MODIFICATION
A -- Advanced, Trusted, Secure Hardware and Software System Computational Technologies
- Notice Date
- 8/19/2015
- 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 Material Command, AFRL/RIK - Rome, 26 Electronic Parkway, Rome, New York, 13441-4514, United States
- ZIP Code
- 13441-4514
- Solicitation Number
- BAA-RIK-13-06
- Point of Contact
- Gail E. Marsh, Phone: 315-330-7518
- E-Mail Address
-
Gail.Marsh@us.af.mil
(Gail.Marsh@us.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 III: Added Paragraph 5 regarding a government approved accounting system; (b) Section IV.1: Added new URL for BAA Guide to Industry and Proposal Preparation Instructions; (c) Section IV.2: Removed two references to proposals. Directions are now specific to white papers (see Proposal Preparation Instructions for proposal guidance); (d) Section IV.5: Added latest change to NISPOM; (e) Section IV.6: Correct the AFRL Rome Research Site Information Protection Officer's email; (f) Section V, 1 & 3: Removed the second to the last sentence in Sub-Section 1 and reworded the first sentence in Sub-Section 3 to clarify the use of adequate price competition; and (g)Section VI.5: Add information specific to grant awardees regarding the requirement for an additional proposal document. 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: Advanced, Trusted, Secure Hardware and Software System Computational Technologies ANNOUNCEMENT TYPE: Initial announcement FUNDING OPPORTUNITY NUMBER: BAA-RIK-13-06 CFDA Number: 12.800 I. FUNDING OPPORTUNITY DESCRIPTION: The Air Force cyberspace must operate and be built upon a strengthened, trusted foundation that assures mission-essential functions across all Air Force missions, while being agile and resilient and providing the ability to avoid, fight through, survive and recover from advanced cyber threats. The Trusted Systems Branch of the Information Directorate, Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL), Rome Research Site, is soliciting white papers under this announcement for technologies to explore, research and develop innovative and potentially disruptive technologies that support trusted foundations/architectures for high assurance, secure, resilient systems, while increasing computational sophistication, capacity, and energy and cost performance efficiencies under constraints imposed by Command, Control, Communications, Computer, Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (C4ISR) trusted/secure systems and performance-requirement-driven layered information processing battlefield systems and networks. Additional innovative technologies are sought that will enable the engineering of secure and correct complex software-intensive systems resulting in trust, and migrate the analysis from execution to the design and development phases. Of particular interest are technologies that support architectures for high assurance, trusted/secure architectures, increased computational sophistication, more complex system functionality with improved quality, dramatic improvements in the energy/performance/cost of systems, embedded processing and quantum information processing. Also of interest are technologies that can reduce warfighter decision latencies/response time, decrease system costs and system development times, automate labor-intensive/error-prone and costly aspects of system software development, and improve reliability, longevity, and usability of new and legacy military computing systems. The Department of Defense (DoD) requires trustworthy data and software executables for successful performance of assigned missions; However, there is significant uncertainty about the DoD's Software Assurance (SwA) capability to achieve the level of confidence that software functions as intended (and only as intended) and remains free of vulnerabilities across legacy systems and systems being acquired. Any approach for Software Assurance must address vulnerabilities and weaknesses to cyber threats of the system as a whole from the beginnings of design and not be a piecemeal approach applied as an afterthought. Implementation must be top down; covering a risk based approach for the system itself as well as addressing supply chain management and enforcement. In the end, the approach must deliver a high level of assurance that the software system is self-contained, the data is verifiably incorruptible/trustworthy, executables protected while at rest, under execution, or in transit within any environment/system relevant to the warfighter. While the solution space offers software-only or hardware-assisted data and executable protections, measuring and verifying assurance of the incorruptibility/trust is of utmost importance. Lastly, while the rapidly evolving threat environment requires a consistent approach to protecting our systems, it must also be agile, as it must be recognized that in most cases, a "one size fits all" solution will not work. Different types of applications have differing threat profiles, varying by criticality, threats, Software Assurance requirements and concerns (ie. web based application verse real-time embedded application verse flight/safety critical application verse development tools). This effort will investigate the research, application and/or development of trusted/secure information processing architecture technologies, products and standards as they relate to the following technical areas: (1) Development of appropriate information technology to enhance the processing capabilities of current and future Air Force C4I systems: This technical area encompasses all information processing technology, both hardware and software that could potentially contribute to enhancing the security, trustworthiness, functionality, performance, reliability, longevity, scalability, resiliency and usability of legacy or planned Air Force C4I processing systems. Examples of hardware technologies include multi-core processing architectures with emphasis on hardware support for semantic operations, power reducing/power management/power aware processing architectures, high assurance/trusted/secure processing architectures, data storage, performance optimization visualization tools, mobile and wireless networks and technologies necessary to achieve secure information processing. Examples of software technologies include High Performance Computing (HPC) programming languages both new and existing, data retrieval/mining, data management, data delivery, software/system monitors, publish/subscribe mechanisms, decision making techniques, distributed databases, static and dynamic runtime optimization and resource management. (2) Trusted Software-intensive Systems Engineering: The objective of the trusted software-intensive systems engineering technical area is to develop techniques, methodologies and tools to guarantee trust (as measured by correctness, security, reliability, predictability, and survivability) and migrate the analysis from execution (testing and monitoring) to design (correct-by-construction and formal/security specifications) and development (composition and auto-generation of artifacts). Technical areas of interest include: techniques to enable trust in model-based software engineering; model-based engineering for predictable software attributes; provably correct code generation; evidence-based software assurance; trusted software and systems composability; modeling, analysis, and verification of autonomous software; mechanisms to fight through software failures; and software comprehension. (3) Quantum Information Processing: This technical area includes one-way quantum computation using cluster/graphs states, measurement based quantum computation, quantum computing with an emphasis on the utilization of photon-based qubits, quantum algorithms employing cluster/graph states or quantum annealing or adiabatic quantum computation, blind quantum computation, single-photon/entangled-photons on demand, quantum integrated optical waveguide circuitry, reduced measurement methodologies for quantum tomography of multi-qubit states. (4) Secure, resilient and Trusted Computing Architectures: The objective of this technical area is to investigate the necessary building blocks for secure and resilient computing environments (environments where compelling evidence is supplied to determine a high level of trustworthiness), including both the underlying hardware and software to support it. Technical areas of interest include, but are not limited to: (a) Problems and challenges with current processor designs for trustworthiness and their solutions; (b) Problems and challenges with current computer architectures for trustworthiness and solutions to them; (c) Operating System level constructs, objects, functions and distributions that must be provided to complement the hardware to enable a trustworthy computing base; (d) State of the art software-based assurance designs, methodologies or concepts which are better suited for implementation in hardware than software. This technical area is also interested in research and development for increasing the level of trustworthiness of integrated circuit designs, commodity integrated circuits and currently available systems as a whole. Finally, this technical area is also interested in security enhancements possible in the software tool chain used for compiling and linking source code as well as research in the implications of state-of-the-art commercially available processor architectures and specially designed processor architectures that will enable delivery of trustworthy, secure and timely information. (5) Software Assurance Framework: Achieving the degree of Software Assurance across the application space requires a holistic approach that agilely addresses all layers of the supply chain and enterprise including governance, partnerships, process, standards, and education. The objective of this area is to create the foundations of such a Software Assurance holistic approach including the CONOPS for an organizing entity that will classify and prioritize the use of relevant and continuously vetted tools to create a higher baseline in terms of systemic SwA for the DoD and its most critical Defense Industry Base (DIB) partners. The entity will focus on developing and monitoring adherence to an appropriate risk-based assessment framework for software assurance, aligning each class of software with appropriate depth and breadth of validation and verification tools. The initial domain for this topic is DoD embedded systems. Areas of interest include: (a) Develop the Concepts of Operation (CONOPS) of a central SwA entity and requisite SwA Integrated Product Team. This will include, but is not limited to, the definition and plan for implementing the strategies, objectives, plans, procedures and roadmaps for a central Software Assurance entity within the DoD and an operational entity located at AFRL/RI Rome NY. (b) SwA Tools Assessment and Categorization- Perform baseline evaluation of initial toolsets to be used in the Software Assurance process. Define the appropriate depth and breadth of validation and verification tools for various classes of DoD embedded software providing a standardized set of the best and most appropriate tools. (c) Prototype Software Assurance Demonstration - Run a pilot demonstration on an exemplar program office code base. (d) SwA technology - seeks to advance the state of SwA at scale. Research in this area will address the technology gaps to improve SwA tools (e.g. precision and recall) and scalability (e.g. code size, expertise required, and execution time). Responses for Technical Area (5) may address one or more of the areas of interest. II. AWARD INFORMATION: Total funding for this BAA is approximately $24.9M. The anticipated funding to be obligated under this BAA is broken out by fiscal year as follows: FY14 - $4.5M; FY15 - $5M; FY16 - $5.2M; FY17 - $5.2M and FY18 - $5M. Individual awards will not normally exceed 36 months with dollar amounts normally ranging from $100K to $1M 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 or cooperative agreements depending upon the nature of the work proposed. III. ELIGIBILITY INFORMATION: 1. ELIGIBLE APPLICANTS: All potential applicants are eligible. A determination has been made that all foreign allied participation is excluded at the prime contractor level. Contact the contracting office focal point, Gail E. Marsh, Contracting Officer, telephone (315) 330-7518 or e-mail gail.marsh@us.af.mil if you have any questions. The e-mail must reference the title and BAA-RIK-13-06. 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 or agreement, 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 5. GOVERNMENT APPROVED ACCOUNTING SYSTEM: An offeror must have an government approved accounting system prior to award of a cost-reimbursement contract per limitations set forth in FAR 16.301-3(a) to ensure the system is adequate for determining costs applicable to the contract. The acceptability of an accounting system is determined based upon an audit performed by the Defense Contract Audit Agency (DCAA). IMPORTANT: If you do not have a DCAA approved accounting system access the following link for instructions: https://www.fbo.gov/index?s=opportunity&mode=form&id=1cffad228f48b58057072a6c9113799d &tab=core&_cview=1 IV. APPLICATION AND SUBMISSION INFORMATION: 1. APPLICATION PACKAGE: THIS ANNOUNCEMENT CONSTITUTES THE ONLY SOLICITATION. WE ARE SOLICITING 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," Mar 2015, and Proposal Preparation Instructions, Dec 2014 may be accessed at: https://www.fbo.gov/index?s=opportunity&mode=form&id=1cffad228f48b58057072a6c9113799d &tab=core&_cview=1 2. CONTENT AND FORM OF SUBMISSION: Offerors are required to submit 1 copy of a 3 to 5 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, Estimated Cost, Name/Address of Company, Technical and Contracting Points of Contact (phone, fax and email) (this section is NOT included in the page count); Section B: Task Objective; and Section C: Technical Summary and Proposed Deliverables. Multiple white papers within the purview of this announcement may be submitted by each offeror. If the offeror wishes to restrict its white papers, they must be marked with the restrictive language stated in FAR 15.609(a) and (b). All white papers 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, their Dun & Bradstreet (D&B) Data Universal Numbering System (DUNS) number, a fax number, an e-mail address, and reference BAA-RIK-13-06 with their submission. All responses to this announcement must be addressed to the technical POC, as discussed in paragraph 6 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: FY14 by 3 Mar 2014; FY15 by 2 Mar 2015; FY16 by 1 Mar 2016; FY17 by 1 Mar 2017 and; FY18 by 1 Mar 2018. White papers will be accepted until 2pm Eastern time on 28 Sep 2018, but it is less likely that funding will be available in each respective fiscal year after the dates cited. FORMAL PROPOSALS ARE NOT BEING REQUESTED AT THIS TIME. This BAA will close at 2pm Eastern Time on 28 Sep 2018. 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 and incorporating Change 1 dated March 28, 2013, 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 unclassified responses to this announcement must be addressed to ATTN: Christopher Flynn, AFRL/RITA, 525 Brooks Rd., Rome, NY 13441. Unclassified electronic submission to Christopher.Flynn.6@us.af.mil will also be accepted. 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): Vincent Guza 315-330-4048 0730-1630 Monday-Friday 315-330-2961 Evenings and Weekends Email: vincent.guza@us.af.mil V. APPLICATION REVIEW INFORMATION: 1. CRITERIA: White papers and proposals will be evaluated through a peer or scientific review process using the following criteria, which are listed in descending order of importance and 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: (1) Overall Scientific and Technical Merit - Including the soundness of the approach for the development and/or enhancement of the proposed technology. The technical concepts should be clearly defined and developed, and the technical approach must be sufficiently detailed to support the proposed concepts and technical claims. (2) Offeror's Capabilities and Related Experience - The extent to which the offeror demonstrates relevant technology and domain knowledge, to establish that the offeror has credible capability and experience to complete the proposed work. (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 and fees (if any) to evaluate whether the costs are aligned with the proposed work plan. No further evaluation criteria will be used in selecting white papers/proposals. White papers and proposals submitted will be evaluated as they are received. 2. REVIEW AND SELECTION PROCESS: Only Government employees will evaluate 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, and 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. 3. ADEQUATE PRICE COMPETITION: The Government may simultaneously evaluate proposals received under this BAA with a common cutoff date for multiple offerors. In this case, the Government may make award based on adequate price competition, and offerors must be aware that there is a possibility of non-selection due to a proposal of similar but higher-priced technical approach as compared to another offeror. 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 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. 5. GRANT AWARDS ONLY : For efforts proposed as grant awards, offerors must provide an abstract in their proposal (not to exceed one page) that is publicly releasable and that describes - in terms the public may understand - the project or program supported by the grant. The DoD will publically post the abstract to comply with Section 8123 of the Department of Defense Appropriations Act, 2015 (Pub. L. 113-235). VII. AGENCY CONTACTS: Questions of a technical nature shall be directed to the cognizant technical point of contact, as specified below: TPOC Name: Christopher Flynn Telephone: (315) 330-3249 Email: christopher.flynn.6@us.af.mil Questions of a contractual/business nature shall be directed to the cognizant contracting officer, as specified below: Gail E. Marsh Telephone (315) 330-7518 Email: gail.marsh@us.af.mil The email must reference the solicitation (BAA) number and title of the acquisition. In accordance with AFFARS 5301.91, 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 2014) 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 barbara.gehrs@us.af.mil All responsible organizations may submit a white paper which shall be considered.
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