MODIFICATION
D -- Sources Sought Notice and Pre-Solicitation Conference - Federal Student Aid Enterprise Business Collaboration and Enterprise Information Technology Architecture - Small Business
- Notice Date
- 5/31/2018
- Notice Type
- Modification/Amendment
- NAICS
- 541519
— Other Computer Related Services
- Contracting Office
- Department of Education, Federal Student Aid, FSA Acquisitions, Union Center Plaza, RM 91F1, 830 First Street, NE, Washington, District of Columbia, 20202-5405
- ZIP Code
- 20202-5405
- Solicitation Number
- 910031-18-FSASSN
- Point of Contact
- Enterprise & Architecture Team,
- E-Mail Address
-
FSAEAT@ed.gov
(FSAEAT@ed.gov)
- Small Business Set-Aside
- Total Small Business
- Description
- This is NOT A SOLICITATION ANNOUNCEMENT. This is a SOURCES SOUGHT NOTICE (SSN) and is issued for planning purposes and to determine the availability of capable firms to provide enterprise technology business collaboration and information technology architecture services. It does not constitute a Request for Proposal, a Request for Quote, or an indication that the Government will contract for any of the items and/or services discussed in this notice. Only submissions from small business firms will be accepted for this announcement. Submission of a response to this SSN is entirely voluntary. The Department of Education, Federal Student Aid (FSA) will not pay or entitle the submitter of information to claim any form of compensation whatsoever. Should solicitations be issued for the draft requirements, they will be issued pursuant to the acquisition strategy selected by the Contracting Officer and the applicable procurement regulations. Disclaimer All information received in response to this notice will be treated as business confidential information, and exempted from disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act. Nonetheless, submitters should properly mark their responses if the information is proprietary. Responses to this notice will not be returned. In accordance with FAR 15.201(e), responses to this notice are not offers and cannot be accepted by the Government to form a binding contract. A) PURPOSE FSA is issuing this SSN to: (1) Provide industry with two draft Performance Work Statements (PWSs); I. Enterprise Business Collaboration (EBC) PWS II. Enterprise Information Technology Architecture (EITA) PWS (2) Invite firms to an Pre-Solicitation Conference for the services described in the draft PWSs; (3) Identify small businesses that are capable of meeting the draft PWS requirements; and (4) Collect information to be considered in FSA's forthcoming determination on whether to consolidate the draft PWS requirements. B) INTRODUCTION FSA uses a complex set of applications, collectively called FSA Applications, to support its mission of managing over $150 billion each year in new grants, loans, and work-study funds. In pursuit of fulfilling its mission, FSA has defined strategic goals to: (1) Provide superior service and information to students and borrowers; and (2) Develop efficient processes and effective capabilities that are among the best in the private and public sectors. EBC and EITA were implemented in order to help meet these strategic goals, and both are key initiatives within FSA's Technology Office. Each is managed by a separate team within the Technology Office. The underlying infrastructure for both EBC and EITA resides at FSA's Next Generation Data Center (NGDC), which is currently operated and maintained by the NGDC contractor. Note: Please refer to the attached PWS for each draft requirement, which will provide detailed tasks and information. EBC Overview EBC delivers secure collaboration, workflow, communication, and cost-effective development capabilities by incorporating products that provide significant out-of-the box capabilities. The required capabilities are applied across the Department of Education, and not just Federal Student Aid. The suite of products includes, but is not limited to, Microsoft SharePoint, Project Server, Serena Business Manager, and K2 Black Pearl. FSA will rely on the EBC contractor to support, operate, and maintain EBC systems and services working under the guidance of FSA's personnel, and in conjunction with multiple FSA teams (e.g., application development, change management, information security, performance test), in addition to other contractors, when appropriate. EITA Overview EITA was designed to: (1) Reduce complexity and licensing costs by implementing a shared environment utilized by over 40 Information Systems within FSA and the Department of Education (2) Provide a high availability solution (3) Provide a highly scalable architecture (4) Adopt and promote industry best practices throughout the enterprise (5) Provide up-to-date technology via a regular ever-greening cycle EITA provides the set of "middleware" and a set of supporting services for critical functions and resources that FSA Applications rely on for operations, maintenance, architecture, design, implementation, test, and deployment. FSA will rely on the EITA contractor to support, operate, and maintain EITA systems and services working in conjunction with the NGDC contactor as well as other relevant FSA Applications and other contractors, and or cloud provider(s), as appropriate. C) SCOPE EBC PWS Scope The scope of the EBC contract is to procure the full range of technical and project management services to 1) support the continuing, comprehensive, and effective operation of the infrastructure and 2) support FSA Applications hosted and utilized by Stakeholders that use EBC. At a high level, FSA's business needs for Contractor support for EBC include the following: (1) Monitor EBC in all environments. (2) Document the EBC configuration in the "Install and Configuration Guide." (3) Administer SharePoint by performing tasks such as implementing team sites and portals as requested using templates developed and modified as needed, managing access parameters and settings as necessary, and configuring audit logs. (4) Provide subject matter expertise to help analyze results of periodic security scans and remediate issues found during security scan as pertinent to EBC. (5) Provide EBC-related data to support reporting to external stakeholders, as required by FSA. (6) Support the development and enhancement of the EBC Team portal. (7) Develop and maintain EBC procedures. (8) Develop and maintain EBC guidance for users and developers. (9) Deliver enhancements to EBC documentation, tools, software, and sites as necessary. (10) The EBC Contractor shall provide full support, including implementation and deployment, to the Development, Test, and EPT environments. (11) The Contractor shall provide qualified personnel, materials, automated systems, software, equipment, and services to support the EBC Service Areas outlined below and each of the service requirements listed. (12) Develop, distribute maintain, and as requested, present project plans and schedules. (13) Provide technical strategy, guidance, and consultative advice, to the NGDC through FSA regarding facility security, network security, and operating system security. (14) Support security testing and evaluation of EBC and its applications as impacted by EBC. (15) Support the introduction of new technologies and capabilities to EBC (e.g., server virtualization through evaluation, analysis and technical proofs of concept). (16) The contractor shall maintain traceability of configuration items, including baselines and builds, to support all the functions of FSA's Lifecycle Management Methodology (LMM). (17) Develop and maintain the long-term evergreening schedule in collaboration with FSA's Technology Office and recommend a COTS evergreening plan and timeline. (18) Deploy releases, versions and patches according to a schedule approved by FSA. (19) Receive and process incident requests from FSA Application Owners. (20) Forward production incidents to the NGDC, creating a NGDC Incident Ticket. (21) Support remediation efforts. (22) Operate a Tier 1 Help Desk to receive requests for help and incident reports from stakeholders via phone and email. The Help Desk hours are 8:00 am to 8:00 pm Eastern Standard Time. EITA PWS Scope The scope of the EITA contract is to procure the full range of technical and project management services to support the continuing, comprehensive, and effective operation of an integrated set of middleware functions and supporting resources available to FSA Applications and Stakeholders to use and integrate with. At a high level, FSA's business needs for Contractor support for EITA include the following: (1) Support EITA middleware resources and work products required to provide a broad range of EITA related services. (2) Support EITA software and integrated FSA Applications operating in the following environments: development, testing, enterprise performance testing, staging, and production. (3) Comply with documentation requirements and Stage Gate reviews as defined in the EITA Lifecycle Management Methodology (LMM) Tailoring Plan. (4) Comply with standards for test management within the LMM. (5) Conduct and support intersystem testing between its area of responsibility and other entities that do business with Federal Student Aid. The contractor shall provide test data, and test cases/scenarios in support of intersystem testing. (6) Document defects found during testing in accordance with FSA's Enterprise Test Management Standards. (7) This contract is subject to Independent Verification and Validation (IV&V) and the contractor shall support Federal Student Aid IV&V activities. (8) Provide information and assistance to support annual Program Assessment (PA) activities. (9) Maintain traceability of configuration items, including baselines and builds, to support all the functions of FSA's Lifecycle Management Methodology. (10) Collaborate with FSA's Test Manager, the other contractors and other project team members as needed to facilitate the success of EITA activities. (11) Provide all qualified personnel, materials, automated systems, software, equipment, and services to support the EITA Service Areas outlined in the PWS. (12) Support FSA in managing this contract by providing standard project management services and communicating standard artifacts to EITA's stakeholders. (13) Provide technical strategy, guidance, and consultative advice, to the NGDC (or hosting data center) and FSA regarding facility security, network security, and operating system security. (14) Support NGDC (or hosting data center) management of Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) certificates and schedule for renewals. (15) Support security testing and evaluation of EITA's applications. (16) Support remediation of security-related issues in EITA's applications. (17) Support handling security incidents related to EITA's applications. (18) Support the introduction of new technologies and capabilities to EITA, e.g. virtualization of various environments. (19) Provide Subject Matter Expertise (SME) and assist in making architectural decisions. (20) Support developing sizing requirements for the physical and virtual environments. (21) Provide design specifications relating to EITA software for the physical and virtual machines that will house the various needed production and pre-production environments. (22) Support FSA Application Owners in analyzing technical impact and developing plans. (23) Ensure EITA documentation is kept current and performs changes, maintenance, and version control of all EITA technical architecture, systems and network design, and process documentation, and LMM documentation, where applicable. (24) Support small to medium sized new application deployments, for applications not currently supported by EITA. (25) Conduct Technical Proofs of Concept, across all of the EITA service areas: ITA and ESB. (26) Tailor the Install and Configuration Guide to the target deployment environment. Install and Configuration Guides are quite similar across the pre-production and production environments except for server names. (27) Support software release and deployment to the Staging and Production environments at the NGDC (or hosting data center). (28) Process TFA (Two-Factor Authentication) tier 1 requests as EITA Incident Tickets. (29) Route EITA incident tickets to the appropriate EITA service area Incident Management and Problem Resolution function. (30) Support development of J2EE applications. (31) Develop configuration files for application run-time context, build, and deployment. D) PRE-SOLICITATION CONFERENCE FSA is hosting a Pre-Solicitation Conference on June 4, 2018 from 10 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time (EDT). The designated Contracting Officer(s) and Program Managers within FSA will be present to discuss the upcoming EITA and EBC opportunities and allow vendors to gain an understanding of FSA's mission and the draft EITA and EBC requirements. A question-and-answer period will follow; however, only questions submitted by the questions deadline referenced in section F will be considered. The engagement is offered at no cost. Due to building logistics and space availability this event will be limited to one attendee per vendor. Location: Department of Education Lyndon B. Johnson Building 400 Maryland Avenue SW, Washington, DC 20202 Interested vendors must register for the event using the following link: http://www.cvent.com/d/1gq00l/4W. Space will be filled on a first-come basis. FSA will stop accepting reservations on May 23, 2018. Up to two individuals from each company will be allowed to attend. After confirmation no other substitution of names will be allowed. On the day of the event, individuals that were not previously confirmed will not be allowed entrance into the building or the event. FSA plans to webcast this event. The webcast can be accessed using the below link: https://edstream.ed.gov/webcast/Play/9c09a7506b754fe1a3d5fcfa9152764d1d The webcast option and its quality is not guaranteed. Those attending the webcast must submit their company name to FSAEAT@ed.gov following the completion of the event. E) ACQUISITION APPROACH FSA has not decided on its acquisition approach for the draft PWSs. F) SUBMISSION INSTRUCTIONS Standard company brochures will not be reviewed. Submissions are not to exceed fifteen (15) pages (per each requirement (EBC and EITA)) and shall use no less than 11 font size. This page limit is inclusive of all actual pages, including cover pages. If you are submitting capabilities for both EBC and EITA, please submit two separate attachments, one for EBC and one for EITA. Interested parties may submit questions regarding this SSN via email no later than May 28, 2018 by 3:00 p.m. EDT to FSAEAT@ed.gov. Submissions must include: (1) A Capability Statement to include (1) company name, (2) contract numbers of Indefinite Delivery Vehicles that are open to ED for ordering, (3) contact information, (4) your firm's small business and socioeconomic statuses, and (5) narratives describing relevant experience on comparable projects, including dollar values of comparable projects. (2) In the narrative describing each comparable project, FSA requires vendors to provide key excerpts from relevant Statements of Works, CPARS assessments, or any other supporting artifacts. Each excerpt must be labelled as an excerpt. Excerpts shall be used to provide adequate evidence of the vendor's experience described in each narrative. Narratives must be presented in sufficient detail for the Government to determine that your company possesses adequate experience comparable to the requirements in the draft PWSs. (3) Please also provide a recommendation as to whether any of these draft requirements should or should not be combined into one single award. This information will be considered when FSA determines whether it is appropriate to consolidate the attached draft requirements under one award. In a separate attachment with no page limit, firms are encouraged to also submit any comments regarding the attached draft PWSs. Vendors that do not follow FSA's submission instructions may not be considered. FSA encourages submissions to be thorough, detailed, and sufficiently tailored to this announcement. FSA reserves the right to verify the information provided in any submissions. All submissions to this SSN must be submitted no later than June 11, 2018, 5:00 PM EDT. Selected firms may be contacted for further information regarding their capabilities.
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-
FBO.gov Permalink
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- Record
- SN04938722-W 20180602/180531231030-bef8440c4eae8332069a81b7f5b382c6 (fbodaily.com)
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