SOURCES SOUGHT
D -- Intent to Sole Source
- Notice Date
- 9/25/2017
- Notice Type
- Sources Sought
- NAICS
- 541990
— All Other Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services
- Contracting Office
- Other Defense Agencies, National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, OCSA - Application & Content Delivery, Attn: OCSA Mail Stop S84-OCSA, 7500 Geoint Drive, Springfield, Virginia, 22150, United States
- ZIP Code
- 22150
- Solicitation Number
- HM0476-170617
- Archive Date
- 10/10/2017
- Point of Contact
- Monica E. Mende,
- E-Mail Address
-
monica.e.mende@nga.mil
(monica.e.mende@nga.mil)
- Small Business Set-Aside
- N/A
- Description
- 1. NGA is in the midst of transformation: Today, we experience challenges delivering critical analytic technologies and exploitation capabilities at the pace of our need. We must evolve our way of doing business to leverage all manner of capabilities-government and commercial off-the-shelf and open source-rather than limiting ourselves to large complex programs with lengthy acquisition timelines. The value of our GEOINT knowledge depends on the technical agility we harness through close partnerships with our IC colleagues, industry, and academia, and we must change the way we identify, design, develop and deliver capabilities to the workforce. Rapid technology advancements and the increasing volume and diversity of spatially-temporally referenced data has great potential to assist our analytic work when we can quickly bring useful advances into our day-to-day business. Over the next few years NGA will automate many activities and services in house or obtain them as services from commercial vendors. Repeatable tasks, such as structuring observations from imagery exploitation and selecting data sources, will run autonomously with human oversight. In the to-be National System for Geospatial-Intelligence (NSG) and Allied System for Geospatial-Intelligence (ASG) architecture, analysts will exploit expansive and diverse GEOINT content through model-driven and advanced analytics. Automation will permeate the mechanics of GEOINT, with subject matter experts providing guidance and context. Exploitation of data and selection of collection assets will predominantly operate as automated systems. Humans will train the systems and research new methods, verifying automated outputs and investigating intellectual nuances machines cannot understand. Furthermore, the new NGA architecture will include elements that enable implementation of initiatives such as Broker and Object Based Production; leverage projected advances in the fields of Computer Vision and Machine Learning; and realize the long term objective of providing anticipatory intelligence. NGA envisions a decentralized cloud based architecture comprised of a series of standards based, interoperable services and tools that will support the entire NSG/ASG. NGA is conducting an engineering analysis to identify the tools and services that will provide the capabilities to execute the transformed analytic mission. NGA will use this analysis to refine the to-be NSG/ASG architecture and define the enterprise level acquisition strategies for many follow-on efforts. Specifically related to the Cedalion program and existing suite of tools, the analysis will examine the feasibility of modularizing a vast majority of our current orchestration and exploitation services. Recommendations will be provided on how to best evolve complicated and lengthy workflow services and deliver flexible, discreet and interoperable micro services to meet the needs of the evolving tradecraft. NGA has already begun separating Cedalion into more modular services which supports this strategic shift. For instance, NGA has separated Cedalion's data layer from the service and application layers. NGA may also realign existing data services over to our Library Services or other enterprise data services as they become available. In addition, as more enterprise services are delivered, such as GEOINT Search and Retrieval (GSR), we envision divesting Cedalion's current Discovery, Search, and Retrieval requirements and services to GSR. These are but two examples, and NGA will consider all Cedalion services in the upcoming engineering analysis to deliver more flexible and rapidly delivered micro services. 2. We will engage industry partners: Our recent experience with several smaller, more agile and modular development efforts have shown the value of working in integrated analytic and technology development teams to create apps and services supporting the mission. Going forward we will create a free-market environment to exchange innovative ideas among analysts, scientists and industry partners. Over the next two years we will begin to replace lengthy acquisition timelines with the formation of agile, joint development teams-with developers and analysts-to deliver and scale new, modular capabilities. These joint development teams will use the development-operations environment-one with developers and analysts collaborating in real-time-to deliver and scale new capabilities, overhaul existing capabilities, and constantly deliver new, improved applications and services. These teams will foster a "culture of innovation" where ideas may be competed for the opportunity to get time and resources to grow the ideas into functional capabilities and methodologies, potentially using fly-offs, demonstrations with down selects, and other competitively awarded and streamlined development and integration opportunities. NGA will hold several industry days and joint engineering forums over the next 24 months to engage firms and inform industry partners on the progress being made toward these objectives, determine sustainment necessities of capabilities retained as-is, and to learn more of our industry partners' best practices, and suggestions regarding implementation of this vision. In advance of these joint sessions, NGA will periodically share engineering analysis and insight regarding how we plan to get value-added technology into the hands of analysts, ensuring the right people have reviewed the data and are prepared to have a meaningful conversation. This will not be business as usual. The engineering analysis and to-be architectures that NGA will share with the community over the next several months, through the industry focused events described above, will provide transparency towards these future requirements, ensuring industry builds the best teams possible for the work NGA needs performed. 3. NGA has a need to maintain current capabilities: While NGA is working through this transformation the agency has a need to maintain current systems and capabilities until NGA can evolve the systems, engineer modular services, or move the capabilities into new systems. Pursuant to Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) 6.302-1, NGA intends to contract on a sole source basis with Lockheed Martin Corporation, 13560 Dulles Technology Drive, Herndon, VA 20171-3414, to continue maintaining Cedalion systems for a total period of 27 months through December 2019. This will be accomplished through a three-month extension of the existing contract through 31 Dec 2017, followed by the award of a sole source contract in January 2018 with a base period of 12 months and options for an additional 12 months. These sole source contract actions will ensure the continuity of Cedalion services without a break in the mission while NGA works toward new contracts and other development efforts with an expected start date of January 2020. Cedalion provides GEOINT Intelligence Reporting Workflow/Workgroup Management capabilities in order to facilitate the identification, allocation, creation, monitoring, assessment, commitment and management of exploitation and production resources to quantify and measure totality of analytic work effort. GEOINT Workflow/Workgroup is the sequence of operations, declared as work of a person, group, organization, mechanism, or piece of information technology, that ingest, process, and output GEOINT. GEOINT Intelligence Reporting Workflow Management is the ability to visualize and control the entire synthesis of GEOINT workflow pipelines, niche processes, ad hoc and assigned resources that can be applied to satisfy GEOINT orders. The capabilities provide the requirements, workflow, and workgroup management to create Intelligence Reports, products, and services. Cedalion provides the evolution of the required tools for analysis workgroups to plan and manage the end-to-end exploitation and production of GEOINT data and products, and the ad-hoc ability to create and modify workflows as crises and national security events dictate. Specific Cedalion services that will be sustained during this period include the maintenance and release train facilitating the delivery of Cedalion capabilities, cloud enabling code to facilitate the transition of services to the cloud infrastructure, and engineering support to technical assessments and activities (as required) to provide preventative, perfective and adaptive maintenance and integration of other segment developed capabilities. Lockheed Martin Corporation is the only available source that can provide the program and domain knowledge, skilled resources and corporate reach back support suitable for successful continuation of Cedalion capability-based software development, operations and sustainment processes. This notice of intent is being published in accordance with FAR 5.2 requiring the dissemination of information on proposed contract actions. This is a notice of intent to award on a sole source basis. The statutory authority for this sole source procurement is 10 U.S.C. 2304(c)(1), as implemented by FAR 6.302-1. There is a reasonable basis to conclude that the highly specialized supplies or services are available from only one responsible source and no other supplies or services will satisfy agency requirements. Further, award of this requirement to any other source would result in an unacceptable delay in fulfilling the agency's requirements and substantial duplication of cost to the Government that is not expected to be recovered through competition. This notice of intent is not a request for competitive proposals. Interested parties may identify their interest and capability to respond to the requirement. All responsible sources may submit a capability statement, which shall be considered by the agency. A determination not to compete this requirement, based upon the responses to this notice, is solely within the discretion of the Government. The Government will issue a Justification and Approval (J&A) to support the need to contract on a sole source basis. The J&A will be posted to the unclassified ARC at https://acq.westfields.net 14 days after award of the modification. The point of contact for both actions is Monica E. Mende, monica.e.mende@nga.mil. Contracting Office Address: Attn: OCSA Mail Stop S84-OCSA 7500 Geoint Drive Springfield, Virginia Place of Performance: Springfield, Virginia
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