents of an information space by appropriately sharing information among other federation members. The federation interfaces to the information space encompass trust management, confidentiality and integrity management, policy mediation, content filtering, information replication, and pass-through processing activities. Federation managers are software components responsible for policy, resource management, maintenance services and processes that permit the information space to process information demands in a secure, timely, and reliable manner. Manager responsibilities are as follows: monitor and control the information; navigate and understand the syntactic relationships among MIO types; dictate, understand and delegate prevailing security policies on MIO types; monitor and control resource allocation and performance; ensure accurate data mediation; configure and monitor effectiveness of information support; establish and maintain federated space relationships; maintain information space currency; and audit information infrastructure transactions. A single universal information space is unlikely to be achieved in any sufficiently complex military endeavor and it will be necessary to have multiple information spaces where clients need to breach both logical and physical boundaries to retrieve the information they require. The desire is to have the information itself foster a connection forming a federation that allows an information space to be ‘extended' by the contents of another. The advantage provided by this class of federation is providing consumers a "single" information space. Producers merely share information within their ‘native' information space and federation services ensure that it is shared appropriately with other federate members. Having the information spaces interact directly will require service agreements between the respective information spaces. Mission-Driven Quality of Service: The layers of services that form the information management infrastructure empower an information space wherein information is managed directly, rather than delegating all information management responsibilities to applications that produce and consume information. Actors interact with one another indirectly through the information space and the layers of services that manage the information within the information space. The activities of information management can be organized into multiple service layers. These service layers include security, workflow, Quality of Service (QoS), transformation, brokerage, and information space maintenance. The security layer includes access control, transaction and audit logging, security policy with federated information spaces, identity protection and an ability to sanitize content. The primary functions that enable effective enterprise workflows are managing workflow configurations, which encompass instantiating and maintaining workflows and assessing and optimizing their performance. The QoS layer is responsible for ensuring that an information management system can best serve the needs of its consumers, producers and federated information spaces when faced with changing operating conditions in the communication and information levels within available resources. Activities that can be performed in an information space to increase service quality in the information domain are: respond to client context, allocate resources to clients, prioritize results and replicate information. The primary activities within the transformation layer are contextualizing information, transforming MIOs (e.g. interoperability), state- and context-sensitive information processing and supporting user and manager defined processing functions. The role of the brokerage layer is to match available (or potentially available) information to information needs. The brokerage layer is responsible for processing queries, supporting browsing, maintaining subscriptions, notifying consumers, processing requests for information, and supporting federated information space proxies. The maintenance layer interacts directly with the underlying information space. It is responsible for posting new information to the information space repositories, verifying the format of posted information, informing the brokerage layer of the introduction of new MIOs, managing the lifecycle of MIOs in the repositories, managing internal information space performance, providing support for configuration management of models stored in the information space (e.g., work flow models and MIO types) and for retrieving specific MIOs from the information space repositories. Survivable Information Services: Current IM services lack sufficient protection against malicious attacks, planned and unplanned disruptions, corruption and leakage of information. Improving the survivability for the next generation of (IM) services can be accomplished by extending current architecture and design techniques to include Information Assurance (IA)-cognizant and survivable methodologies. Mechanisms for preserving system availability, integrity, and confidentiality will support continued operation through sustained cyber attacks while avoiding a single point of failure. Further development of information-centric activity monitoring mechanisms, which allow capture of activities across distributed services, will provide a greater level of insight into service capability and real-time state information. Dynamic Information Relationship Exploitation: The role of the Information Catalogue is to maintain meta-information representative of information inherent to use of the information space. The meta-information may include the stored information index, models (the taxonomy of the different MIOs supported by the information space) and producer and consumer client status. The information repositories receive, maintain, and provide the actual pieces of information or MIOs. An important factor driving the effectiveness of IM services is the degree to which metadata describes available information. Static, document-centric IM solutions have led to inefficiencies in relational semantics and the absence of the ability to adequately correlate dynamic information sources. This has created a fundamental requirement to create a more adaptive and organic information model. The exploration of techniques for establishing autonomic information relationships will aid in exploiting related information between information instances and classes. Developing solutions for dynamic information grouping, group management and exploitation capabilities will enable cross and multi-type subscription and query provisioning. Refining the flexibility in the model and enabling any existing information to be managed while exploiting its native format and processing algorithms is vital. Enabling transparent mechanisms that exploit interrelationship between multiple types of information to dynamically create new, more comprehensive information should also be explored. Additional reference information: 1. "Phoenix: SOA based information management services" http://link.aip.org/link/?PSISDG/7350/73500P/1 2. "A Reference Model for Information Management to Support Coalition Information Sharing Needs" http://www.dodccrp.org/events/10th_ICCRTS/CD/papers/274.pdf For more information about information management, the DoD Information Management & Information Technology Strategic Plan 2008-2009 can be found at: http://www.defenselink.mil/cio-nii/docs/DoDCIO_Strat_Plan.pdf All white papers should address solutions based on the development of non-proprietary, modular components (including the delivery of source code) that will be capable of integrating into existing or emerging IM infrastructures. The objectives of this BAA is to solve the technical problems inherent to moving beyond manipulation of information as a set of singular objects and focus on information quality, relationships, and fault tolerance. FY10 Focus Areas: Survivable Information Management Survivable systems are capable of adapting their behavior, function, and resource allocation in response to a variety of intermittent and permanent disruptions to maintain adequate levels of mission functionality. Understanding the operational range of expected deployment configurations and survivability requirements is a necessary condition to instrumenting a responsive survivable system. This task focuses on the development of operationally relevant, mission focused, deployment scenarios and survivability requirements. This task also requires the specification of an assessment framework for evaluating the efficacy of approaches to address survivability requirements within the context of varied deployment configurations. Offerors are encouraged to: • identify operational deployments for Information Management (IM) services focusing on tactical environments. • identify and describe missions and mission scenarios within tactical operational deployments that capitalize on the use of IM services. • define mission centric survivability requirements that identify and describe required levels of IM service quality and availability. • define, design and implement an assessment framework which will be used to test and assess survivability techniques in mission oriented, operationally relevant contexts. Tactical Information Management Tactical Information Management (TIM) has many of the same objectives as IM as discussed in the master BAA 10-08-RIKA announcement, but with the added focus on dismounted users, improved radio-based communications and resource constraints that aren't present in enterprise-class defense applications. Emphasis for this research will be on a series of demonstrations with feedback from real users to learn practical lessons and improve the overall system. Offerors are encouraged to focus on the exploration of techniques applicable to tactical situations for: • improving effective/reliable communications in low bandwidth (as low as 2 kbps) situations • service discovery and prioritization • TIM interfaces in a resource-constrained environment • effective management of various tactical data types in a manner that is relevant to dismounted users • effective, prioritized reach-back to federated systems in a bandwidth-aware manner Offerors are also encouraged to build upon existing IM and QOS components for this work, including the AFRL-developed Advanced Information Management System (AIMS), Marti, and Phoenix/Fawkes, in order to maximize productivity for the research, and to provide maximum benefit to the Government. (2) The recommended date for submittal of FY 11 white papers for the two topic areas above is 24 June 2010. FY12 Focus Areas: Offerors should be conscious of our increasing focus on the use of Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) to maximize interoperability and reusability of AFRL-developed technologies. Offers should demonstrate an understanding of service development and, to the extent reasonable and possible, propose deliverables that are readily deployed as services (i.e., discoverable, well-defined, self-contained modules that are independent of state or context of other services). Where SOA is a viable part of an offeror's technical approach, offeror should be prepared to discuss SOA infrastructure requirements at program kickoff and updates to decomposition and implementation status discussed at technical program reviews. Potential SOA deliverables might include Web Service Description Language (WSDL) service definitions, documented service behaviors (dependencies, sequence diagrams, stateful assumptions), and configurable virtual machine service deployments. INFORMATION MANAGEMENT (IM) IN THE CLOUD Growing capabilities to collect intelligence data are quickly outpacing our ability to manage and exploit this information. Current collection capabilities produce an incredible amount of data that needs to be contextualized, organized, and stored for the purposes of efficient information retrieval and analysis. While there is no formal definition of what a "cloud" is, cloud computing is essentially a means to provide access to services over the Internet on the fly without a significant investment in new infrastructure, training, or licensed software. A trend toward the adoption of cloud computing is being observed within the DoD and Federal sectors as a means to save costs. IM services will need to be designed to operate in this new environment and leverage cloud resources to ingest messages at a rate that is proportional to the size and frequency of data coming off of surveillance platforms. Once ingested, this large volume of data needs to be indexed and catalogued so that hundreds of external users can find the information they need for forensic analysis. Internal to the cloud, the data must be quickly delivered to large object processing and exploitation services for the production of actionable information for subsequent dissemination to users external to the cloud. Cloud computing is a natural evolution of the widespread adoption of virtualization, SOA, and utility computing where software and hardware capabilities are delivered as services to customers. Next generation IM services will need to exploit the elasticity properties of the cloud, that is, the ability to scale-up capacity on demand and scale-down and release that capacity when it is no longer needed. We seek to assess cloud computing technologies for "best of breed" features to host, build and deploy economy-of-scale IM services, identify the technical challenges associated with deploying IM services to the cloud, and architect, build and deploy cloud capable IM services that are affordable, scalable and meet mission and information assurance requirements. Offerors are encouraged to: • Identify how to optimize the use of the resiliency, scalability, and flexibility features offered by various cloud solutions (e.g., private, public and hybrid) to best deploy scalable IM services. • Investigate and develop mechanisms that cloud resource monitoring and control that are adequate for influencing required Quality of Service (QoS) and information delivery prioritization policies. • Investigate the ramifications of cloud-based services on information and mission assurance (e.g., security, survivability, availability, and consistency). • Design and implement cloud-ready IM services that can fully exploit the promises of increased elasticity, performance, availability and reliability offered by the cloud. OpenPod OpenPod will provide a significant net-centric capability to many existing AF platforms without modification to their Operational Flight Programs (OFPs) - a significant hurdle for technology insertion. The objective of OpenPod is to increase pilot (and other user) effectiveness through: 1) the development of information management (IM) capabilities, 2) the instantiation of those capabilities in a tactical pod, and 3) the exposure of information and enabled applications via the multi-function displays (MDF). OpenPod will also facilitate connectivity to tactical collaborators and to those users in the broader enterprise with post-mission responsibilities. To accomplish this, we need a capability to rapidly evolve the mission software suite over time and to load and access a mission-appropriate subset of that suite in an open-standards-based manner. There are several key challenges to achieving this capability. The first is the protection of applications from one another (to be accomplished with SE Linux); the second is to be able to toggle between applications in an intuitive manner; the third is to be able to configure their respective data sources and sinks in a dynamic tactical environment. OpenPod will allow greatly enhanced processing of data in real-time on the pod, as well as the timely addition of new pod capabilities by third parties through the use of an OpenPod application programming interface (API), including the ability to leverage the embedded HPC in the pod. Offerors are encouraged to: • Investigate and develop mechanisms to enhance aircraft net-centric capability without relying upon or modifying the OFP of the host platform. • Design and develop modifications to existing pods (e.g. Litening) to expand Size, Weight and Power (SWaP) for computational elements.. • Build upon current AFRL-developed prototypes to modernize the MDF interface to support on-board information management services. • Demonstrate the ability to archive and retrieve data from pod repositories post-mission for construction of mission briefs and for pre-loading pod repositories pre-mission. • Design and integrate hardware modifications to a Litening or Litening-class pod to support onboard signal processing, archive, and retrieval with support for net-centric operations without reliance upon or modification of host platform OFP. • Develop software to present archived and real-time data hosted on the pod to the pilot for improved situation awareness. Secure Tactical/Enterprise Gateway A secure tactical-to-enterprise gateway is necessary to provide effective, efficient, and secure information exchange between tactical and enterprise systems, protecting both the warfighter from threats in the enterprise environment and the enterprise environment from threats in the tactical edge. In order to ensure timely situational awareness across the tactical battlespace, the Air Force needs a gateway that enables tactical systems to communicate with the enterprise systems that handle much of the protocol, security, and resource mediation. Ultimately, we seek to understand how every packet that passes through the gateway supports the mission, what priority it deserves, whether it presents a threat to the network, and what will break if it is dropped. Secure Tactical/Enterprise Gateway (STEG) will provide a robust and secure router for message traffic passed between the operations floor and tactical IP-based networks. This task focuses on the development of such a system to manage the boundary between the operations center networks and IP-based tactical networks that is robust, prioritized, and compatible with current mission planning tools. This task also requires the use of SOA services, in addition to any other instantiations required or desired, to maximize interoperability and usability. Offerors are encouraged to: • Investigate and develop intelligent SOA-based IM services that prioritize the information that is sent into the tactical environment. • Investigate and develop mediation frameworks for resource profiles, threat models, requirements, and constraints of the different environments, and the bridge from tactical to enterprise, enterprise to enterprise through the tactical edge, and tactical to tactical through the enterprise, to balance the amount of security that is needed and that one can afford. • Investigate and develop a connection abstraction between the tactical and enterprise environment with the appearance and functionality of one parameterized connection presented to the tactical side that map seamlessly to different parameterized connections to enterprise sides and their security requirements. • Investigate and develop mechanisms to maintain and improve functionality, performance, and reliability of constant connectivity even as resources, connectivity, and topology change dynamically, and a means for automatic reconnection in intermittent connectivity situations. • Investigate and develop how to limit the impact of devices that are compromised or fall into enemy hands. • Investigate and develop security solutions and configurations to address the vulnerabilities and threat models for composed tactical and enterprise environments and their integration points. FY 13 Focus Areas: Adaptive Mission Templates Information management revolves around a set of universal services (e.g., publish, subscribe, and query) that manage the exchange of information objects between producers and consumers. These services enable a wide range of solutions in multiple application domains where the safe and secure sharing of information is necessary. A Managed Information Object (MIO) contains the content of a message (payload), and has the required structure and metadata to allow that message to be decoded and understood. Metadata may be thought of as "data about data" (e.g., an attribute such as AircraftType might be used to specialize the meaning of the value Fighter). Other examples of the metadata information that may be present in an information object include: • Who sent the message (trust) • Who or what the subject that the content pertains to is about (identity) • What file format or media type applies to the content (application/protocol to be used) • What security classification applies (access/disclosure control) • When the content was created and the message sent (temporal context) • Where the subject that the content pertains to was located (geospatial context) • How the content was derived (provenance/pedigree) The metadata captured in a MIO may serve many purposes, and can be essential for ascertaining the criticality and relevance of information to missions, user roles, and tasks. The real challenge and ultimate goal is to ensure that the information being exchanged via information management services is of maximum value to the mission. The metadata provided by information objects, as well as the payload, combined with the services that manage them according to established policies make this goal achievable. In general, AFRL seeks to leverage (semantic) technologies to reason about the relevance, relatedness, and priority of information as it applies to missions and cyber resource constraints based in large part on the payload and metadata supplied by information objects. Specifically, AFRL seeks to build user friendly tools that can be used to define "meta-models" for information classes, mission types, common roles, and generalized assets from which domain specific mission and information model instances can be easily constructed. This "mission template" toolset can then be used to correlate missions, roles, and users to information classes, types, and instances, thereby specifying the linkages between mission users/roles and information types/instances. These linkages, in turn, would be interpreted by information management services in order to autonomously implement and enact mission relevant information flows. Semantic web technologies and standards such as the Resource Description Framework (RDF), Web Ontology Language (OWL), rule specification languages, and inference engines show great potential for the development of adaptive mission templates, provided user friendly tools that ride upon these standards can be developed. It is anticipated that this work will leverage Common Mission Definition (CMD) or other Community of Interest (COI) schemas and taxonomies, as well as operational Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) to develop meta-models and domain-specific use cases. The ability to automatically ingest mission models (e.g., from an Air Tasking Order (ATO)) is of particular interest to ease the development of meaningful mission and information model instances that provide the basis for realistic proof-of-concept implementations and demonstrable capabilities. Mission template toolset capabilities and generated outputs must be accessible (e.g., via a well-documented Application Programming Interface (API) or web service interface) and consumable (e.g., via open system standard data formats and protocols) in such a way that the information management services (e.g., AFRL Phoenix base implementation services, which can be made available as Government furnished software in the event of an award) can interpret and act upon them to enact mission relevant information delivery consistent with the semantics specified in the templates. For this focus area ONLY: Individual awards will not normally exceed 24 months with dollar amounts normally ranging between $250,000 to $500,000 per year. White papers for this focus area only will be accepted until 23 Aug 2012. Please send your white paper to: James.Milligan.2@us.af.mil. If you have questions please contact James Milligan at 315-330-4763. Responsive Information Prioritization and Relationships (RIPR) Project Information environments are becoming more integrated between functional areas, command echelons, armed services and coalition partners. The identification and delivery of mission relevant information is essential. We must reduce response latency and limit information overload, while increasing situational understanding to result in more timely and informed decision-making. These net-centric environments will become congested through heavy use, degraded by faults or contested by cyber adversaries, but are still required to support missions. The goal of the Responsive Information Prioritization and Relationships (RIPR) project is to develop and demonstrate resource-aware Information Management (IM) services that are responsive to the information needs of active missions. In contested and/or congested environments, information will be assessed and delivered in accordance to the relative importance of each mission. The roles of the individual information consumers in support of each mission must also be considered. The resulting capability will ensure that mission related/relevant information is dynamically identified, prioritized and given preferential access to available resources. These resources include, but are not limited to, network bandwidth, CPU and memory use that maximizes mission effectiveness. This project will build upon the AFRL Phoenix Prime information management services. Phoenix Prime leverages the Phoenix core services which act as the foundational baseline for the AFRL IM research. The RIPR objectives require the development and integration of services that can identify information relationships and relevancy, employ a multidimensional prioritization capability based on missions and roles and respond to resource availability changes. To varying degrees, initial prototypes of these features have been developed under previous projects and can serve as starting points for this work. In the AFRL Agile IM project, semantic reasoning components are currently being developed in a software branch of the Phoenix core services. This work is exploiting the semantic web W3C technologies such as Web Ontology Language (OWL) and Resource Descriptive Framework (RDF) allowing the automatic identification of information relationships. Further development of these semantic capabilities by adapting them for mission relevancy assessment and bringing them into the Phoenix Prime baseline as some form of a Semantic Reasoning Service (SRS) is desired. Quality of Service (QoS) Enabled Dissemination (QED) is a Phoenix core capability that is also available to be leveraged and matured during this project. QED assigns priorities to messages only by their type and enacts dissemination policies based on network performance. A Prioritized Information Dissemination (PID) capability will be required as an integral function of the Phoenix Prime delivery service. The PID assigns information priorities based on active missions and the users/roles that support those missions as well as by information type. The ongoing Survivable IM project of the AFRL Service Protection and Fault Tolerance program is developing a resource monitoring and reaction capability as part of the Phoenix core. Survivable IM's goal is to detect and respond to various faults and failures involving services, information and compute nodes. This capability will be available at the end of FY13 and can be leveraged by RIPR in FY14. AFRL seeks to have this capability combined with network monitoring technology resulting in a Resource Monitoring Service (RMS) and a Resource Reactor Services (RRS) to operate with Phoenix Prime. This mechanism allows information prioritization and delivery to be responsive to resource availability. Identity management is a critical component to meeting RIPR objectives since each information producer/consumer must be identified. This will allow producers/consumers to be given preferential access to information and resources based upon their role in the supported missions as established by the prioritization policies. An Identity Management Service (IDMS) is required within Phoenix Prime to support the AuthN/AuthZ requirements. It is important that the resulting resource aware, mission relevancy services are integrated into a consistent Phoenix Prime baseline. RIPR will conclude with an operationally relevant, end-to-end demonstration that proves the efficacy of the capabilities as well as identified measures to key performance parameters. Offerors are encouraged to provide a strong on-site (AFRL/RISA Rome, NY) presence to minimize development and integration risks through collaboration with the AFRL in-house development teams. Additional reference information: 1. "Phoenix: Service Oriented Architecture for Information Management - Base Implementation Document": http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a549822.pdf 2. "Integrated Information and Network Management for End-to-End Quality of Service": http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a556118.pdf 3. Agile IM, Survivable IM and Phoenix Prime interim documentation is available by sending a request to risa@us.af.mil For this focus area ONLY: Individual awards will not normally exceed 24 months with dollar amounts normally ranging between $350,000 to $700,000 per year. White papers for this focus area only will be accepted until 23 Aug 2012. Please send your white paperto: Timothy.Blocher@us.af.mil. If you have questions please contact Timothy Blocher at 315-330-3941. FY14 Focus Area Mission-Driven Tasking of Information Producers The objective of Mission-driven Tasking of Information Producers (MTIP) is to enable asynchronous collection requests and synchronous tasking control of information producers based on consumer mission information needs derived by tactical information management (IM) services. While applicable in many domains, the focus of this project is on ground users interacting over tactical networks with one or more piloted aircraft to collaborate on surveillance and targeting. Existing tactical information dissemination is limited to information that has been produced as a result of the sensor operator's actions, a labor intensive task that competes for the pilot's attention, slows down surveillance and target prosecution, and results in suboptimal sensor allocation. MTIP seeks to improve this process by using consumer information needs (as expressed through subscriptions and queries) to generate and prioritize tasking for information producers (e.g., airborne sensors) in order to optimize their value to multiple consumers (e.g., ground users). This project will also enable consumers to satisfy time-critical information needs through the synchronous tasking of producers, including closed-loop control. The MTIP objectives require development of technologies that enable opportunistic task generation, prioritization and scheduling of tasks among multiple sensors and multiple platforms based on mission needs, and synchronous tasking of sensors to include closed-loop control. Offerors are encouraged to: • Design and develop IM services that derive information needs from the subscriptions and queries registered with the IM platform as well as from an analysis of anticipated mission information needs for which there is no information in the IM repository, and present these needs as tasks to the proper information producer. • Investigate methods to aggregate requests for information into a single task (when those requests share data or when they can be partially fulfilled by existing information) to improve tasking efficiency for a shared resource. • Design and develop a task prioritization software prototype that continually evaluates opportunistic task requests against mission relevance as well as the cost of collection and dissemination. • Design and develop IM services that broker connections between information producers and consumers and investigate protocols that enable synchronous tasking and closed-loop control of producers by authorized consumers. • Build upon existing Tactical Information Management user clients for a Multi-Function Display, Android mobile devices, and FalconView to enable asynchronous collection requests, synchronous tasking, and sensor operator input and override. Offerors are encouraged to build upon existing IM and QOS components for this work, including the AFRL-developed Marti tactical information management services and Android Tactical Assault Kit (ATAK) [1], in order to maximize productivity for the research and to provide maximum benefit to the Government. For this focus area ONLY: Individual awards will not normally exceed 30 months with dollar amounts normally ranging from $250,000 to $600,000 per year. The recommended date for submittal of white papers for this focus area ONLY is July 31, 2013. Please send your white paper to: James.Metzler@us.af.mil. If you have questions please contact James Metzler at 315-330-4033. [1] Gillen, M.; Loyall, J.; Usbeck, K.; Hanlon, K.; Scally, A.; Sterling, J.; Newkirk, R.; Kohler, R., "Beyond line-of-sight information dissemination for Force Protection," MILITARY COMMUNICATIONS CONFERENCE, 2012 - MILCOM 2012, vol., no., pp.1,6, Oct. 29 2012-Nov. 1 2012 II. AWARD INFORMATION: Total funding for this BAA is approximately $24.9 Million. The anticipated funding to be obligated under this BAA is broken out by fiscal year as follows: FY 10 - $1 Million; FY 11 - $6 Million; FY 12 - $6 Million; FY 13 - $6 Million; and FY14 - $5.9 Million. Individual awards will not normally exceed 30 months with dollar amounts normally ranging between $150,000 to $500,000 per year. There is also the potential to make awards up to any dollar value. Awards of efforts as a result of this announcement will be in the form of contracts, grants and cooperative agreements depending upon the nature of the work proposed. The Government reserves the right to select all, part, or none of the proposals received, subject to the availability of funds. All potential Offerors should be aware that due to unanticipated budget fluctuations, funding in any or all areas may change with little or no notice. III. ELIGIBILITY INFORMATION: 1. ELIGIBLE APPLICANTS: All foreign allied participation is excluded at the prime contractor level. 2. COST SHARING OR MATCHING: Cost sharing is not a requirement. 3. System for Award Management (SAM). Offerors must be registered in the SAM database to receive a contract award, and remain registered during performance and through final payment of any contract or agreement. Processing time for registration in SAM, which normally takes forty-eight hours, should be taken into consideration when registering. Offerors who are not already registered should consider applying for registration before submitting a proposal. 4. Executive Compensation and First-Tier Sub-contract/Sub-recipient Awards: Any contract award resulting from this announcement may contain the clause at FAR 52.204-10 - Reporting Executive Compensation and First-Tier Subcontract Awards. Any grant or agreement award resulting from this announcement may contain the award term set forth in 2 CFR, Appendix A to Part 25 http://ecfr.gpoaccess.gov/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=ecfr&sid=c55a4687d6faa13b137a26d0eb436edb&rgn=div5&view=text&node=2 :1.1.1.41&idno=2#2:1.1.1.4.1.2.1.1 IV. APPLICATION AND SUBMISSION INFORMATION: 1. APPLICATION PACKAGE: THIS ANNOUNCEMENT CONSTITUTES THE ONLY SOLICITATION. WE ARE SOLICITATING WHITE PAPERS ONLY. DO NOT SUBMIT A FORMAL PROPOSAL AT THIS TIME. Those white papers found to be consistent with the intent of this BAA may be invited to submit a technical and cost proposal. See Section VI of this announcement for further details. For additional information, a copy of the AFRL "Broad Agency Announcement (BAA): Guide for Industry," May 2012, may be accessed at: http://www.wpafb.af.mil/shared/media/document/AFD-120614-075.pdf. 2. CONTENT AND FORM OF SUBMISSION: CONTENT AND FORM OF SUBMISSION: Offerors are required to submit 3 copies of a 2 to 3 page white paper summarizing their proposed approach/solution. The purpose of the white paper is to preclude unwarranted effort on the part of an offeror whose proposed work is not of interest to the Government. The white paper will be formatted as follows: Section A: Title, Period of Performance, Cost of Task, Name of Company; Section B: Task Objective; and Section C: Technical Summary. Multiple white papers within the purview of this announcement may be submitted by each offeror. If the offeror wishes to restrict its white papers/proposals, they must be marked with the restrictive language stated in FAR 15.609(a) and (b). All white papers/proposals shall be double spaced with a font no smaller than 12 pitch. In addition, respondents are requested to provide their Commercial and Government Entity (CAGE) number, a fax number, and an e-mail address with their submission. All responses to this announcement must be addressed to the technical POC, as discussed in paragraph six of this section. 3. SUBMISSION DATES AND TIMES: It is recommended that white papers be received by the following dates to maximize the possibility of award: FY 10 should be submitted by 24 May 2010; FY 11 by 02 Aug 2010; FY 12 by 01 Aug 2011; FY 13 by 01 Aug 2012; FY 14 by 01 Aug 2013. White papers will be accepted until 2pm Eastern time on 30 Sep 2014, but it is less likely that funding will be available in each respective fiscal year after the dates cited. The end date for this BAA will be 30 Sep 2014. FORMAL PROPOSALS ARE NOT BEING REQUESTED AT THIS TIME. 4. FUNDING RESTRICTIONS: The cost of preparing white papers/proposals in response to this announcement is not considered an allowable direct charge to any resulting contract or any other contract, but may be an allowable expense to the normal bid and proposal indirect cost specified in FAR 31.205-18. Incurring pre-award costs for ASSISTANCE INSTRUMENTS ONLY are regulated by the DoD Grant and Agreements Regulations (DODGARS). 5. All Proposers should review the NATIONAL INDUSTRIAL SECURITY PROGRAM OPERATING MANUAL, (NISPOM), dated February 28, 2006 as it provides baseline standards for the protection of classified information and prescribes the requirements concerning Contractor Developed Information under paragraph 4-105. Defense Security Service (DSS) Site for the NISPOM is: http://www.dss.mil/. 6. OTHER SUBMISSION REQUIREMENTS: DO NOT send white papers to the Contracting Officer. All responses to this announcement must be addressed to ATTN: Robert Flo AFRL/RISD, reference BAA-10-08-RIKA, 525 Brooks Road, Rome NY 13441-4505. Respondents are required to provide their Dun & Bradstreet (D&B) Data Universal Numbering System (DUNS) number with their submittal and reference BAA-10-08-RIKA. Electronic submission to Robert.Flo@us.af.mil will also be accepted. Please include the text "BAA-10-08-RIKA" in the subject line. In the event of a possible or actual compromise of classified information in the submission of your white paper or proposal, immediately but no later than 24 hours, bring this to the attention of your cognizant security authority and AFRL Rome Research Site Information Protection Office (IPO): Bob Kane 315-330-2324 0730-1630 Monday-Friday 315-330-2961 Evenings and Weekends Email: robert.p.kane.7@us.af.mil V. APPLICATION REVIEW INFORMATION: 1. CRITERIA: The following criteria, which are listed in following order of importance, will be used to determine whether white papers and proposals submitted are consistent with the intent of this BAA and of interest to the Government. Criteria, (1) through (3) are of equal importance and criteria (4) is of lesser importance than criteria (1) through (3): (1) Overall Scientific and Technical Merit - The extent to which the offeror's approach demonstrates an understanding of the problem, the approach for the development and/or enhancement of the proposed technology, integration approach, innovative and novel approach and appropriate levels of readiness at yearly intervals, (2) Related Experience - The extent to which the offeror demonstrates relevant technology and domain knowledge, (3) Openness/Maturity of Solution - The extent to which existing capabilities and standards are leveraged and the relative maturity of the proposed technology in terms of reliability and robustness and (4) Reasonableness and Realism of Proposed Costs - The overall estimated costs and fees (if any) should be clearly justified and appropriate for the technical complexity of the effort. No further evaluation criteria will be used in selecting white papers/proposals. Individual white paper/proposal evaluations will be evaluated against the evaluation criteria without regard to other white papers and proposals submitted under this BAA. White papers and proposals submitted will be evaluated as they are received. Cost sharing will not be considered in the evaluation. 2. REVIEW AND SELECTION PROCESS: Only Government employees will review the white papers/proposals for selection. The Air Force Research Laboratory's Information Directorate has contracted for various business and staff support services, some of which require contractors to obtain administrative access to proprietary information submitted by other contractors. Administrative access is defined as "handling or having physical control over information for the sole purpose of accomplishing the administrative functions specified in the administrative support contract, which do not require the review, reading, or comprehension of the content of the information on the part of non-technical professionals assigned to accomplish the specified administrative tasks." These contractors have signed general non-disclosure agreements and organizational conflict of interest statements. The required administrative access will be granted to non-technical professionals. Examples of the administrative tasks performed include: a. Assembling and organizing information for R&D case files; b. Accessing library files for use by government personnel; and c. Handling and administration of proposals, contracts, contract funding and queries. Any objection to administrative access must be in writing to the Contracting Officer and shall include a detailed statement of the basis for the objection. VI. AWARD ADMINISTRATION INFORMATION: 1. AWARD NOTICES: Those white papers found to be consistent with the intent of this BAA may be invited to submit a technical and cost proposal. Notification by email or letter will be sent by the technical POC. Such invitation does not assure that the submitting organization will be awarded a contract. Those white papers not selected to submit a proposal will be notified in the same manner. Prospective offerors are advised that only Contracting Officers are legally authorized to commit the Government. All offerors submitting white papers will be contacted by the technical POC, referenced in Section VII of this announcement. Offerors can email the technical POC for status of their white paper/proposal no earlier than 45 days after proposal submission. 2. ADMINISTRATIVE AND NATIONAL POLICY REQUIREMENTS: Depending on the work to be performed, the offeror may require a SECRET facility clearance and safeguarding capability; therefore, personnel identified for assignment to a classified effort must be cleared for access to SECRET information at the time of award. In addition, the offeror may be required to have, or have access to, a certified and Government-approved facility to support work under this BAA. This acquisition may involve data that is subject to export control laws and regulations. Only contractors who are registered and certified with the Defense Logistics Information Service (DLIS) at http://www.dlis.dla.mil/jcp/ and have a legitimate business purpose may participate in this solicitation. For questions, contact DLIS on-line at http://www.dlis.dla.mil/jcp or at the DLA Logistics Information Service, 74 Washington Avenue North, Battle Creek, Michigan 49037-3084, and telephone number 1-800-352-3572. You must submit a copy of your approved DD Form 2345, Militarily Critical Technical Data Agreement, with your Proposal. 3. Data Rights: The potential for inclusion of Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) or data rights other than unlimited on awards is recognized. In accordance with (IAW) the Small Business Administration (SBA) SBIR Policy Directive, Section 8(b), SBIR data rights clauses are non-negotiable and must not be the subject of negotiations pertaining to an award, or diminished or removed during award administration. Issuance of an award will not be made conditional based on forfeit of data rights. If the SBIR awardee wishes to transfer its SBIR data rights to the Air Force or to a third party, it must do so in writing under a separate agreement. A decision by the awardee to relinquish, transfer, or modify in any way its SBIR data rights must be made without pressure or coercion by the agency or any other party. Non-SBIR data rights less than unlimited will be evaluated and negotiated on a case-by-case basis. Government Purpose Rights are anticipated for data developed with DoD-reimbursed Independent Research and Development (IR&D) funding. 4. REPORTING: Once a proposal has been selected for award, offerors will be given complete instructions on the submission process for the reports. VII. AGENCY CONTACTS: Questions of a technical nature shall be directed to the cognizant technical point of contact, as specified below: TPOC: Robert Flo Telephone: (315) 330-2324 Email: Robert.Flo@us.af.mil Questions of a contractual/business nature shall be directed to the cognizant contracting officer, as specified below: Lynn White Telephone (315) 330-4996 Email: Lynn.White@us.af.mil The email must reference the solicitation (BAA) number and title of the acquisition. In accordance with AFFARS 5315.90, an Ombudsman has been appointed to hear and facilitate the resolution of concerns from offerors, potential offerors, and others for this acquisition announcement. Before consulting with an ombudsman, interested parties must first address their concerns, issues, disagreements, and/or recommendations to the contracting officer for resolution. AFFARS Clause 5352.201-9101 Ombudsman (Apr 2010) will be incorporated into all contracts awarded under this BAA. The AFRL Ombudsman is as follows: Ms. Barbara Gehrs AFRL/PK 1864 4th Street Building 15, Room 225 Wright-Patterson AFB OH 45433-7130 FAX: (937) 656-7321; Comm: (937) 904-4407 All responsible organizations may submit a white paper which shall be considered.
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A -- Service Oriented Information Management