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COMMERCE BUSINESS DAILY ISSUE OF JANUARY 9,1997 PSA#1758

Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), Contracts Management Office (CMO), 3701 N. Fairfax Dr., Arlington VA 22203-1714

A -- INFORMATION ASSURANCE OF THE ISO ARCHITECTURE SOL BAA97-11 DUE 123197 POC Sami Saydjari, Teresa Lunt, fax 703-516-6065. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)/Information Systems Office (ISO) seeks Information Assurance (IA) solutions for the Global Command and Control Systems Leading Edge Services (GCCS LES) architecture. The GCCS LES architecture, which will integrate technology incrementally in phased releases over several years, offers critical new capabilities to the Defense Department. However, these capabilities are of little value if users are not confident that these enhanced capabilities can adequately protect their information and be available even under situations of high system stress or when the system is under attack. The purpose of the Information Assurance program is to create the basis of this confidence. Thus the Information Assurance program is a critical enabling program for most of the other key technology programs in ISO and consequently is urgent and of high priority. The IA architecture must be capable of withstanding system stresses through robust, adaptive, proactive protection and management of information and information transport services. Proposals sought are of two types: 1) a systems architecture and integration effort and, 2) individual efforts which will integrate existing and emerging state-of-the-art technologies or develop new technologies which will fill in the gaps between existing or state-of-the-art, and that meet required program objectives as stated above. Proposed activity is further divided into 4 major divisions with twelve focus areas. The divisions and focus areas are: Systems Architecture and Integration Division (Area 1. Systems Architecture and Integration), Protection Division (Area 2. Protection from malicious code, Area 3. Intrusion detection, and Area 4. Automatic response), Security and Integrity Division (Area 5. Multilevel security and releasability, Area 6. Authentication, and Area 7. Access control), Systems Management Division (Area 8. Security management, Area 9. Certificate management, Area 10. Interoperability, Area 11. Command and Control (C2) schema extensions and Area 12. Availability and reliability). It is essential that the integration facilitate upgrading to newer, better solutions as they become available and accommodate rapid advances in base computing and networking technologies. Teaming is strongly encouraged between security and survivability specialists and those familiar with the architecture. GENERAL INFORMATION: Information in this announcement is NOT complete. Offerors MUST also refer to the associated Proposer Information Packet (PIP) before submitting a proposal. SCHEDULE: This BAA will be open through 19 December 1997. An initial round of evaluations will be conducted. In order to be considered in this initial round of evaluations, proposals must be received prior to 1600 EST, 3 February 1997. For the initial round of evaluations only, proposals will be evaluated as they are received. Accordingly, offerors should be prepared to negotiate their proposals shortly after they are received by DARPA or upon completion of technical discussions which may be required for clarifications. It is anticipated that some award announcements may be made as early as the end of the initial evaluation period. However, no award announcements will be made prior to this date and no information regarding the status of evaluations during this period will be released. Proposals received after the close of the initial evaluation period, but prior to the close of the BAA, will be reviewed based on a schedule determined by program requirements and funds availability. Proposals received after the close of this BAA will be returned unopened. SUBMISSION: Offerors must submit an original and ten (10) copies of their technical proposal and three (3) copies of their cost proposal to the administrative address for this BAA in order to be considered. Offerors MUST obtain the BAA97-11 Proposer's Information Packet (PIP), which provides further information on the content, preparation, format, submission and evaluation criteria of proposals and other important information.This packet may be obtained from the World Wide Web one working day after the CBD publication at URL address http://www.darpa.mil/baa/. These documents may also be requested in writing by sending correspondence by facsimile to 703-516-6065 addressed to ATTENTION Information Assurance or by surface mail addressed to DARPA/ISO, ATTN: BAA97-11 INFORMATION, 3701 N. Fairfax Drive, Arlington, VA 22203-1714. These requests must include the name and phone number of a point of contact. FORMAT: Failure to adhere to the format specified in the PIP is sufficient grounds for proposals to be considered non-responsive. This Commerce Business Daily notice, in conjunction with the BAA97-11 PIP, constitutes the entire BAA. EVALUATION AND AWARD: Proposals will be selected through a technical/scientific/peer review. Proposals submitted in a technical area are evaluated only within that area, based on their own technical merit. DARPA will evaluate proposals and make contract awards within a reasonable period of time after receipt. Evaluations will be performed using the following criteria: A. For Area 1: (1) System Development and System Integration Capabilities (2) Understanding of Operating Environment and Technical State of the Art (3) Access to Domain Experience (4) Quality of Management Plan (5) Past Performance (6) Personnel in primary and subcontractor organizations (7) Defensibility of the overall estimated cost. Criteria (1) through (3) are of the greatest importance and receive equal weight. Criteria (4) and (5) are of next importance and are also equally weighted. Criteria (6) and (7) are weighted below the preceding in descending order. Note: Cost Defensibility will only be significant for proposals which appear to have significantly over or under estimated the cost to complete the research. B. For Areas 2 through 12: (1) Capability provided (2) Impact on architecture (3) Innovation (4) Technical Approach (5) Understanding of Operating Environment and Technical State of the Art (6) Personnel in primary and subcontractor organizations (7) Capabilities (8) Defensibility of the overall estimated cost. Criteria (1) and (2) are of greatest weight and are weighted equally to each other. The remaining criteria are in descending order of weight. Note: Cost Defensibility will only be significant for proposals which appear to have significantly over or under estimated the cost to complete the research. Procurement Vehicles. For Area 1, DARPA is seeking participation in this undertaking from the widest number of offerors. Toward this end, DARPA is willing to consider all types of proposals including, traditional FAR/DFARS type contracts, grants and "Other Transactions". Please see Section VI of the PIP for additional information. The Government reserves the right to select for award all, some or none of the proposals received. All responsible sources capable of satisfying the Government's needs may submit a proposal, which will be considered by DARPA. Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU) and Minority Institutions (MI) are encouraged to submit proposals and join others in submitting proposals. However, no portion of this BAA will be set aside for HBCU and MI participation due to the impracticality of reserving discrete or severable areas of IA research for exclusive competition among these entities. It is the policy of DARPA to treat all proposals as competitive information and to disclose the contents only for the purposes of evaluation. The Government intends to use Litton/PRC and MITRE Corporation personnel as special resources to assist with the logistics of administering proposal evaluation and to provide advice on specific technical areas. Personnel of these contractors are restricted by their contracts from disclosing proposal information for any purpose other than these administrative or advisory tasks. Contractor personnel are required to sign Organizational Conflict of Interest Non-Disclosure Agreements (OCI/NDA). By submission of its proposal, each offeror agrees that proposal information may be disclosed to thoseselected contractors for the limited purpose stated above. Any information not intended for limited release to these contractors must be clearly marked and segregated from other proposal material. SPECIAL NOTICE: Organizational Conflict of Interest. Each cost proposal shall contain a section satisfying the requirements of the following: Awards made under this BAA are subject to the provisions of the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) Subpart 9.5, Organizational Conflict of Interest. All offerors and proposed subcontractors must affirmatively state whether they are supporting any DARPA technical office(s) through an active contract or subcontract. All affirmations must state which office(s) the offeror supports and identify the prime contract number. Affirmations shall be furnished at the time of proposal submission. All facts relevant to the existence or potential existence of organizational conflicts of interest, as that term is defined in FAR 9.501, must be disclosed. This disclosure shall include a description of the action the Contractor has taken, or proposes to take, to avoid, neutralize or mitigate such conflict. If the offeror believes that no such conflict exists, then it shall so state in this section. ADMINISTRATIVE: All administrative correspondence and questions on this solicitation must be directed to one of the administrative addresses below. Email or fax is preferred. DARPA intends to use electronic mail for most technical and administrative correspondence regarding this BAA. Technical and contractual questions should be directed to baa97-11@darpa.mil. Include the originator's full name and return Email address in the text. These questions will be answered directly by Email. All questions must be submitted in writing. Administrative Addresses: The PIP and Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) are available at http://www.darpa.mil/baa/. Written requests for these documents may be sent by facsimile to 703-516-6065 addressed to ATTENTION Information Assurance or by surface mail addressed to DARPA/ISO, ATTN: BAA97-11 INFORMATION, 3701 N. Fairfax Drive, Arlington, VA 22203-1714. These requests must include the name and phone number of a point of contact. (0007)

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