20180914_JA_Leav-2018_96_redacted.pdf

Control No: MICC 2018-96 Contractor: Booz Allen Hamilton

Program/Equipment: Multi-Source Assessment and Feedback

Version – March 2018 FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY

JUSTIFICATION REVIEW DOCUMENT

FAR PART 6 JUSTIFICATION AND APPROVAL FOR OTHER THAN

FULL AND OPEN COMPETITION

Program/Equipment: Center for Army Leadership (CAL), Multi-Source Assessment and Feedback (MSAF) Program support services

Authority: 10 U.S.C. 2304(c)(1) as implemented by FAR Part 6.302-1 -- Only One Responsible Source and No Other Supplies or Services Will Satisfy Agency Requirements.

a Amount: $2,203,370 a Prepared by: DSN:

Contract Specialist Date: 18 July 2018 Email:

Contracting Officer: DSN:

Contracting Officer Date: 18 July 2018 Email:

Technical: DSN:

Program Manager Date: 18 July 2018 Email:

Requirements: DSN:

Program Manager Date: 18 July 2018 Email:

Reviews: I have reviewed this justification and find it adequate to support other than full and open competition.

Small Business Specialist, Small Business Program:

DSN:

Date: See Digital Signature

Version - March 2018 FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY

Version - March 2018 FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY

Program/Equipment: Multi-Source Assessment and Feedback

Version – March 2018 FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY

FAR Part 6 Justification and Approval for Other than Full and Open Competition

1. Contracting Activity: Mission and Installation Contracting Command (MICC) Fort Leavenworth, 535 Kearny Avenue, Bldg. 338, Fort Leavenworth, KS 66027

2. Description of Action: The Center for Army Leadership (CAL) requests a firm-fixed-price, new contract with Booz Allen Hamilton, 8283 Greensboro Drive, McLean, VA 22102-3830. The Government projects award for September 2018 and fiscal year 2018, Operations and Maintenance funds will be used. An acquisition plan is not required because this procurement does not meet the threshold at Defense Federal Acquisition Regulation Supplement 207.103(d)(i)(B).

This action is a follow-on to task order W911S0-11-D-0012-0011. This task order was competed under the authority of FAR 16.605, Ordering, and Supplements using a Best Value Trade-off evaluation method. The solicitation for this task order was issued, unrestricted under the MICC Fort Leavenworth CAC Omnibus MAIDIQ contract vehicle.

3. Description of Supplies/Services: This is a services contact for Information Technology (IT) services to maintain and upgrade a previous version of the Multi- Source Assessment and Feedback (MSAF) Program SharePoint application from SharePoint 2010 to SharePoint 2016 and to maintain and operate the application for one year from the date of award. This contract is for IT services only. The previously awarded contract included support operations functions beyond IT services. The additional IT work in this contract is due to the complex nature of upgrading the SharePoint version of a highly customized SharePoint application.

a

Base Period: 25 Sep 2018 to 24 Sep 2019 Value:

FAR Clause 52.217-8 option: 25 Sep 2019 to 24 Mar 2019 Value:

Total Value:

4. Authority Cited: 10 U.S.C. 2304(c)(1), as implemented by FAR 6.302-1, Only one responsible source and no other supplies or services will satisfy agency requirements.

5. Reason for Authority Cited: As described in FAR 6.302-1(a)(2), when the supplies or services required by the agency are available from only one responsible source, or, for DoD, NASA, and the Coast Guard, from only one or a limited number of responsible sources, and no other type of supplies or services will satisfy agency requirements, full and open competition need not be provided for. As further described at FAR 6.302- 1(a)(2)(iii)(B) for DoD, NASA, and the Coast Guard, services may be deemed to be available only from the original source in the case of follow-on contracts for the

Program/Equipment: Multi-Source Assessment and Feedback

Version – March 2018 FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY continued provision of highly specialized services when it is likely that award to any other source would result in unacceptable delays in fulfilling the agency’s requirements.

(See 10 U.S.C. 2304(d)(1)(B).)

a. Background: The Center for Army Leadership (CAL), is charged with providing the Army with a Multi-Source Assessment and Feedback (MSAF) Program. CAL is currently exploring options for the future of the MSAF program including changing the current SharePoint platform which is how the MSAF program is currently accessed.

The assessment of the future of MSAF and future contracting requirements will not be defined before the current task order ends in September 2018. However, CAL has a need to continue support at the current level, without a break in service or loss of productivity that would occur if the current requirement were re-competed. The MSAF program supports the Army’s strategy for sustaining a ready force led by competent, confident, and adaptive leaders. MSAF consists of a set of programs of Leader 360, Unit 360, Commander 360, and Joint 360 assessment surveys. These programs provide assessments and development. Accurate feedback is the basis for self-awareness. Self-awareness is considered an integral characteristic of adaptive leaders and the basis for leader development. Therefore to ensure CAL can accomplish their mission to maintain and complete upgrades as required by an Army Directive it has been determined that a 12-month bridge contract would provide the best value to the government.

The MSAF Program is currently accessed via the SharePoint application. Due to an Army directive to upgrade to newer versions of SharePoint, CAL is in the process of completing the required upgrades under the current task order and providing maintenance support to ensure the MSAF Program remains accessible. The current contractor, Booz Allen Hamilton (BAH), has extensive knowledge regarding the framework and programming for the MSAF Program. BAH has made improvements to the MSAF Program which have reduced application errors and latency issues. BAH has been able to continually improve the functionality of MSAF under the current task order but requirements to upgrade the system are not yet complete. It would benefit the Government for BAH to continue the work due to the complex nature of the MSAF application. The MSAF application contains custom code created by a previous contractor. BAH has learned and been able to leverage their expertise to correct issues with the previous versions of SharePoint and correct latency issues that negatively impacted the performance of the MSAF application.

BAH has the institutional knowledge to continue with this work and they have been able to resolve local network issues which created latency in the application. BAH has also been able to provide assistance and valuable insight which will facilitate a smooth transition of all IT environments and upgrading to SharePoint 2016. It would degrade the ongoing efforts to bring in a new contractor for a short-term contract. The time to train-up a new work force is not in the Government’s best interest. There would be a significant amount of start-up knowledge (and non-productive time) required for a re-compete. In the base year of the current award the contractor had to become familiar

Program/Equipment: Multi-Source Assessment and Feedback

Version – March 2018 FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY with hundreds of thousands of lines of code and to correct over 38,000 coding errors and outdated code from the content database of the MSAF application. This required an extension of the overlap between incumbent and outgoing contractors. Prior plans for a 30 day transition between contractors was found to be insufficient. The extent of CASTE (software used to identify and correct errors), scans, hybrid/customized code and data base fixes and the number of code interdependencies and the understanding of these issues make it impractical to re-compete for a short-term. Also the MSAF application has a powerful set of unique/complex features that other government agencies come to CAL for because they are not easy to complete and to reproduce. An example is the J7 of the Joint Chiefs of Staff tasking CAL to create and host the Joint 360 assessment, a subprogram of the MSAF Program. The relationship between the initial order and the bridge contract is logical due to the nature of the services required and value to the government of the current contractor’s expertise and knowledge of past work.

b. Alternatives: The government has considered three alternatives which are: 1) maintain the current version of the MSAF application with existing level of support via a re-compete task order, 2) re-compete support for current operations, or 3) suspend operation of the current application and re-compete to replace MSAF. These three alternatives are unacceptable due to the following reasons.

1) An Army requirement for all leaders to mandatorily participate in the MSAF program in accordance with Army Regulation 600-100, Army Profession and Leadership Policy, was rescinded and left to the discretion of subordinate commanders to continue participation. Commanders of organizations and individual leaders are still requesting and fully supporting the program. MSAF’s impact is a better-led force, leaders who understand leadership competencies and attributes, and who are capable of being effective in the full range of military operations. MSAF supports the imperatives of the Army Leader Development Strategy, aligns with the Army’s leadership requirements model in Army Doctrine Reference Publication (ADRP) 6-22, and is an essential technique for developing leaders as described in Field Manual (FM) 6-22. MSAF was referred to by name in the Congressional mandate to the Department of Defense (DoD) in Section 571 of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for FY14. The ensuing report prepared by Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness (OUSD(P&R)), dated March 2015, advises all services to continue to use 360-assessments for development purposes. The report recognizes that the Army's MSAF program is the most advanced and comprehensive 360 program across the military services. MSAF is critical to the advancement of the mission command philosophy (Army Doctrine Publication 6-0, Mission Command, 2014) as it allows leaders to obtain feedback on their demonstration of mission command principles. The six mission command principles are aligned with the Army leadership requirements:

Army Leadership Development Strategy (ALDS), Army Doctrine Publication (ADP) 6-22, and FM 6-22. MSAF is also tied to the Officer Evaluation Report (OER) and Non- Commissioned Officer Academic Evaluation Report (AER). Each report requires an MSAF completion date on the form. Without the date the OER and AER cannot be

Program/Equipment: Multi-Source Assessment and Feedback

Version – March 2018 FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY processed and will cause delays in updating and maintaining leader personnel records.

Over 17,000 OER’s are processed monthly and a projected 30,000 AER’s processed annually.

2) Local network issues would remain unresolved under a new competitively awarded contract. Re-competing current operations would potentially require a very detailed and lengthy hand-over/transition of knowledge and involve a total new development and support effort. Local network latency issues would remain as a major problem while a new vendor reassessed the operating environment to fully understand the cause and then implement improvements. In contrast, a bridge contract with the incumbent would allow the seamless continuation of effort that is already progressing in resolving network latency, and would allow quicker transition to both a Cloud-based delivery infrastructure and SharePoint 2016 which should resolve the network access and latency problems. The Cloud will allow greater access/throughput and the SharePoint16 upgrade will streamline data handling within MSAF. Replacing the existing system under a new competitive contract, rather than upgrading the system, would include costs already invested, training costs, and replacement costs. These costs include providing and provisioning new servers, upgrading software, training and certifying systems administrators and database architects, training new helpdesk personnel, training new coaches for developmental counseling.

3) Suspending operations would impact not only the leaders involved in the MSAF program but also effect policies for the submission of OERs for officers and AERs for our non-commissioned officers as outlined in AR 600-100, Army Profession and Leadership Policy, dated 5 April 2017. Both reports require a completion date entry for MSAF to be valid and submitted as official personnel actions.

4) CAL contracted with Gartner Corporation to conduct an alternative solution study from March through September 2017 (see Market Research section of this document for further detail). Its goal was to see if there were Commercial-Off-The-Shelf or Government-Off-The-Shelf solutions in meeting the current capabilities but alternatives were cost prohibitive and the government determined keeping the current application was more cost effective and provided all the features the Army required.

5) There have been a number of delays of the movement from local servers to TRADOC’s Azure Cloud services. There have been three occasions where TRADOC has changed the locations of the data centers for cloud services, and also the

Program/Equipment: Multi-Source Assessment and Feedback

Version – March 2018 FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY provisioning of hardware that resulted in rebuilding of MSAF Staging and Production servers. This happened in January 2018, April 2018 and May 2018. Rebuilding of servers takes approximately two weeks to add application and operating software and then uploading content databases. In April 2018, a new requirement to pass through a Cloud Access Point (CAP) was placed on the MSAF team before live data cloud be allowed on the network. This requirement was for Level 4 data and not required for the Level 2 data the MSAF databases store even though on numerous occasions CAL communicated to TRADOC that Level 2 data was not required to pass through the CAP.

CAL MSAF servers were shut down by TRADOC from early April 2018 until late May 2018 until TRADOC finally realized the CAP requirement did not pertain to the MSAF application. An additional change was placed on the MSAF Team in June of 2018, when TRADOC, having known that MSAF had requested to continue to use the 2nd

Regional Cyber Center reverse proxy for Common Access Card authentication to CAL servers, directed CAL to use Microsoft Azure cloud authentication. The DoD requires that any application must restrict users to those with a Common Access Card. This requirement resulted in code changes and incurred an additional two week delay in moving to the cloud. In December 2017, a request was made to TRADOC to provide an SMTP server that would allow the MSAF application to send email notices to participants that have been selected to provide feedback for their 360 events. Without this server, assessors will not know that a request for their feedback has been requested. The SMTP server was finally provided in July of 2018 after numerous requests over the previous six months. The MSAF team is in final testing and should be able to move production to the TRADOC MS Azure cloud by the end of July 2018. The reason for all these delays were a direct result of the Cloud service provider not having a well-documented onboarding procedure for migrating an application as complex as the MSAF application. A proven checklist for migration would have identified the aforementioned potential delays and allowed for plans to mitigate these issues and stay on schedule with the migration.

6) The period of performance of 12 months was based on the aforementioned delays and previous experience on the numerous levels of approvals that must be taken before changes in hardware/software and architecture can take place. In addition this bridge will take the MSAF application, a highly customized application through a series of upgrades from its current stage of SharePoint 2010 through SharePoint 2013, and ultimately to SharePoint 2016. With each step along this upgrade process, the application must be configured, tested and remediated when errors in code result.

c. Additional Supporting Information.

1) The verified minimum requirements of the Government include maintaining a development environment and a production environment on the TRADOC Microsoft Azure Cloud service while simultaneously upgrading to SharePoint 2016, conducting user acceptance testing and moving the SharePoint 2016 application into production and finally maintaining the production application until a competitive contract is awarded

Program/Equipment: Multi-Source Assessment and Feedback

Version – March 2018 FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY for the future MSAF program. The current services carry operation of MSAF through September of 2018.

2) This request is for a bridge contract with the incumbent. It would be neither cost effective nor realistic to expect another contractor to adequately perform during the brief interim period because of: start-up costs to include personnel staffing problems and recruitment of SharePoint experts, (which historically, based on geographical location has presented challenges to contractor recruitment); and the likely inability to prevent loss of program availability or significant latency caused from a lack of understanding the program complexity. If services are not maintained at the current level, CAL will be unable to meet its mission to provide MSAF and Joint 360 capabilities as mandated by Army regulation.

3) MSAF is a key Leader Development Program: If this bridge contract is not awarded there would be mission failure and specific functions required by Army and Joint policy would cease. MSAF supports the imperatives of ALDS, aligns with the Army’s leadership requirements model in ADRP 6-22, and is an essential technique for developing leaders as described in FM 6-22.

(a) MSAF was referred to by name in the Congressional mandate to DoD in Section 571 of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for FY14. The ensuing report prepared by the OUSD(P&R), dated March 2015, advises all services to continue to use 360-assessments for development purposes. The report recognizes that the Army's MSAF program is the most advanced and comprehensive 360 program across the military services.

(b) MSAF aligns with the Army Operating Concept (TRADOC Pam 525-3-1, 2014) that requires the institutional and operational Army to develop competencies in leaders and Soldiers critical to future responsibilities. The MSAF program provides assessments of those critical competencies and enhances their development through increased self-awareness and developmental programs.

(c) MSAF is critical to the advancement of the mission command philosophy (ADP 6-0, Mission Command, 2014) as it allows leaders to obtain feedback on their demonstration of mission command principles. With feedback about a leader obtained from superiors, peers, and subordinates, MSAF provides a unique viewpoint for the principles of team-building, shared understanding, clear intent, disciplined initiative, mission-type orders and prudent risk. The CAL Annual Survey of Army Leadership (CASAL) has shown for twelve years that developing leaders is the least effective leadership competency in the Army. This finding has been corroborated by the 2015 Army Leader Development Inspection report. The MSAF program addresses this area by providing a way for leaders to get insight into their developmental needs. Both the Commander360 and Unit360 sub-programs involve the chain of command in using the strengths and developmental needs identified from 360 assessments. All the multi-source assessments provide feedback on the Army’s ten core leadership competencies, Program/Equipment: Multi-Source Assessment and Feedback

Version – March 2018 FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY including how well the target leader develops others. The MSAF’s Virtual Improvement Center provides learning resources for individuals or Army schools to use on how to improve in each of the competencies. The unique and customized code required to sustain and create feature updates would require a new vendor to overcome a significant learning curve in order to mitigate lengthy periods of inaccessibility to the system when updates are implemented. As documented by the Gartner study, there is no other commercial or currently customized solution that offers the features or capabilities needed by the Army that can match the current MSAF system capabilities.

6. Efforts to Obtain Competition: A Request for Information was posted to the Army Single Face to Industry/ Federal Business Opportunities on 19 April 2018. Only one response was received.

a. Effective Competition: Because this is a sole source action, effective competition is not applicable.

b. Subcontracting Competition: Previous contracts for this service have included subcontracting to Small Businesses. Therefore, subcontracting competition will be achieved by including in the solicitation a requirement for a subcontracting plan. FAR 52.219-9 and DFARS 252.219-7003 will be included in the request for proposal and the resulting contract, requiring Booz Allan Hamilton to submit a Small Business Subcontracting Plan. The Subcontracting Plan will be reviewed by the Contracting Officer and the local Small Business Specialist prior to contract award. The Contractor’s achievement to the plan will be reviewed semi-annually as required in the Electronic Subcontracting Reporting System (eSRS).

7. Actions to Increase Competition: A sources sought notice was posted to Federal Business Opportunities on 19 April 2018. One response was received from

The response was evaluated by the Center for Army Leadership on 8 May 2018. The evaluation stated the capability statement does not demonstrate the experience or knowledge of the primary focus for this requirement. The lack of demonstrating these capabilities or an understanding of the requirements within the submitted sources sought response would put the government at great risk for failure.

8. Market Research: Prior to the determination being made to award a bridge contract to BAH, CAL acquired the services of Gartner to conduct an independent study to determine if it would be feasible to replace the current MSAF platform with COTS solutions.

Program/Equipment: Multi-Source Assessment and Feedback

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After assessing the alternative solutions, it was determined both recommendations were cost prohibitive and failed to meet the government’s requirements for functionality.

During the market research, continuing coordination with TRADOC, and Microsoft who is under contract with TRADOC, revealed a potential alternative course of action that would address the current issues. MSAF has highly customized code and for a new contractor it would take many months to understand the complexities and require shutting down the program and a restart of already completed work resulting in the government paying for this previously completed work.

In accordance with Defense Federal Acquisition Regulation Supplement (DFARS) 205.205-71, DFARS 206.302-1(d), and DFARS Procedures, Guidance and Information (PGI) 206.302-1(d), a sources sought notice was posted to Army Single Face to Industry/Federal Business Opportunities on 19 April 2018 for 15 days. Only one response was received from The COR reviewed the capabilities statement provided and determined as not capable of providing the support needed for this requirement. The COR determined did not demonstrate the required capabilities which would guarantee government success for the requirement.

9. Interested Sources: Preliminary technical information submitted by in response to the FedBizOpps notice has been reviewed by the requiring activity who have advised that does not appear to meet the requirements in the RFP.

10. Other Facts:

a. Procurement History: This procurement action dates back to 2007 with several awards throughout its history. These include the recent awards from 2010, 2012 and 2016.

1) Contract No.: W911S0-11-D-0012-0011 Awarded: 27 Feb 2016 Vendor: Booz Allen Hamilton Period of performance: 26 March 2016 – 25 Jun 2018.

Program/Equipment: Multi-Source Assessment and Feedback

Version – March 2018 FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY

Competitive Status: Unrestricted, MICC Ft Leavenworth CAC Omnibus MAIDIQ contract vehicle.

2) Contract No.: W91QUZ-06-D-0016-B004 Award Date: 3 Jul 2012 Vendor: Science Applications International Corp.

Period of performance: 26 Sep 2012 to 24 Apr 2016.

Competitive Status: Unrestricted, CHESS ITES-2S.

Program/Equipment: Multi-Source Assessment and Feedback

Version – March 2018 FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY

11. Technical Certification: I certify that the supporting data under my cognizance which are included in the justification are accurate and complete to the best of my knowledge and belief.

Date: see electronic signature

Program Manager Signature:

12. Requirements Certification: I certify that the supporting data under my cognizance which are included in the justification are accurate and complete to the best of my knowledge and belief.

Date: see electronic signature

Director

13. Fair and Reasonable Cost Determination: I hereby determine that the anticipated cost or price to the Government for this contract action will be fair and reasonable. The basis for this determination will be price analysis and the IGCE. As a part of this basis, certified cost or pricing data will be required.

Date: see electronic signature

Contracting Officer

14. Contracting Officer Certification: I certify that this justification is accurate and complete to the best of my knowledge and belief.

Date: see electronic signature

Contracting Officer

Program/Equipment: Multi-Source Assessment and Feedback

Version – March 2018 FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY

Approval

Based on the foregoing justification, I hereby approve the procurement of Multi-Source Assessment and Feedback Support Services for Fort Leavenworth, Kansas on an other than full and open competition basis pursuant to the authority of Title 10 United States Code Section 2304(c)(1) as implemented in Federal Acquisition Regulation Part 6.302- 1, “Only one responsible source and no other supplies or services will satisfy agency requirements.” The estimated value of the contract is for a one year period of performance from approximately Sep 2018 to Sep 2019 plus FAR Clause 52.217-8.

The approval is subject to the availability of funds, and provided that the services or property herein described have otherwise been authorized for acquisition.

Command Advocate for Competition US Army Mission and Installation Contracting Command, Ft Sam Houston, TX