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FBO DAILY - FEDBIZOPPS ISSUE OF JUNE 13, 2018 FBO #6046
DOCUMENT

J -- IT SUPPORT SERVICES - Attachment

Notice Date

6/11/2018
 

Notice Type

Attachment
 

NAICS

518210 — Data Processing, Hosting, and Related Services
 

Contracting Office

Department of Veterans Affairs;OPAL / National Acquisition Center;Building 37;1st Avenue/One Block North of Cermak;Hines IL 60141
 

ZIP Code

60141
 

Solicitation Number

36C79718Q9002
 

Response Due

6/22/2018
 

Archive Date

7/22/2018
 

Point of Contact

Valerie Wallace, Contracting Officer
 

E-Mail Address

786-7680<br
 

Small Business Set-Aside

Total Small Business
 

Description

36C79718Q9002 SOURCES SOUGHT NOTICE IT SUPPORT SERVICES 4 Sources Sought Announcement for IT Support Services Introduction This is Sources Sought announcement is being conducted pursuant to FAR Part 10, Market Research. This is for planning purposes only and there is no solicitation available at this time. This is an initial step in the planning process for the IT Support Services contract. The Department of Veterans Affairs at Building 37, Hines, Illinois, seeks information about potential sources to perform IT Support Services for support, development, and maintenance of the National Acquisition Contract Contract Management (NACCM) database. The NACCM is a front end application, which is a browser-based graphical user interface (GUI) intranet application running on IIS. It is supported by a collection of applications which include browser based and win-forms applications. This includes export/upload, quality monitoring, reporting, and security management applications. The application front end, which was originally developed by VA personnel, represents an evolution of user requirements and technological improvements over the course of a twelve year period. The front end is heavily dependent on an arrangement of views, layered up to seven levels deep, some of which have been part of the structure since the application s inception. Because the database is not completely relational, additional knowledge based consideration is required when designing changes to the front end. The front end is developed as a combination of vb.net (legacy portion) and a C#.net object layer. The North American Industrial Classification Systems (NAICS) code is 518210, Data Processing, Hosting, and Related Services, Computer Systems Design Services, which has a small business size standard of $32.5 M. A Service Disabled Veteran Owned Small Business or Veteran Owned Small Business (SDVOSB/VOSB) competing as a prime contractor must be able to perform at least 50% of the total requirement within its own company (reference FAR 52.219-14, Limitations on Subcontracting). As part of the Government s continuous information exchange with industry while formulating the acquisition strategy for the IT Support Services contract, we request your assistance in determining if this acquisition should be a total set-aside as mandated by the Veterans Benefits, Health Care, and Information Technology Act of 2006 (Public Law 109-461), which provides preference to small businesses owned by service-disabled veterans and veterans over other companies. In order for the Department of Veterans Affairs to make this determination, information is requested to gain knowledge about the capability of potential offerors to meet contract requirements. This information will allow us to determine whether SDVOSB/VOSB concerns can satisfy the Government's requirement to obtain quality services at a reasonable price. Your response will assist greatly in the formulation of an acquisition strategy that maximizes the participation of SDVOSB/VOSB concerns. Information and Instructions: All certified SDVOSB/VOSB businesses capable of providing these services are invited to respond. Please note the VA Rule of Two applies to this requirement in determining the capability of SDVOSB/VOSBs. In accordance with FAR 19.1405(c), if the contracting officer receives only one acceptable offer from a service-disabled veteran-owned small business concern in response to a set-aside, the contracting officer should make an award to that concern. If the contracting officer receives no acceptable offers from SDVOSB/VOSB concerns, the SDVOSB/VOSB set-aside shall be withdrawn and the requirement, if still valid, set aside for small business concerns. Any information provided to the Government, as a result of this sources sought synopsis, is voluntary and the Government will not pay for any information submitted. Respondents are requested to submit capability packages electronically, as described below: Capability packages shall be one electronic copy. Capability package files should be in MS Office format (Word, Excel or PowerPoint) or Adobe pdf format, and should not exceed 5 MB on one e-mail. Capability packages should not exceed 30 pages, each single side counting one page, 8.5 x 11 inch, with one-inch margins, and font no smaller than 10 point Times New Roman. All capability packages must be received no later than 2:00 pm (Central) on June 22, 2018. SDVOSB/VOSB concerns must be verified in the Vendor Information Pages (VIP). See https://www.va.gov/osdbu/verification/ for more information. Capability package responses shall be sent via email to valerie.wallace1@va.gov. Interested SDVOSB/VOSB concerns should provide a capability package describing corporate experience (within the past 5 years) on contracts of similar scope to the activities described in the objectives listed below in Section C. Respondents are requested to include the following information within their statement of capability packages: Company Information: Provide company name, address, a point of contact with e-mail address and telephone number, Data Universal Numbering System (DUNS), and business size. Your company must be registered in SAM. To register, go to https://www.sam.gov Type of Interest: Is your company likely to propose as a prime contractor? Is your company looking for subcontracting opportunities? SDVOSB/VOSB Businesses: Respondents to this announcement should indicate whether the respondent is a veteran-owned small business or service-disabled veteran-owned small business (In accordance with the VA s Veteran s First Policy. A 30 day transition period will be provided to contractor to take over full performance for a contract of this magnitude and complexity. IT Support Services Requirements Provide application maintenance for the NACCM application which is currently in use by the contracting staff at the National Acquisition Center (NAC). Application maintenance consists of two areas including maintenance of several databases and maintenance of the suite of front end application user interfaces. The application front end, which is a browser based graphical user interface (GUI) intranet application running on Internet Information Server (IIS), exists as and is supported by a collection of applications which include browser based as well as winforms applications. These include export/upload, quality monitoring, reporting and security management applications. Maintenance of the application front end is based on knowledge of the original legacy application and is heavily dependent on an arrangement of views, layered up to seven levels deep, some of which have been part of the structure since the application's inception. Because the database is not completely relational, additional consideration is required when designing changes to the front end as discussed in more detail in the ensuing paragraphs. The front end is developed as a combination of vb.net (legacy portion) and a C#.net object layer. The NACCM application pharmaceutical section is the most critical and complex portion of the application. It utilizes data from the Pharmacy Benefits Management (PBM) group database. Ongoing development and maintenance of the pharmaceutical item management section of the NACCM requires knowledge of the business practices pertaining to the calculation of the federal ceiling price (FCP), pricing types, pricing restrictions and pricing quality analysis performed by both the PBM group and NAC personnel. While the Non-federal Average Manufacturer (NFAMP) data collection and FCP calculation functions remain with the PBM group, the NACCM support staff must interpret the results and enforce the FCP according to the business rules established by public law (PL). Known business rules as well as the refinement of those rules over time are reflected in the C#.net object layer which is then enforced at the GUI. Development and maintenance of the pharmaceutical item management section also requires support of the interface to the VA pharmaceutical prime vendor. This is further supported by the database as discussed below. Development and maintenance of the pharmaceutical item management section also requires knowledge of the detailed legal and fiscal requirements specifically Public Law 102-585 for maintaining pricing history over time, including the pricing history of an individual National Drug Code (NDC), the pricing history if a particular drug changes its NDC and finally the pricing history as a particular drug moves from one manufacturer to another. Knowledge of these requirements is a critical component to ongoing maintenance of the history information. These are further supported by the database as discussed below. Quality analysis applications, consisting of views and data validation, integrated into the NACCM indicate to the user a custom view of outlier situations with regard to vendor reporting, user data maintenance, and price quality. Presentation of this information requires detailed knowledge of the business requirements surrounding the vendor process. Support of the pricing quality analysis requires knowledge of the 21-point business requirement provided by PBM that ensures the correct relationship between the FCP; FSS price; Department of Defense, Department of Veterans Affairs, Department of Health and Human Services, and the United States Coast Guard all collectively known as the BIG4 price; and restricted prices. In addition, quality reports mirror the real time quality analysis and provide greater detail for management monitoring purposes. Quality reports for pharmaceutical item quality and pricing involve a three layered approach starting with a dashboard top level and providing drill downs to individual areas of concern. These include implementation of additional requirements for cross checking between various data sources which cannot be accomplished by simple validation at the GUI. In addition to support of the application front end commonly known to the end users, several supporting applications are required to be maintained to complete the suite of applications in the NACCM system. These include the medical/surgical pricelist export and upload application, the pharmaceutical pricelist export and upload application, the security manager application and also the original sales upload application which is available for use in the event that a manual upload of vendor sales data is required. Maintenance of the medical/surgical item upload application is required to ensure that the application properly detects missing or incorrect information during the upload process to prevent loss of data integrity. A critical future project in this area is the medical/surgical item maintenance development. The purpose of this effort is to provide the ability for users to edit, export and upload future medical/surgical pricing information. The user interface and underlying tables need to be redesigned and re-implemented to allow the future prices to coexist with current prices in a way that is maintainable by the users. Additionally, this development effort includes the maintenance of new data elements to support manufacturer s part number and tracking customer data. The availability of this data will allow contracting officers to perform price comparisons across contracts and facilitate the price negotiation process. To accomplish this task successfully requires an extremely detailed knowledge of the existing medical/surgical data structures and supporting application code. Maintenance of the Pharmaceutical pricelist upload application directly supports the Public Law 102-585 process for enforcement of federal ceiling price on covered pharmaceutical items. Maintenance requires knowledge and enforcement of current business rules and processes surrounding the public law process. This application forms the core of the applications used during the process and thus requires frequent modification to ensure it reflects the current business processes as modified with each passing public law year. Maintenance of the active interface with the Contract Catalog Search Tool (CCST) is required along with a general familiarity with operation of the CCST application. Maintenance and development of the security manager portion of NACCM requires familiarity with the role/access point/schedule security model used by the application. This model is a 3 dimensional approach involving dynamic role definitions, area of responsibility based on both division and contract type, and application function points which are tightly coupled with the implementation of the NACCM itself, as well as the other applications mentioned here. The application allows creation of new roles and the addition of new areas of responsibility by end users. The application backend is currently based on Microsoft SQL Server 2008. Support of the application from the database perspective involves four areas, including, first, the ten active interfaces to external customers. Development of the filters used to select the appropriate data for each of the interfaces is dependent on the knowledge of the database's layered view structure, which, as previously mentioned, is layered up to seven levels deep, and is of a legacy design nature. Additionally, support of each of the interfaces has its own unique requirements as dictated by the recipient of the data. Each is implemented by a series of scripts, data transformation tasks as well as custom C# objects and finally scheduled as appropriate. Support of the jobs requires expert knowledge of the underlying legacy and augmented databases as well as active interception and resolution of error conditions. Specifically, support of the interface to the Pharmaceutical Prime Vendor requires expert knowledge of the business rules surrounding pharmaceutical pricing. This is critical to VA operations as a whole as errors in this area risks exposing the VA to expensive charge back operations. The second major area of support is for the export and import of medical/surgical and pharmaceutical item data. The item data for medical and pharmaceutical based contracts is unique in its changing nature. Over the lifetime of each contract, the vendor catalog corresponding to that contract is constantly in a state of flux. Thus, capabilities must be provided to enable the contracting officers to keep their catalogs current. This is a critical function in that it ensures that our veterans always have access to the most advanced medical supplies and drugs provided by industry. A critical future project in this area is the migration of the underlying database to SQL Server 2014. The additional security restrictions imposed by this migration has required the redesign of certain aspects of the export and import functionality of the med/surg and pharmaceutical data. To accomplish this task successfully requires an extremely detailed knowledge of the existing medical/surgical and pharmaceutical business rules, data structures and supporting application code in order to provide continued availability of these features after the migration. Thirdly, support must be provided for the Fiscal group for receipt and maintenance of payment information for payment of the Industrial Funding Fee (IFF) or Cost Recovery Fee (CRF) provided by vendors to the VA as required by the contract. Payment information is received via an interface from the GSA sales reporting vendor portal via pay.gov into the NACCM database as supported by a series of jobs which retrieve and process the GSA sales and pay.gov activity files. Most critically, the processing of the debit vouchers requires expert knowledge of the business processes of how to apply the changes against the existing payment records. Support must also be provided to enable the database to interface to the NACCM application front end as previously described in the above sections. The application data structure, in addition to being dependent on the legacy views, is actually several databases working in concert. They include the main NACCM database, the pharmaceutical item management database and the security database among others such as the NACCM application offers section which provides Federal Supply Schedule (FSS) users with the ability to track vendor offers. Support of the offers database requires an understanding of the relationship between an offer and its awarded contract as well as knowledge of the business practices codified in the Federal Acquisition Regulation/VA Acquisition Regulation (FAR/VAAR) surrounding the process flow as an offer is evaluated for contract award. Each database has its own challenges. The main database was built many years ago with limited knowledge of relational database concepts and limited planning. Existing table structures that are part of the legacy portion of the database are not consistently constructed using a normal relational model. This has resulted in a complex structure that has evolved over the course many years rather than one created by design. This constraint sometimes requires unique approaches to obtaining the desired result. For example, there is increased complexity for performing otherwise common tasks, such as relating new tables with legacy tables, due to the specialized knowledge required to implement such tasks. All recently created objects, however, follow a strict relational model. The pharmaceutical item management database, in addition to maintaining current catalog items, also has item and pricing history, and presents the information in a way specifically required by law. In addition, the pricing history must be gathered and summarized for use by the GUI level as well as for various reports used to investigate the pricing history of a particular drug item. Knowledge of the business requirements for the sequencing, splitting, replacing or updating of the history records is a critical component to the ongoing maintenance of the history database. The security manager database is designed for performance to provide authorization support for the main NACCM GUI as well as the second tier applications which support it. The security manager makes heavy use of stored procedures that address the implementation of the three dimensional security model previously mentioned by maintaining encoded lists of function points within individual fields. The lists are packed and unpacked using a set of custom encoding and decoding functions implemented in SQL. In addition to the above requirements support for the NAC must be adaptable and agile to respond to issues as they come up as well as ever changing laws, regulations, court decisions and business practices which impact on the design, functionality, and user experience of the application and supporting database. Not only is maintenance of the current application and database required but there is always a standing list of enhancements to the application and database that are continuously being developed, tested and put into production. Capability Package and Evaluation: The Government will evaluate the capabilities packages using the following criteria in order to support development of the acquisition strategy: Company Experience in the development, maintenance and support of databases and applications of similar type and scope. Certified contracted staff that have the following current and valid professional certifications before starting work under this contract. For the Database Administrator MSCDBA and 5 plus years of experience. MSCDBA is an added plus. For the Developer 10 plus years with extensive practical experience in Visual Studio.NET with an emphasis on C#. Full Stack development experience is an added plus. If your company is a small business under NAICS 518210, you must be capable of performing at least 50% of the total requirement within your own company. Government Responsibility: This Sources Sought Notice is not a solicitation, and should not be construed as a commitment by the Government for any purpose, nor does it restrict the Government to an ultimate acquisition approach. Any information submitted by respondents to this sources sought is strictly voluntary and any offer submitted by such a firm will be evaluated without prejudice. All questions and comments on this synopsis shall be submitted via e-mail to only the contact listed below. Please direct any questions to Valerie Wallace valerie.wallace1@va.gov.
 

Web Link

FBO.gov Permalink
(https://www.fbo.gov/spg/VA/VANAC/VANAC/36C79718Q9002/listing.html)
 

Document(s)

Attachment
 

File Name: 36C79718Q9002 36C79718Q9002_1.docx (https://www.vendorportal.ecms.va.gov/FBODocumentServer/DocumentServer.aspx?DocumentId=4377765&FileName=36C79718Q9002-000.docx)

Link: https://www.vendorportal.ecms.va.gov/FBODocumentServer/DocumentServer.aspx?DocumentId=4377765&FileName=36C79718Q9002-000.docx

 

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

Place of Performance

Address: Department of Veterans Affairs;OPAL / National Acquisition Center;Building 37;1st Avenue/One Block North of Cermak;Hines, IL

Zip Code: 60141
 

Record

SN04951295-W 20180613/180611231028-90c81a38d00e158aee65cb80075ddda2 (fbodaily.com)
 

Source

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

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