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FBO DAILY - FEDBIZOPPS ISSUE OF OCTOBER 01, 2016 FBO #5426
DOCUMENT

D -- jPDFEditor Software, Including Software Maintenance Support - Attachment

Notice Date

9/29/2016
 

Notice Type

Attachment
 

NAICS

541519 — Other Computer Related Services
 

Contracting Office

Department of Veterans Affairs;Technology Acquisition Center;23 Christopher Way;Eatontown NJ 07724
 

ZIP Code

07724
 

Solicitation Number

VA11816Q1689SEWP42851
 

Archive Date

12/26/2016
 

Point of Contact

Tinamarie Giraud, Contract Specialist
 

Small Business Set-Aside

N/A
 

Award Number

NNG15SD22B VA118-16-F-1567
 

Award Date

9/27/2016
 

Awardee

FOUR POINTS TECHNOLOGY, L.L.C.;14900 CONFERENCE CENTER DR STE 100;CHANTILLY;VA;20151
 

Award Amount

$36,027.36
 

Description

JUSTIFICATION FOR AN EXCEPTION TO FAIR OPPORTUNITY 1. Contracting Activity:Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Office of Acquisition Operations Technology Acquisition Center 23 Christopher Way Eatontown, NJ 07724 2. Description of Action: This proposed action is for a firm-fixed price delivery order to be issued under the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Solutions for Enterprise-Wide Procurement (SEWP) V Government Wide Acquisition Contract (GWAC) for Qoppa Software jPDFEditor software including software licenses and warranty support. 3. Description of the Supplies or Services: The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Office of Information and Technology (OIT) has a requirement for Qoppa Software jPDFEditor software, including software licenses and warranty support for The Image Management System (TIMS) application. TIMS is a Java code based system that has PDFs and the jPDFEditor software allows the TIMS application users to rotate or resize the PDFs that they are viewing to help adjudicate Veteran's and dependent Education Claims. This software is a Java based PDF editor that works with the Java and Java Applet based TIMS code thus allowing the Education Employees to work the claim in a more efficient manner. VA requires warranty support for the above mentioned software in order to keep the software fully functional and operational. The software maintenance will consist of software upgrades and updates to include major releases, point releases, service releases and security releases of the applicable software on a quarterly basis, and/or within 48 hours in case in which a high risk vulnerability fix becomes available. Delivery of the software licenses shall be no later than 30 days after receipt of order. The period of performance for the warranty support shall be 5 years. 4. Statutory Authority: The statutory authority permitting this exception to fair opportunity is Section 41 U.S.C. 4106(c)(2) as implemented by the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) 16.505(b)(2)(i)(B), entitled "Only one awardee is capable of providing the supplies or services required at the level of quality required because the supplies or services ordered are unique or highly specialized." 5. Rationale Supporting Use of Authority Cited Above: Based on extensive market research, as described in Section 8 of this justification, it was determined that limited competition is available among NASA SEWP V GWAC contract holders for the required brand name Qoppa Software jPDFEditor software, including software licenses and warranty support. The implementation of Qoppa Software jPDFEditor is necessary for the TIMS application to work effectively as it enables Education Employees to adjudicate Veteran and dependent Education claims in a timely manner. Qoppa Software jPDFEditor is the only software that provides a Self-contained Java component that will work seamlessly with the existing Java-based TIMS application. Further, Qoppa Software jPDFEditor can support web based applications and offers batch mode capabilities to save documents via the web to remote servers. These features are required as TIMS is a web based application which saves all required documentation to a back end server via a web application. Qoppa Software jPDFEditor also provides web editing features allowing TIMS users to add, split, move, rotate, flip, delete and merge PDF documents. This functionality is required in order for the Education Employees to effectively utilize theTIMS application to process Veteran and dependent Education Claims in a timely manner. Without this software, TIMS users need to print out excessive amounts of documents to edit manually and scan back in which significantly impacts the ability for Veteran claims to be processed in a timely manner. In addition, Qoppa Software jPDFEditor is a proprietary software product. Therefore, no other software maintenance provider has the proprietary code to provide the necessary warranty support. Based on the market research conducted by the Government technical experts, it has been determined that only Qoppa Software jPDFEditor and associated warranty support can meet the Governments'' requirements. 6. Efforts to Obtain Competition: Market research was conducted, details of which are in the market research section of this document. Limited competition is anticipated for this brand name software and warranty support. In accordance with FAR 5.301 and 16.505(b)(2)(ii)(D), this action will not be synopsized at award on the Federal Business Opportunities (FedBizOps) website due to the dollar threshold. In accordance with Far 16.505 (a)(4)(ii)(A), this justification will be submitted to all applicable NASA SEWP V GWAC holders along with the Request for Quotation in order to fully notify all interested parties. 7. Actions to Increase Competition: In order to remove or overcome barriers to competition in future acquisitions for this requirement, the Government will continue to conduct market research to ascertain if there are changes in the market place that would enable future actions to be competed. 8. Market Research: Qoppa Software jPDFEditor is a commercially available off-the-shelf software license package currently in use in the VA. When conducting market research in November 2015 and August 2016, the Government's technical experts reviewed other similar software products to ascertain if these items could meet VA's requirements. Specifically, the Government's technical experts conducted web-based research on similar software products available from Adobe Acrobat Pro, OmniPage, Nuance Converter, ABC PDF, and PDF-XChange Editor. The research revealed that none of the editor software products available from these companies can meet all the Governments requirements as described in Section 5 including a self-contained Java component, and the ability to support web applications, batch mode and web editing. In order to implement any other editor product other than Qoppa Software jPDFEditor, the TIMS application would have to be redeveloped to a non-Java based code language which would cost the Government over five million dollars and about twenty-four months of development time, and would adversely impact VA's ability to provide Veterans and dependent Education benefits in a timely manner. In addition, the market research confirmed that the source code required to issue the updates is proprietary, and therefore, only Qoppa Software or its authorized resellers have the tools and can access the source code and other proprietary data to provide the necessary warranty support. Market research was also conducted by utilizing the Provider Lookup Tool in July 2016 on the NASA SEWP V GWAC website, which found no NASA SEWP V contract holders that were resellers of Qoppa products. However, the Contract Specialist contacted a Qoppa Software sales representative who confirmed that they do not have any exclusive partnership agreements in place, and are therefore willing to work with any NASA SEWP contract holders. As such, a Request For Information (RFI) was issued on NASA SEWP in September 2016 which yielded market research quotes from two capable vendors. Additionally, NASA SEWP V GWAC has a dynamic catalog where line items can be added based on customer requests, therefore, as long as the required item or service is within scope of the NASA SEWP V GWAC holder's catalog on a daily basis. In addition, the requirements discussed herein have been found to be within scope of the NASA SEWP V GWAC in a separate determination. 9. Other Facts: None.
 

Web Link

FBO.gov Permalink
(https://www.fbo.gov/notices/106cc4a656fdcb75284304a15c52563c)
 

Document(s)

Attachment
 

File Name: NNG15SD22B VA118-16-F-1567 NNG15SD22B VA118-16-F-1567.docx (https://www.vendorportal.ecms.va.gov/FBODocumentServer/DocumentServer.aspx?DocumentId=3032891&FileName=NNG15SD22B-038.docx)

Link: https://www.vendorportal.ecms.va.gov/FBODocumentServer/DocumentServer.aspx?DocumentId=3032891&FileName=NNG15SD22B-038.docx

 

Note: If links are broken, refer to Point of Contact above or contact the FBO Help Desk at 877-472-3779.
 

Record

SN04293311-W 20161001/160929235619-106cc4a656fdcb75284304a15c52563c (fbodaily.com)
 

Source

FedBizOpps Link to This Notice
(may not be valid after Archive Date)

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