NATIONAL IMAGERY AND MAPPING AGENCY, PCOE/MS D-5, 4600 SANGAMORE ROAD, BETHESDA, MD 20816-5003

A -- COMMERCIAL IMAGERY INITIATIVE BROAD AGENCY ANNOUNCEMENT SOL NMA301-98-BAA-0001 DUE 042098 POC Kenneth D. Popkin, Contracting Officer I. INTRODUCTION. The National Imagery and Mapping Agency announces a Fiscal Year 1998 competition for the Commercial Imagery Initiative (CII). The CII is a National Imagery and Mapping Agency (NIMA) initiative to examine alternatives for providing the U.S. national security community access to commercial imagery provided by the commercial remote sensing industry. This CII may result in research designed to determine if commercial capabilities can be incorporated into existing U.S. Government practices and capabilities. II. GENERAL INFORMATION. Through this CII competition, NIMA expects to make awards for the research and development of adaptations to both vendor systems architectures and U.S. Government Systems to support national security missions, subject to the availability of appropriations. All awards will be based on merit competition. III. AREAS OF INTEREST-GENERAL. The major architecture functions for research and development are identified in Section VIII. These descriptions are intended to provide proposers with a frame of reference for these topics. Innovative ideas that address these concerns are encouraged. Proposers are urged to consider the topics carefully, and are strongly encouraged to contact industry vendors to achieve common solutions for topics of mutual interest. Inquiries are welcomed and a briefing may by available for interested parties. Note, however, proposals must be directed only to the contracting officer. IV. CONDITIONS-GENERAL. This CII is specifically for the topics identified in Section VIII. Potential proposers are advised to read Section VIII carefully. This BAA is aimed at commercial satellite imagery companies that have made or are making substantial investments in placing on-orbit one-meter high resolution commercial satellite imagery. The U.S. national security community strongly favors gaining access to close to real-time commercial imagery and therefore in the strongest terms possible urge vendors to intensively explore options to provide Government easy and responsive access. A partnership among commercial imagery providers is valued. Partnership proposals should list one vendor as the principle point of contact and define the relationships among the partners. V. CONTRACT/AGREEMENT TYPE. NIMA is willing to consider various types of proposals including; traditional FAR/DFARS type contracts and/or non-procurement agreements (e.g., Cooperative Agreements, and "Other Transactions"). These agreements are effected under 10 U.S.C. 2371 (Congressional direction requires that at least 50 percent of the cost of a project under this initiative be provided by industry) and "Section 845, Authority to Carry Out Certain Prototype Projects." Information concerning "Other Transactions" can be found at http://www.darpa.mil/cmo/pages/other_trans.html and http://www/acq/osd.mil/ddre/research, or by contacting Mary Ann Klaner or Ken Popkin at (301)227-2743 or by e-mail to klanerm@nima.mil or popkink@nima.mil. VI. REQUIREMENTS FOR PROPOSALS. Proposers are invited to submit detailed proposals. All proposals submitted under the terms and conditions cited herein will be reviewed. The proposals should be submitted in two volumes. Volume I, Technical Proposal, and Volume II, Cost/Funding proposal. Volume II should contain a firm estimate of cost, both total cost and detailed cost for each functional area. Proposals will be evaluated by the criteria cited in Section VII. Submission by electronic media will be accepted, however, a copy of the proposal with the signature of an authorizing official must also be submitted to the contracting officer. Five copies of the proposals should be submitted to the NIMA Contracting Officer, PCO/MS D-5, 4600 Sangamore Road, Bethesda, MD 20816-5003. Proposals must be received by the NIMA contracting officer by 20 April 1998. Awards are planned to be in place by 01 June 1998. TECHNICAL PROPOSAL Technical proposals should not exceed twenty-five (25) pages and should include the following three sections: Section 1 -- Executive Summary: Provide a brief technical and business description of the contents of the proposal. The technical area should address the proposal's technical goals, approach, and expected results. The business area should address business and market issues for successful commercialization of the proposal technology. Section 2 - -- Technical Issues: Give a detailed explanation of the technical approach, objectives, staffing and resources relating to the development of the proposed technology for both military and commercial use. Discuss clearly and specifically in realistic terms the technical objectives of this proposed effort; include a Statement of Work (SOW) that discusses the specific tasks to be accomplished, tied to the specific approach and goals of the project. Section 3 -- Business Issues: Discuss the business issues relating to the commercialization of the proposed development and its impact on the market. Include the benefits to the Department of Defense (DOD). COST/FUNDING PROPOSAL Cost/funding proposals are not restricted in length, have no specific page layout requirements, and should address funding periods of performance. Work breakdown structures and certified cost or pricing data are neither required nor desired, however, NIMA reserves the right to request this information for proposals using FAR/DFARS type contracts. Cost/funding proposals should be organized to include four sections in the following order: total project cost, cost sharing and in-kind contributions, cost to the Government and off-budget supporting resources. These are described in more detail below. Section 1 -- Total Project Cost: This section will give a detailed breakdown of costs of the project. Cost should also be broken down on a task-by-task basis for each task appearing in the statement of work. This should include all of the proposed costs to the Government and cost sharing by the proposer. The following information should be presented in your proposal for each phase of the effort: total cost of the particular project phase; total proposer cost share; funding requested from the Government; and elements of cost (labor, direct materials, travel, other direct costs, equipment, software, patents, royalties, indirect costs, and cost of money). Sufficient information should be provided in supporting documents to allow the Government to evaluate the reasonableness of these proposed costs, including salaries, overhead, equipment purchases, fair market rental value of leased items, and the method used for making such valuations. Profit should not be included as a cost element. Section 2 -- Cost Sharing and In-Kind Contributions: This section will include: (1) the sources of cash and amounts to be used for matching requirements; (2) the specific in-kind contributions proposed, their value in monetary terms, and the methods by which their values were derived; and (3) evidence of the existence of adequate cash or commitments to provide sufficient cash in the future. Affirmative, signed statements are required from outside sources of cash. Proposals should contain sufficient information regarding the sources of the proposer's cost share so that a determination may be made by the Government regarding the availability, timeliness, and control of these resources. For example: How will the funds and resources be applied to advance the progress of the proposed effort? What is the role of any proposed in-kind contributions? Section 3 -- Cost to the Government: This section will specify the total costs proposed to be borne by the Government and any technical or other assistance including equipment, facilities, and personnel of Federal laboratories, if any, required to support these activities. The cost to the Government should be that portion of the proposed effort, which is not covered by a cost share. The costs incurred and work performed by any DOD or national laboratory "partnering" with the offeror under the proposal shall normally be considered costs of the Government and not costs of the proposer for purposes of the cost-sharing requirement. Proposals should contain sufficient information regarding the resources to be provided by the Government so that an evaluation of their availability, timeliness, and control may be made. Section 4 -- Off-Budget Supporting Resources: This section will show cash or in-kind resources which will support the proposed activity but which are not intended to be included in the total project cost. Items in this category do not count as cost share nor as Federal funds which must be matched. Examples of items to place in this category include: Commitments of cash or in-kind resources from other Federal sources, such as national laboratories, and projections of fee-based income where there is substantial uncertainty about the level which will actually be collected and where the income is not needed to meet cost-share requirements. VII. EVALUATION CRITERIA AND SELECTION PROCESS. The primary evaluation criteria, of equal weight, are: (1) Scientific and technical merits of the proposed research to include (a) the degree to which proposed research and development objectives support the targeted technical topic and (b) validity of the technical basis for the approach offered; and (2) Relevance and potential contributions of the research to the objectives of the CII. Other evaluation criteria, of lesser importance than (l) and (2) but equal to each other, are: (3) The qualifications of the task principal investigator and other key research personnel; (4) The adequacy of current or planned facilities and equipment to accomplish the research objectives; and (5) The realism and reasonableness of cost, including proposed cost sharing. (6) Past performance on similar efforts. One or more awards are anticipated from this BAA. Individual awards will be funded based on merit and benefit to the Government, but are not expected to exceed $5 million per award. Because some of these adaptations may also have commercial applications, evaluation preference will be given to proposals that include innovative cost sharing, cost effective recommendations for changes to existing Government systems that would allow quick and easy access to commercial vendors, and/or innovative adaptations of existing, or proposed, commercial (tasking, archiving and dissemination) systems that can be used with or in lieu of Government systems. VIII. SPECIFIC TOPICS FOR THE FY98 CII. An award for any topic will be made only if a sufficiently meritorious proposal is received. NIMA reserves the right to allocate available funds based on the quality of the responses and NIMA priorities. ==>Several next generation commercial, civil and foreign remote sensing satellites are planned to be launched by 2003. NIMA is interested in utilizing all these new sources of imagery data to support the US National Security Strategy, and is particularly interested in using both one-meter resolution and high resolution multispectral panchromatic imagery. NIMA and other national security organizations will use these new data sources to support operations, mission and operational planning, intelligence gathering, treaty monitoring and making, disaster, environmental and economic analysis. ==>The national security community will use new imaging capabilities, described herein, to augment national systems, in case of national system failures, to reduce collection shortfalls, and broaden the distribution of imagery within unclassified environments. Augmenting national systems during a crisis or war provides the Government with more options to obtain important information. To achieve this augmentation, the architecture must be scalable to ingest larger quantities of source data and must be able to disseminate the data quickly to be available with decision cycles. To support operational objectives, NIMA is interested in improving access to one-meter commercial satellite imagery to provide an image to a customer within 24 hours after the image is taken. NIMA also wants to provide an archived image to customers within 24 hours following the request for the image. ==>To improve access, NIMA has been chairing a community Commercial Imagery Team (CIT) that has been examining Government operational concepts and architecture modification options. The CIT has been examining these architecture functional areas: new imagery collection tasking; imagery search, query, browse and storage; and imagery dissemination. The options are bounded by the existence of two national security customers sets: those that operate in unclassified environments; and those that operate in classified environments. ==>The CIT has established options for a Government architecture that would improve access to commercial imagery, however, these options alone cannot satisfy the requirement for 24 hour dissemination and may not fully utilize vendor investments in capabilities that could improve access to imagery. In order to achieve the goal of a 24-hour dissemination response time, research, development and operational prototyping of vendor architecture and system solutions are required. A virtually integrated Government and vendor architecture with appropriate interfaces is needed. One without the another precludes national security customers from receiving data within the specified time lines. ==>This research and development activity is a unique start-up activity. Private sector commercial -- not Government -- based one-meter remote sensing satellites launches and operations have never been attempted by either U.S. or foreign entities. This activity effectively represents a proof of concept activity to demonstrate that these promising capabilities can be adequately utilized by the Government to meet national security needs. ==>In order to properly evaluate the utility of commercial imagery for intelligence and geospatial applications, NIMA will need support data along with the imagery. Support data should include ephemeris, attitude and camera model data. Support data provided to NIMA shall be protected by limited purpose rights, which are needed to create a universal data model for NIMA's own uses that access these commercial systems. ==>Architecture functional areas: New collection tasking -- for the user in unclassified environments, the Government projects it will prudently use vendor capabilities already residing on the INTERNET or other unclassified channels without compromising national security activities. For the user in a classified environment, the Government has established a home page from which these users can task for imagery from both Secret and Top Secret domains. For this proposal, NIMA would like submissions from offerors articulating how satellite company INTERNET available tasking tools and other aids can be migrated to this home page for users to access and use, as well as proposed cost and schedules for doing so. For this proposal, vendors should also address an on-line process for frequent time sensitive or ad hoc tasking that can process and execute a new tasking order within twenty-four hours or less. ==>Imagery search, browse, query, and storage: for the user in unclassified environments, the Government projects it will use vendorcapabilities already residing on the INTERNET, consistent with security policies. For users in the classified environment, NIMA seeks submissions articulating how companies can interface to this environment within the framework of existing Government security policies and practices. The intent here would be to leverage existing vendor infrastructure capabilities to avoid major Government investment in this area. ==>Imagery dissemination: for the user in the unclassified environment, the Government projects that both mail, INTERNET, and existing Government dissemination methods will be used, again consistent with security policies. The CIT plan also calls for a one-way connection of satellite imagery companies to Government networks to carry commercial data to the user in either the classified or unclassified environment. For this proposal, vendors should also propose more responsive alternatives -- such as satellite broadcast capabilities -- to disseminate imagery to the Government user. This area is apotential opportunity for vendors to collaborate on a solution. A critical sub-function submission required for this proposal pertains to dissemination of imagery from vendor ground stations to vendor CONUS processing facilities to avoid any delays prohibiting a 24-hour delivery of imagery to the user. ==>Each proposal should contain the projected daily volumetric meeting the 24-hour requirement, as well as potential vendor roadblocks -- in processing or other functions -- that would prohibit the delivery of imagery within a 24-hour period. The proposal should include solutions and associated costs. ==>For each architecture functional area, vendors should also consider how US government objectives can be met by unique arrangements with vendor regional affiliates. Facsimile proposals will not be accepted. Electronic proposals are acceptable. Text may be offered in MS Word 6.0, spreadsheets in MS Excel 5.0 and graphics in MS PowerPoint 4.0. Documents "zipped" into an executable (.exe) file can be e-mailed to the Contracting Officer at popkink@nima.mil. IBM PC compatible 3.5 diskettes may also be mailed. (0065)

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