FBODaily.com | FedBizOpps: MOD | A | Mission Awareness for Mission Assurance (MAMA)

FBO DAILY - FEDBIZOPPS ISSUE OF OCTOBER 11, 2015 FBO #5070
MODIFICATION

A -- Mission Awareness for Mission Assurance (MAMA)

Notice Date: 10/9/2015
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-2014-0014
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 any previous modifications, pursuant to FAR 35.016(c). This republishing also includes the following changes: (a) Section I: Added new Focus Area for FY16-17 and white papers submission dates have been revised and a new submission date added for FY16; (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 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; (f) Section VI.5: Revised highlight some of the new or revised contractual provisions; (g) Section VI: Added Paragraph 6 regarding grant awards. ________________________________________ 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 BROAD AGENCY ANNOUNCEMENT (BAA) TITLE: Mission Awareness for Mission Assurance (MAMA) BAA ANNOUNCEMENT TYPE: Initial announcement BAA NUMBER: BAA RIK-2014-0014 CATALOG OF FEDERAL DOMESTIC ASSISTANCE (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 effective cyber situational awareness (SA) during mission execution to achieve mission assurance for military operations. AFRL/RI conducts research in the areas of information management and dissemination as well as cyber science and technology. This research has led to the development of service oriented information management and dissemination implementations, in particular, Phoenix Prime. The continued development and maturation of innovative concepts and enhanced services that maximize the situational awareness during mission execution to achieve mission assurance of military operations is the primary focus of this BAA. Background : The Information Management Technologies Branch of the Information Directorate of the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL), Rome Research Site, are researching and developing techniques and services for information management in diverse military environments. 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 role/policy based information access control, information tagging and contextualization through semantic assessment, discovery and identification, scalability and responsiveness to resource availability and the administrative activities that support them. Understanding how concepts for sharing information amongst disparate producers, consumers and operational domains and the technologies that can be applied in the unique military operational and tactical domains are of critical importance. AFRL's information centric technology vision has culminated in a suite of AFRL Information Management (IM) services known as Phoenix Prime. Phoenix Prime is a service oriented information system that enables the management of all information interactions through domain independent "universal services" whose functions include obtaining, discovering, characterizing, identifying, prioritizing, mediating, persisting and disseminating information within and between mission partners. The most recent Phoenix Prime developments correlate users with operational activities, determine information requirements, assess information for mission relevance and establish information processing priorities based upon mission importance and system resource availability. A new consolidated program called "Mission Awareness for Mission Assurance" (MAMA) is being started under this BAA. The goal of MAMA is to enhance cyber situational awareness by the automated assessment of mission execution through the analysis of network traffic flows. This resultant capability is an enabler to achieving mission assurance by allowing prioritization of mission essential functions, mapping of critical cyber assets, vulnerability assessment of mission essential functions and mitigation of vulnerabilities and risks. A key component of the Cyber Vision 2025 tenet of "Assure and Empower the mission" is that ensuring survivability and freedom of action in contested and denied environments requires enhanced cyber situational awareness (SA) for air, space, and cyber commanders. This can be enabled by, in part, mission mapping. The vision goes on to identify then enabling science and technology (S&T) for mission assurance and empowerment as mission mapping to systems components, cyber mission verification across sensors/platforms and dynamic cyber mission configuration. This program acknowledges that cyber is inextricably entwined with the air and space missions, yet the Air Force has no "true" cyber SA, even for limited critical missions; therefore, the vision of this program is to expand upon the Cyber Vision 2025 S&T platform to not only cyber missions, but to all Air Force missions. Much like the recommendations made by Cyber Vision 2025, the Scientific Advisory Board Study on Cyber Situational Awareness also advocates S&T investment in automated mission mapping, data tagging, utilization of context-aware routers and the evaluation of these technologies in an operationally relevant environment. The study sees this investment crucial to addressing the fact that, even for critical missions, there is almost no understanding of Air Force mission dependencies on information systems. The global AF enterprise relies heavily on communication networks to achieve its mission of global vigilance, global reach and global power. However, as the AF and the nation are gaining unprecedented capabilities from high capacity global networks, it is also contending with increasingly sophisticated threats to its networks and systems. These threats range from distributed denial of service, to Anti-satellite (ASAT), to insider threats. While there are significant investments seeking to mitigate these threats, none will eliminate them. AFRL/RI recognizes that the first step to mission assurance, despite the presence of these threats, is improved SA for decision makers at all levels. This program seeks to provide mission awareness through extraction and analysis of content transiting the Air Force Network (AFNET), to inform Command and Control (C2) elements monitoring mission execution, and to control critical network elements to improve mission effectiveness. MAMA's challenge is to first identify what specific missions are supported by what specific information flows. This is called "mapping information to missions." However, simply counting packets between endpoints may provide a measure of network performance, but it does not indicate much about mission performance. The Air Force must separate the SA needed to support cyber-dependent mission assurance from awareness of network health and status. Reports to commanders must be at the mission-impact level, not at the network level. The key is to operate higher in the Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) stack by tagging information objects with mission relevant data. MAMA will extract semantic content from mission relevant metadata of transiting information objects to assess mission status. In addition to supporting a MAMA's goal of addressing current missions, it is anticipated that the massive amount of extracted semantic content will be useful for other goals such as identification of "low and slow" cyber threats, a big data problem that falls outside the scope of MAMA, but within the scope of AFRL/RI. AFRL/RI is uniquely suited to develop the MAMA concept because it draws heavily upon a maturing, moderate Technology Readiness Level (TRL), set of prior investments to accomplish its objectives. Among these is the Content and Context-aware Trust Router (CCTR) as the high capacity broker that is capable of extracting and brokering information around the AFNET. The broker will forward selected traffic to Phoenix Prime, a cloud-scale enterprise-class information management system that will extract semantic content into a triple store accessible to backend analytics engines. The triple stores will challenge AFRL/RI's high performance computing expertise to maintain performance over time in an effort to continuously assess mission status. Perhaps most importantly, it will marry up AFRL/RISA's adaptive mission templates with a specific mission domain to semantically model the mission space, extract mission orders, and support mission awareness. The Department of Defense (DoD) and AF are operating within a contested cyber environment and its ability to accomplish their mission will require responding to network dynamics. In addition, peer competitors may deny us continuous communications with mission assets, leading to uncertainty for commanders. MAMA, while not directly assuring the mission, supports mission assurance by providing a network elements basis for resource allocation, and monitors information flows to infer mission performance on a large scale. AFRL/RIS proposes to focus this program on the Space domain for several reasons. First, as a less mature domain, it is more receptive to technology insertion than the Air domain that has more mature processes and is in the midst of major acquisition efforts. The high level challenge of providing mission awareness for mission assurance can be broken down into several sub-challenges that are addressed within the program structure. This BAA comprises three projects with each having its own technical risks that require substantial S&T: 1) Mapping the Mission to Information Flows 2) Mission Information Sufficiency, Correlation, and Event Learning (MISCEL) and 3) Integration, Demonstration and Validation of MAMA. At a high level, MAMA brings together three types of data: 1) models of information flows that support known mission types, 2) knowledge of specific missions being executed with principals mapped to corresponding roles, and 3) the information transiting the network either in support of these missions or from other unmapped data flows. Based upon these components, MAMA will provide mission awareness to C2 operators and provide feedback to Quality of Service mechanisms in the CCTR. The current research and development focus areas to be conducted under this BAA are as follows: - FY 15-16 - Mapping the Mission to Information Flows - FY 16-17 - Mission Information Sufficiency, Correlation, and Event Learning (MISCEL) - FY 17-18 - Concept Integration, Demo and Validation of MAMA FY15-16 - Focus Area - Mapping the Mission to Information Flows NOTE : Reference: IV.1: FY15 should be submitted by 1 Nov 2014 and FY16 by 1 June 2015 for this Focus Area. The goal of the "Mapping the Mission to Information Flows" project is to build upon the Active Mission Templates (AMT) project currently under development under the Mission Responsive Information Services (MRIS) consolidated program. The AMT models will need to be extended to incorporate temporal models of information flows. The AMT project enables mission planners to specify semantic models (mission templates) of the information needs of users based on their roles, mission parameters, context, and situations. These models can then be instantiated and used by running IM services to help govern information dissemination that is responsive to specific mission needs. The set of AMT mission models will need to be extended to cover the domain of interest (currently a to-be-determined critical Joint Space Operations Center mission). The models will need to incorporate monitoring criteria to ensure that status reports reflect what commanders need to know. Furthermore, identified mission applications will need to be proxied to transform their message traffic into managed information objects, and MAMA will need to determine what metadata is necessary to support the mission requirements. Key challenges are developing a domain ontology, domain mission context/event definitions, operational concept exploration, complex event processing services, and mission context phase monitors and triggers. This effort draws heavily upon earlier investment in CCTR and Phoenix Prime's semantic extraction and reasoner capabilities. FY16-17 - Focus Area - Mission Information Sufficiency, Correlation, and Event Learning (MISCEL) NOTE: The Government is looking for white papers now for this Focus Area. The white papers for this focus area should be submitted no later than 13 Nov 2015 for a FY16 award and 1 Sep 2016 for a FY17 award. The goal of MISCEL is to develop a working architecture for semantic analysis based on textual and structural data extraction from information into mission intelligence, mission status monitoring, mission assurance notifications, and cross-domain situational awareness. The MISCEL project will harness an analytics engine to continuously monitor mission execution and system status. Mission intelligence will be gained through the autonomous assessment of mission execution. This assessment is performed by analyzing mission information models, raw information contents, and semantic extractions (Temporal, Geospatial, Information, Mission, etc.) in order to determine information to mission(s) correlation, phase changes for mission essential workflows (MEFs), information workflow traceability, status, and mission prioritization. This previously uncaptured mission intelligence will enable effective management of the mission's information space and inform mission assurance capabilities. MISCEL will result in furthering the critical capability of enhancing mission awareness that empowers mission assurance, utilizing information fingerprints to intelligently bridge static, prescribed mission models with operational reality. MISCEL is the 2nd phase of MAMA, which seeks to transition advanced mission awareness capabilities to the logistical, humanitarian, and mission domains of US TRANSCOM, while simultaneously providing interoperability and cross-SA information to other mission-domains. Phase I targets the production of use case mission models, messaging, and prioritization components. Phase II seeks to provide the intelligent metadata analysis and mission-driven information assessment engine that will manage and configure the core awareness capabilities. Phase III integrates the mission awareness components (Phase I) with mission intelligence capabilities (Phase II) and demonstrates them via red teaming and an operational technology experiment. The key challenges to be addressed in this project are: - Mission Metadata Value Analysis and Assessment - Use cases for Information, Mission, MEF, and other algorithms have pre-requisite inputs, and are optimized if outputs are normalized. The value of metadata is variable to its applied algorithm, but capturing value can optimize algorithm selection from a catalog and measurably increase the probability of mission success. - Mission Correlation & MEF Workflow Phase Changes- Relevant mission(s) should be identified, as autonomously as possible, when solutions are provisioned only with a set of mission models and raw information. MEF phase changes should be detected and/or learned. Future support for Decision Support hooks should be considered, where supervised, semi-autonomous learning can provide justifications & mission participant decision points can be informed according to the roles, process, algorithms, and metadata value analysis results. - Information, Mission, and MEF Critical Events & Prioritization - Disparate events identified from the information should be evaluated for mission criticality. Normalized scales of prioritization and criticality, aligned with relevant AF guidance and standards, need to be determined in order to inform and adapt agile mission aware messaging systems. Mission Assurance Categorization standards and MEF guidelines should inform the prioritization scale and the assessment results of executed algorithms. - High Performance Combinational Data Mining/Learning - Developing algorithms, with Analytics Engine support, that mine a combination of semantic relationships, structured/unstructured information, and mission templates/models can result in solutions that are slow, and unable to scale to the growing scale of data exchanged and persisted. Also, complexity can grow unwieldy in converging diverse forms of analytics (Graph, MapReduce, NLP, etc.) and queries (SPARQL, XPATH, Keyword, KeystoneML, etc.). It can also be difficult to prove that algorithm(s) qualitatively enhances some facet of mission awareness, increasing the research and implementation complexity. - Behavioral Monitoring - Mission models/templates provide only the most minimal information sufficiency, and tend to be non-runtime adaptable, while also requiring manual supervision. MISCEL pursues behavioral monitoring capabilities that capture information provenance (queries, subscriptions, results, types, formats, etc.) for mission and mission role participants. This captured provenance should be taken into account by algorithms seeking to determine information relevancy increasing/decreasing over time, respective to mission types and roles. Information relevancy correlated to an individual (Personalized, adaptive content, etc.) is beyond the initial scope of the project. - Limited Ontology Scope and Interconnection - Stitching together existing ontologies (Phase I), or developing new ones, if required for the chosen technical approach, may produce more expansive, reusable, and interoperable knowledge of mission awareness. The core idea is that the maximal amount of mission awareness should be generated to inform better mission assurance decisions. Some technical approaches may emphasize a mix of ontologies, process modeling logic, other Mission QoS analytics, and others seeking to balance a mixture of all three. Consideration of past mission participant behaviors, identified mission assurance events, information clusters, and mission participant roles may provide a foundational set of relationships that better induce and learn mission events and workflows over time. - Mission Assurance Categorization notifications - Communicating identified information vulnerabilities, threats, and MEF events provide greater value if based upon, or interoperable with, existing MAC schemas and messaging standards. Past efforts at AFRL (CMAC) have approached this objective from a networking perspective, and enabling interoperability between network health/status and information SA would cross-pollinate advanced features and enable more agile and reusable Mission Assurance capabilities. - Mission-information visualization - While desirable, but not required, demonstrating the effectiveness of information, mission, and MEF analytics that steer mission assurance capabilities in an intuitive manner is complex, but provides powerful visual evidence of the impact of the resulting mission assessment capabilities. Two benchmarks will be used, each of which consider the capturing of: mission metadata pre-requisites; attribute requirements; mission model constraints; prioritization; and other resulting outputs. The first benchmark will examine the impact of performing valuation of information and the use of that valuation to prioritize what relationships are more critical than others to extract and identify. The second benchmark will be a qualitative benchmark that can measure the effectiveness of the available mission analytics. This benchmark will be used to allow the pursuit of analytics proven to provide greater mission awareness, or that are proven to be more impactful in assessing vulnerabilities. MISCEL mission algorithms should pursue a mixture of offline/online approach that considers best-fit (batch, streaming, runtime/post-processing), as Information Management (IM) is a set of capabilities that operate in widely diverse environments (Tactical/Enterprise) that may be degraded or contested. MISCEL will harness an analytics engine to continuously monitor mission execution and status. Effective monitoring may require balancing high-performance continuous query execution and relevancy-based storage management. Algorithms developed should either be externally verified for quality and effectiveness, or managed by runtime analytics-based QoS that qualitatively validates execution results for mission effectiveness. Although MISCEL should be applicable to diverse datasets, it is specifically targeted towards mapping and correlating raw information within the context of temporal-semantic models of mission lifecycles for missions of interest. This will provide mission context within the information space, and should provide interfaces/mechanisms for mission-driven information prioritization. A Mission Monitoring and Notification Service will be created that provides standards-based Mission Assurance Categorization messages. These messages provide a potential feedback mechanism to future mission assurance learning components, as well as to mission visualization and reporting components. During the MISCEL project, one or more tools that statically model missions and mission essential functions should be leveraged. An existing option is Adaptive Mission Templates (AMT), a prototype mission modeling tool developed under the AFRL Mission Responsive Information Services Program. Business Process Model Notation (BPMN) or other tools that integrate Mission Essential Functions (MEF), resiliency processes, mission event impacts, and notions of role/identity mission participation with an integrated operational plan are other examples. While prescriptive mission models/templates provide enough adaptive structure to flexibly define multiple missions, MISCEL seeks to complement these deductive, model-based capabilities with content-based analytics that derive greater mission awareness from introspected information. This ability will be a milestone towards qualitatively improving the likelihood of mission success by utilizing mission models, ingested information, and the available information & mission-based analytics. Offerors are encouraged to pursue primarily offsite contractor presence, due to limited lab space availability, unless required to effectively foster collaboration, integration, and demonstration requirements. Annual experiments and/or demonstrations in operationally relevant scenarios and domains will act as capability checkpoints throughout this effort. AFRL/RISA has a number of limited availability cloud testbeds, both on-site and off-site, that can be considered for use. Operationally relevant scenarios from the transport and logistics domain due are desired in order to align planned infrastructure & algorithmic capabilities, and transition opportunities. FY 17 -18 - Focus Area - Concept Integration, Demo and Validation of MAMA NOTE: White Papers will be accepted in FY17 for this Focus Area. Reference: IV.1: FY17 should be submitted by 1 Sep 16 and FY18 by 1 Sep 2017. The final project of the program is concept integration, demonstration and validation (DemVal). Red teaming will be used to ensure that these mission critical services are well designed and robust to cyber threats. This component serves several goals. The first is to simply expand the practice of red teaming to improve the maturity of capabilities we transition. Minimally, the system should pass all tests currently required for an authority to operate on NIPRnet/SIPRnet. However, AFRL/RI will go beyond that to consider active intrusion by a red team. In the past, there have been several programs that investigated system hardening, such as Secure Tactical Enterprise Gateway that matured the "crumple zone" concept first developed under the DARPA OASIS (Operations Analysis and Simulation Sciences) program. These ideas will be explored where appropriate, however, they were tuned to much lower throughput scenarios (e.g., tactical network), and so may not be applicable to high data rate deployments. The program will conclude with a limited technology experiment within an operational context. This project represents 25% of the funding and 15% of the technical risk. It is anticipated that the integration task and Limited Technology Experiment (LTE) will be under the Connectivity and Dissemination Core Technical Competency in the Information Systems Division (AFRL/RIS). The red teaming will be led by the Cyber Science and Technology Core Technical Competency in the Information Exploitation and Operations Division (AFRL/RIG) and executed on-site because AFRL/RI wishes to grow competency in this area. Offerors are encouraged to provide an on-site contractor presence working at AFRL/RISA Rome, NY to foster collaboration with other in-house teams, to minimize integration risks and to effectively leverage experimentation/demonstration resources. Phoenix Prime software and documentation are available upon request to Timothy Blocher (timothy.blocher@us.af.mil). Security Classification: Software development will largely be UNCLASSIFIED but the domain specific activities may be up to Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information (TS/SCI). II. AWARD INFORMATION: 1. FUNDING: Total funding for this BAA is approximately $9.9 M. The anticipated funding to be obligated under this BAA is broken out by fiscal year as follows: FY15 - $1.4 M; FY16 - $2.9 M; FY17 - $2.7 M; and FY18 - $2.9 M. Individual awards will not normally exceed 24 months with dollar amounts normally ranging from $250K to $1.5M. There is also the potential to make awards up to any dollar value. 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. 2. FORM. Awards of efforts as a result of this announcement will be in the form of contracts. 3. BAA TYPE: This is a two-step open broad agency announcement. This announcement constitutes the only solicitation. As STEP ONE - The Government is only soliciting white papers at this time. DO NOT SUBMIT A FORMAL PROPOSAL. 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 regarding the proposal. III. ELIGIBILITY INFORMATION: All qualified offerors who meet the requirements of this BAA may apply. Foreign or foreign-owned offerors are advised that their participation is subject to foreign disclosure review procedures. Foreign or foreign-owned offerors should immediately contact the contracting office focal point, Gail E. Marsh, Contracting Officer, telephone (315) 330-7518 or e-mail Gail.Marsh@us.af.mil for information if they contemplate responding. The e-mail must reference the BAA number and title. IV. APPLICATION AND SUBMISSION INFORMATION: All responses to this announcement must be addressed to the Technical point of contact (POC) listed in SECTION VII. DO NOT send white papers to the Contracting Officer. 1. SUBMISSION DATES AND TIMES: It is recommended that white papers be received by the following dates to maximize the possibility of award: FY15 by 1 Nov 2014 FY16 by 1 Sep 2015 FY17 by 1 Sep 2016 FY18 by 1 Sep 2017 White papers will be accepted until 2 PM 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. This BAA will close on 28 Sep 2018. 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. CONTENT AND FORMAT: Offerors are required to submit 2 copies of a 5-6 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: a. 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); b. Section B : Task Objective; and c. Section C: Technical Summary and Proposed Deliverables. All white papers shall be double spaced with a font no smaller than 12 point. 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-2014-0014 with their submission. 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). 3. HANDLING AND MAILING INSTRUCTIONS: a. CLASSIFICATION GUIDANCE. 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/. 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 b. CLASSIFIED SUBMISSIONS. AFRL/RISA will accept classified responses to this BAA when the classification is mandated by classification guidance provided by an Original Classification Authority of the U.S. Government, or when the offeror believes the work, if successful, would merit classification. Security classification guidance in the form of a DD Form 254 (DoD Contract Security Classification Specification) will not be provided at this time since AFRL is soliciting ideas only. Offerors that intend to include classified information or data in their white paper submission or who are unsure about the appropriate classification of their white papers should contact the technical point of contact listed in Section VII for guidance and direction in advance of preparation. c. MAILING INSTRUCTIONS. All classified responses to this announcement must be sent U.S. Postal Service, registered mail and addressed to AFRL/RISA, 525 Brooks Road, Rome NY 13441-4505, and reference BAA RIK-2014-0014. Electronic submission of classified white paper information is NOT authorized. Electronic submission of unclassified white papers to Albert Frantz ( Albert.Frantz@us.af.mil ) will be accepted. Encrypt or password-protect all proprietary information prior to sending. Offerors are responsible to confirm receipt with the technical POC listed in Section VII. AFRL is not responsible for undelivered documents. Any questions can be directed to the cognizant technical point of contact listed in Section VII. 4. OTHER SUBMISSION REQUIREMENTS/CONSIDERATIONS: a. COST SHARING OR MATCHING: Cost sharing is not a requirement. b. 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. The provision at FAR 52.204-7, System for Award Management (Jul 2013) applies. c. EXECUTIVE COMPENSATION AND FIRST-TIER SUBCONTRACT/ SUBRECIPIENT 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. d. ALLOWABLE CHARGES: 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. e. GOVERNMENT APPROVED ACCOUNTING SYSTEM: An offeror must have a 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 V. APPLICATION REVIEW INFORMATION: 1. CRITERIA: The following criteria, which are listed in descending 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: a. Overall Scientific and Technical Merit -- The soundness of approach for the development and/or enhancement of the proposed technology, b. Related Experience - The extent to which the offeror demonstrates relevant technology and domain knowledge. c. Openness, Maturity and Assurance of Solution - The extent to which existing capabilities and standards are leveraged and the relative maturity of the proposed technology, and d. Reasonableness and realism of proposed costs and fees (if any). 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. STEP TWO INFORMATION - REQUEST FOR PROPOSAL & AWARD: 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. 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. ADMINISTRATIVE AND NATIONAL POLICY REQUIREMENTS: Depending on the work to be performed, the offeror may require a top secret facility clearance and safeguarding capability; therefore, personnel identified for assignment to a classified effort must be cleared for access to top 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 white paper/proposal. 3. DATA RIGHTS: a. SBIR 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. b. NON-SBIR RIGHTS. Non-SBIR data rights are strongly encouraged to be unlimited, but 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. NOTICE: The following provisions apply: (a) DFARS 252.239-7017, Notice of Supply Chain Risk (Nov 2013) (b) DFARS 252.204-7009, Compliance with Safeguarding covered Defense Information Controls 6. 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: All white paper and proposal submissions and any questions of a technical nature shall be directed to the cognizant technical point of contact as specified below (unless otherwise specified in the technical area): TPOC Name: Albert Frantz Mailing Address: AFRL/RISA, 525 Brooks Road, Rome, NY 13441-4505 Telephone: (315) 330-4713 Email: albert.frantz@us.af.mil Questions of a contractual/business nature shall be directed to the cognizant contracting officer, as specified below (email requests are preferred): Gail Marsh Telephone (315) 330-7518 Email: gail.marsh@us.af.mil Emails 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 Email: barbara.gehrs@us.af.mil All responsible organizations may submit a white paper which shall be considered.
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Record: SN03919496-W 20151011/151009234231-e62023f5027ede0587af2081f6c81bfa (fbodaily.com)
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