SOURCES SOUGHT
R -- BCRS Management Information System Solution - Package #1
- Notice Date
- 9/7/2013
- Notice Type
- Sources Sought
- NAICS
- 541519
— Other Computer Related Services
- Contracting Office
- Department of Health and Human Services, Health Resources and Services Administration, Office of Acquisitions Management and Policy, 5600 Fisher Ln., Room 13A-19, Rockville, Maryland, 20857, United States
- ZIP Code
- 20857
- Solicitation Number
- 14-250-SOL-BMISS
- Point of Contact
- Kwasi Antwi,
- E-Mail Address
-
kantwi@hrsa.gov
(kantwi@hrsa.gov)
- Small Business Set-Aside
- N/A
- Description
- Attachment II-External Interfaces Attachment I-Architecture This is a Small Business Sources Sought notice. This is NOT a solicitation for proposals, proposal abstracts, or quotations. The purpose of this notice is to obtain information regarding: (1) the availability and capability of qualified small business sources; (2) whether they are small businesses; HUBZone small businesses; service-disabled, veteran-owned small businesses; 8(a) small businesses; veteran-owned small businesses; woman-owned small businesses; or small disadvantaged businesses; and (3) their size classification relative to the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) code for the proposed acquisition. Your responses to the information requested will assist the Government in determining the appropriate acquisition method, including whether a set-aside is possible. An organization that is not considered a small business under the applicable NAICS code should NOT submit a response to this notice. The purpose of this requirement is to provide a broad range of support tasks needed to operate, develop, maintain and enhance the Bureau's critical IT system, the BCRS Management Information System Solution (BMISS). This will enable the BCRS to better utilize BMISS by sustaining existing and integrating new business processes into the software to manage legislative updates and other changes that occur periodically. BACKGROUND: The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), Health Resources and Services Administration's (HRSA) Bureau of Clinician Recruitment and Service (BCRS) mission is to coordinate the recruitment and retention of health professionals in underserved communities and support efforts to build more integrated and sustainable health care systems. BCRS recruits health care providers through scholarship and loan repayment programs that help underserved communities and health care shortage facilities recruit and retain qualified primary care health professionals. Program participants provide primary health care to underserved populations, in communities designated as Health Professional Shortage Areas (HPSAs), in the United States, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, American Samoa, Guam, and the Trust Territories. In 2009, BCRS started a bureau-wide project to consolidate a number of independent software applications used to manage the participant application process throughout their term of service along with managing health care delivery sites where clinicians serve. This development effort resulted in the launch of BMISS. BMISS is a mission-important system designed to ensure that Loan Repayment and Scholarship Programs administered by the BCRS are managed efficiently and in compliance with mandated Agency-wide and Federal policies, procedures and legislation. The system supports planning, application submission, application review, application prioritization and ranking, selection, awards, payment tracking, payroll and invoice processing, self-service customer service portals, Sites and Participant lifecycle program compliance, and closeout phases. BMISS supports work load management within the BCRS as well as reporting of program data and task management metrics. BMISS includes a Section 508-compliant user interface with workflow tasks, a user specific task-list and advanced search capabilities. BMISS supports more than 100,000 external user accounts and 300+ internal users. The system has eight (8) active loan and scholarship programs supported by 889 accredited schools and 16,742 approved clinical sites. In FY 2012 alone, the BCRS issued $294,608,924.85 in loan and scholarship dollars through 6,309 awards. The BMISS system routinely handles hundreds of concurrent users. REQUIREMENTS: 1. Contractors must describe any industry certifications for quality and how recently the Company was reviewed for each. 2. Contractors must demonstrate its experience with writing requirements, designing, coding, testing, and implementing changes to a system similar to BMISS. Please describe the Company's recent (in the last 3 years) and relevant experience (as prime or subcontractor) in relation to the contractual requirements and technology environment, as described below, in each of the following areas (as applicable), being sure to highlight specific relevance to the contract in each case and include a description of work performed through subcontractors to the Company: - HRSA Contracts - U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Contracts - Other Federal Government Contracts - Other Contracts From the contracts presented in response to #2 please identify at least 3 Past Performance References (for prime contracts or only for the managing partner in case of a Joint Venture) and provide the following information for each: •Customer Name/ Contract Name •Contract Number/ Period of Performance/ Total Contract Value •COTR/ Technical Point of Contact Information: Name/ Phone/ Email 3. Please describe the Company's current base of technical personnel resources in labor categories relevant to the contractual requirements. Also describe other sources of technical personnel the Company uses to meet its staffing requirements and putting together technical teams for tasks/projects. Describe the company's experience and lessons learned, if any, in the transition and start-up of a new contract of at least 100 employees. 4. Please describe the Company's financial strength and stability relative to the financial resources needed to perform and manage a prime contract with at least 200 employees for the offeror. What financial challenges are envisioned and how would they be mitigated. 5. Qualified contractors must also provide a detailed description of your company's experience and demonstrated abilities to deliver each and every one (ADDRESS EACH SEPARATELY) of the following requirements: 1. Transition The Transition Task permits for a transition period from incumbent Contractor to a new contractor. The U.S. Government expects this transition period not to exceed three months from the contract award date. The Contractor shall: -Conduct a smooth transition ensuring continuous services and operational support with no disruptions in support services, including planned development releases. -Develop and submit a comprehensive Transition Plan detailing the transition tasks, approaches, schedule, resources, staffing, risks and mitigations, and quality control approach to accomplishing the required transition. -Recruit personnel and submit security papers promptly to get the background investigations done quickly and gain access to HRSA's and NIH's network; -Review and understand all the technical and process documentation; -Review and understand the existing application architecture -Review and understand the existing data and system security policies in place; -Review and understand server and system architecture; -Review and understand the database structure and system architecture and application code; -Review and understand the HRSA EPLC framework and associated PMO processes. 2. HHS and/or HRSA EPLC compliance The contractor shall observe, comply and operate in accordance with the framework of HRSA Enterprise Project Life Cycle (EPLC) policies, procedures, and processes. This includes providing high quality deliverables using HRSA approved templates and supporting gate and project reviews. 3. Support for CPIC Reporting The contractor shall provide monthly data to support the Capital Planning and Investment Control (CPIC) reports that the BCRS and HRSA must submit to comply with the HHS and OMB policies and procedures. The contractor shall support HRSA in planning for the CPIC processes. 4. Business Process Design and Re-engineering The contractor shall support BCRS in designing innovative and creative technology solutions to enhance business processes for the Bureau's loan repayment and scholarship programs, clinical sites, shortage designation, financials and other support areas. The contractor shall also support BCRS in re-engineering existing business processes and help analyze the impact on existing systems, procedures and organization. 5. Systems Development using Java, Teamworks, Solr, SQL Server 2008 The contractor shall provide development, modernization and enhancement (DME) services using Java technologies, Teamworks BPM, Solr, and SQL Server 2008 products. The contractor shall support three to four parallel software development tracks targeting four to six major releases in a calendar year. The contractor shall use proven software and hardware configuration management practices. There are approximately 500,000 lines of code. 6. Change Management The contractor shall support BCRS in planning and executing various change management activities to support successful implementation and adoption of system that affect thousands of internal and external users. This includes identification and support of both internal and external communication needs, implementation needs, strategic planning of both business and staff, as well as development, implementation and facilitation of project governance including but not limited to a Change Control Board, user group working and feedback meetings. The contractor shall provide planning, facilitation, subject matter experts and support during execution associated with all change management needs during the project. 7. Instructor Led Training The contractor shall develop training plans and strategies that are appropriate for this medium by working with BCRS. The contractor shall develop and deliver instructor led training to train internal users on using all the modules within the BMISS software platform. The training materials will be posted and maintained in a BCRS approved repository. 8. Production Support The contractor shall provide support to manage the BMISS application and databases. The contractor shall provide a number of support staff at client site to provide tier 2 support for users, including but not limited to, answering help desk tickets, facilitating and participating in user issue resolution meetings, providing communication regarding upcoming defect fixes, enhancement requests and development progress. The contractor shall provide functional support to end users and help them to use the BMISS application to perform their daily job efficiently. The contractor shall support ad-hoc training requests for specific functionality of the system to end users. The contractor shall support monitoring of all web servers, system applications and database servers. The contractor shall work closely with the system administration team to ensure system reliability, availability and responsiveness. There are a total of 30 servers in the BMISS platform - 16 web and application servers, 2 reporting servers, 6 database servers, and 6 other servers. 9. Ad hoc Reporting The contractor shall provide support for ad hoc data sets that are required for special reporting, analyses, or one-of-a kind, quick-response type calls for data and reports. The contractor shall also provide business specific statistical knowledge to assist in interpreting and/or leveraging data for process or statistical reporting and identification of potential improvements. 10. Onsite Support The contractor shall provide onsite support to ensure that the power users (users with advanced privileges and knowledge of the system modules to support their respective offices) in various offices and bureaus continue to get timely information and help in supporting all end users. 11. Tier 2 Support The contractor shall provide Tier 2 support for resolving all system issues. The Tier 1 can be either the Customer Care Center responding to calls from end users, or various Government POCs interfacing with end users. The contractor shall employ best practices for triage, issue resolution, issue escalation and communication, and patch applications. 12. Domain Expertise in BCRS Loan Repayment and Scholarship Awards The contractor shall provide domain expertise to BCRS. This expertise shall include knowledge of BCRS loan repayment and scholarship programs and their schedules, business objectives and expected outcomes. The contractor shall use this knowledge when proposing solutions to BCRS's business problems. 13. Data Analysis The contractor shall provide support to address complex data analysis needs where data from the BMISS and other HRSA systems needs to be analyzed to address mission important questions and scenarios. The contractor shall use SQL queries or SQL Server Ad-hoc reporting for addressing such questions. 14. Code Sharing and Reuse The contractor shall reuse code and share code to the fullest extent possible to reduce the total cost and increase the quality and performance of all solutions. The contractor shall develop and maintain existing shared code library and address parallel development requirements from multiple solutions. 15. Data Warehouse Reporting Interfaces The contractor shall work, as requested by the BCRS, with HRSA OIT and its contractors to accurately and adequately provide data to the HRSA Data Warehouse in a timely fashion. The contractor shall provide all necessary associated documentation to ensure the data is used as intended. Such documentation may include but is not limited to a data dictionary, data types, an ERD, and validation rules. 16. Systems Integration The contractor shall develop and maintain interfaces to share data between multiple HRSA and non-HRSA systems. The interfaces will exchange data using various data structures and provide security and access control capabilities. The contractor shall maintain and enhance interfaces with the systems listed in Attachment 2. 17. Section 508 Compliance The contractor shall ensure that all system development and maintenance capabilities are compliant with the Section 508 requirements. This also includes all documentation and related deliverables for training and technical assistance. The contractor shall comply with and support any resolution requests following regular accessibility testing provided by HRSA OIT. 18. Dashboards and Performance Management/Measurement The contractor shall maintain and develop business process metrics to help improve business performance and develop user friendly and high impact dashboards that drive transparency into business operations and performance. 19. Configuration and Build Management The contractor shall maintain and improve complex configuration, continuous integration and build management processes utilizing tools including Jenkins, Maven, SVN, and custom scripts. The contractor shall manage deployments between different environments including development, quality assurance (QA), user acceptance testing (UAT),and staging and production throughout the development cycle. 20. Disaster Recovery Management The contractor shall maintain existing DR environments and improve disaster recovery setup and processes by regularly monitoring the health of the various components and conducting periodic tests. 21. Integration of Third Party Components The contractor shall use third-party libraries to provide a variety of services. The contractor shall develop and sustain existing libraries and their integration within existing solutions. The third-party components shall include, at a minimum, the following: Google mapping API, iText PDF creation, Google charts. 22. Testing The contractor shall manage the entire testing cycle for every release. Testing lifecycle includes activities such as creating test strategy, testing plan, test cases, executing test cases and recording results, creating defects, perform performance testing, data migration testing (if any), and defect management. 23. IV&V The contractor shall work with the BMISS IV&V contractor to develop schedules, coordinate testing activities, educate the IV&V team on upcoming functionality, provide requirements and design documents, provide and review test cases, and provide support to complete IV&V test cycles. 24. Agile Development Methodologies The contractor shall use agile development methodology to support BCRS's fast pace development schedule, to keep the end users involved during development process, and to meet or exceed end users expectations while staying under the budget cap. The contractor will maintain and improve EPLC tailoring plan to adjust to the agile development approach. 25. Document and Records Management/Data Governance The contractor shall work closely with HRSA's data and records management group to implement HRSA's electronic data/records management policies for BCRS. The contractor shall establish and manage group to define and govern data standards across all BCRS offices and the system. 26. Responsive Design The contractor shall demonstrate their understanding and experience in responsive design domain as responsive design is integral part of BMISS web applications. 27. Program Management The contractor shall manage the program management office that oversees all BMISS related projects and activities, and is responsible for BMISS's schedule and budget. The contractor shall manage the overall risks and issues related to the BMISS program in consultation with BCRS's leadership. A single-vendor Indefinite-Delivery-Indefinite-Quantity (IDIQ) contract is anticipated for a 12-month base period and four (4) 12-month option periods. The previous source for this requirement was the National Institutes of Health (NIH) via an Interagency Agreement (IAA). NIH has held the existing development and maintenance IAA for four (4) 12-month periods of performance and is currently in the last 12 months of support. The NAICS Code is 541519, with a small business size standard of $25M. Interested small business potential offerors are encouraged to respond to this notice. However, be advised that generic capability statements are not sufficient for effective evaluation of respondent's capacity and capability to perform the specific work as required. Responses must directly demonstrate the company's capability, experience, and/or ability to marshal resources to effectively and efficiently perform each of the tasks described above at a sufficient level of detail to allow definitive numerical evaluation; and evidence that the contractor can satisfy the minimum requirements listed above while in compliance with FAR 52.219-4 ("Limitations on Subcontracting"). Failure to definitely address each of these factors will result in a finding that respondent lacks the capability to perform the work. Responses to this notice shall be limited to 40 pages and must include: 1. Company name, mailing address, e-mail address, telephone and fax numbers, website address (if available), and the name, telephone number and e-mail address of a point of contact having the authority and knowledge to clarify responses with Government representatives. 2. Name, title, telephone number, and e-mail addresses of individuals who can verify he demonstrated capabilities identified in the responses. 3. Business size for NAICS 541519 and status, if qualified as an 8(a) firm (must be certified by SBA), Small Disadvantaged Business (must be certified by SBA), Woman-Owned Small Business, HUBZone firm (must be certified by SBA), and/or Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned Small Business (must be listed in the VetBiz Vendor Information Pages). Additional information on NAICS codes can be found at www.sba.gov. 4. DUNS number, CAGE Code, Tax Identification Number, and company structure (Corporation, LLC, partnership, joint venture; etc.). Companies also must be registered in the System for Award Management (SAM) database (http://www.sam.gov) in order to be considered as potential sources. 5. Identification of the firm's GSA Schedule contract(s) by Schedule number and contract number and SINs that are applicable to this potential requirement are also requested. 6. If the company has a Government approved accounting system, please identify the agency that approved the system. Please submit copies of any documentation such as letters or certificates to indicate the firm's status (see item #3 above). Teaming arrangements are acceptable, and the information required above on the company responding to this announcement, should also be provided for each entity expected to be teammates of the respondent for performance of this work. To the maximum extent possible, please submit non-proprietary information. Any proprietary information submitted should be identified as such and will be properly protected from disclosure. This notice is for planning purposes only, and does not constitute an Invitation for Bids, a Request for Proposals, a Solicitation, a Request for Quotes, or an indication the Government will contract for the items contained in this announcement. This request is not to be construed as a commitment on the part of the Government to award a contract, nor does the Government intend to pay for any information submitted as a result of this request. The Government will not reimburse respondents for any cost associated with submission of the information being requested or reimburse expenses incurred to interested parties for responses to this announcement. Responses to this notice must be received by the Contract Specialist named below no later than 4:00 PM Easter Standard time on September 23, 2013 for consideration. The acceptable methods of delivery are e-mail, U.S. Mail, and express delivery. Responses to this announcement will not be returned, and there will not be any ensuing discussions or debriefings of any responses. However, information obtained as a result of this announcement may be reflected in the subsequent solicitation, and HRSA may contact one or more respondents for clarifications or for information that will enhance the Government's understanding. This announcement is Government market research, and may result in revisions in both its requirements and its acquisition strategy based on industry responses.
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