1.5.1-BNJ_Redacted.pdf

OFFICE OF ACQUISITION MANAGEMENT

ICE Acquisition Manual 3008.4

FEDERAL SUPPLY SCHEDULE ORDERS

SOLE SOURCE JUSTIFICATION

ITEMS PECULIAR TO ONE MANUFACTURER [ORDERS OR BPAS]

J&A-26-0292

This acquisition is conducted under the authority of the Multiple-Award Schedule Program, 41 U.S.C.

152(3), Competitive Procedures, and 40 U.S.C. 501, Services for Executive Agencies, and Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) 8.401(b) (Class Deviation 25-201) which follows the ordering procedures established by the General Services Administration (GSA) at GSAR 538.7104-4.

1. Agency and Contracting Activity.

The Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Office of Acquisition Management (OAQ), on behalf of the ICE Office of Public Affairs (OPA) proposes to award an order pursuant to RFO 8.401(b) and GSAR 538.7104-4, items peculiar to one manufacturer.

This document constitutes the “Sole Source Justification – Items Peculiar to One Manufacturer” for Hootsuite commercial software subscriptions/licenses and associated manufacturer support.

2. Nature and/or description of the item/service being procured and anticipated cost.

(a) Type of action: Firm-Fixed Price Blanket Purchase Agreement (BPA) Call Order under the GSA

MAS;

(b) Amount the current J&A is justifying: $ ;

(c) Brief Description: ICE/OAQ intends to limit the number of sources solicited pursuant to RFO 8.401(b) and GSAR 538.7104-4 for the procurement of Hootsuite licenses (Hootsuite Enterprise), and the associated Hootsuite’s Talkwalker platform, which are available from Hootsuite Inc.

ICE/OAQ intends to procure Hootsuite licenses from the single award DHS General Service Administration (GSA) Blanket Purchase Agreement (BPA) number 70RTAC26A00000011 with

Carahsoft Technology Corp. as the sole distributor of this product. This DHS BPA strategic sourcing vehicle is mandatory for use across the entire Agency for Enterprise Licenses, in accordance with Management Directive 06-0. The BPA was awarded by the DHS Office of Procurement Operations as a single-award BPA under the General Services Administration Multiple Award Schedule program. The BPA provides DHS components with a streamlined vehicle to procure software licenses, subscriptions, maintenance, support services, and training for covered products. It is an extremely cost-effective solution as additional discounts have been negotiated at the BPA level. Hootsuite Enterprise is developed, owned, hosted and maintained solely by Hootsuite, Inc. Hootsuite Enterprise is proprietary and is not white labeled, licensed to or produced by any other manufacturer. The Talkwalker platform is Hootsuite-owned intellectual property. The software is only available from Hootsuite directly and from Hootsuite’s authorized resellers, but there is no second source of manufacture. The period of performance is anticipated to be from September 30, 2026, through September 29, 2029.

3. A description of supplies/services required to meet the agency’s need, including the estimated total value (base and all options).

1 FAR Class Deviation 25-20 is implemented as a result of Revolutionary FAR Overhaul, referred to as RFO, following Executive Order

14275, Restoring Common Sense to Federal Procurement. All citations in this document follow applicable DHS RFO Deviations therefore are referred to as RFO.

FEDERAL SUPPLY SCHEDULE ORDERS

ICE OPA requires an integrated commercial, social media management platform, to support official publishing, scheduling, monitoring, analytics, listening, reporting, alerting, archiving, and workflow approval across multiple social media accounts. Hootsuite is the only capable source because it provides these capabilities in one enterprise platform, supports multiple users and mobile access, enables real-time monitoring and reporting, and reduces operational risk associated with using multiple disconnected tools. Procuring Hootsuite will allow ICE OPA to maintain continuity of official digital engagement operations and meet the requirements identified in the Statement of Work (SOW). It will also allow ICE to increase public awareness about victims, victims’ families, and survivors of crimes linked to immigration

The required supplies and services include:

� Software licenses and subscriptions;

� Software maintenance and technical support;

� Support services associated with the acquired software products;

� Delivery of software and related services in accordance with DHS timelines and specifications;

� Products and services that comply with applicable federal security, privacy, and accessibility requirements, including Section 508 requirements; and � A complete audit trail of who drafted, approved, and published every item.

Hootsuite is the only vendor/manufacturer capable of providing the following:

� Proprietary AI capability unavailable from other sources. Carahsoft provides access to the platform’s proprietary AI capability, Wisdom, which has been trained on twelve years of historical social media data. Unlike general-purpose language models, Wisdom is purpose-built to interpret social media behavior, including conversation propagation, abnormal activity against baseline trends, platform-specific sentiment patterns, and genuine inflection points. This proprietary training corpus and analytic capability are unique to the platform available through Carahsoft.

� Automated message triage, routing, and accountability. The solution available through Carahsoft provides AI-driven assignment and prioritization of inbound public messages across official ICE social media accounts. Messages are automatically triaged by urgency, routed to the appropriate team or field office, and tracked with assignment records showing who received the item and when. This capability is necessary to support ICE’s high-volume, distributed public affairs operations and cannot be replicated through manual processes or basic monitoring tools without loss of timeliness and accountability.

� Integrated visual recognition capability. The platform includes image and video recognition that detects logos, scenes, objects, and other visual indicators in social media content. This allows ICE to identify relevant material that contains little or no accompanying text and would not be captured by text-only monitoring solutions. This integrated visual analysis capability is required to meet the program’s monitoring needs.

� Licensed, large-scale data access. The solution provides licensed access to data from more than 30 social networks and approximately 150 million websites, blogs, forums, news outlets, podcasts, and review sources across 187 languages. This access is obtained through formal agreements with data providers rather than through scraping. The breadth, scale, multilingual coverage, and licensed nature of this access are necessary to meet the program’s requirements.

FEDERAL SUPPLY SCHEDULE ORDERS

� Continuity of ICE-specific configuration and historical data. ICE has approximately two years of accumulated use on the platform, including historical conversation data, tuned query sets, established dashboards, workflows, and account permissions mapped to ICE’s public affairs hierarchy and official account inventory. This agency-specific configuration is embedded in the current solution and would not transfer to a different product without significant loss of historical continuity, operational efficiency, and mission-specific functionality.

� Only source capable of meeting the program’s full requirements without unacceptable disruption. Because Carahsoft provides access to the proprietary AI, licensed data coverage, automated workflow capabilities, visual recognition tools, and ICE-specific historical configuration required by the program, Carahsoft is the only source capable of meeting the Government’s needs without unacceptable delay, duplication of cost, or loss of mission-critical continuity.

The estimated total value of the requirement, including the base period and all option periods, is $ , as follows:

Period Time Price Estimated

Total

Base 12 mos. (09/30/2026-09/29/2027)* $ $

Option Year 1 12 mos. (09/30/2027-09/29/2028)* $ $

Option Year 2 12 mos. (09/30/2028-09/29/2029)* $ $

*Dates are approximate and will be finalized at time of award.

4. Authority and supporting rationale.

Background Information:

DHS/ICE requires Hootsuite Enterprise, a software item peculiar to one manufacturer, as its enterprise platform for governing, publishing, monitoring, and analyzing the agency's official social media communications. The license enables DHS/ICE to administer its official agency accounts within a single governed environment providing role-based permissions, mandatory pre-publication approval workflow, and a complete audit record of published content, with licensing scaled to the number of authorized users and connected official accounts. Governed multi-account publishing, auditable approval workflow, records compliance, and cross-platform analysis of publicly available conversation are the core requirements. Analysis is performed by Wisdom, the manufacturer's proprietary AI, trained on twelve years of historical social data and therefore producing domain-specific analysis that general-purpose AI tools cannot replicate; Wisdom additionally drives automated assignment and prioritization of inbound public correspondence, ensuring time-sensitive inquiries reach the responsible office. Hootsuite's Talkwalker provides image and video recognition and multilingual analysis across more than 30 social networks and approximately 150 million web sources in 187 languages. [Professional Services SKU, provides planning, configuration, account provisioning, integration, and knowledge transfer, enabling DHS/ICE to preserve continuity with its existing configuration, historical data, and query sets, and supporting the agency's mission to communicate accurately and rapidly with the public, meet recruiting and public information objectives, and maintain situational awareness of the public information environment during incidents and emergencies.

FEDERAL SUPPLY SCHEDULE ORDERS

Authority:

ICE/OAQ intends to procure Hootsuite at Carahsoft on a brand name basis through the Multiple Award Schedule Program under the authority of 41 U.S.C. 152(3), Competitive Procedures, and 40 U.S.C. 501, Services for Executive Agencies.

Rationale:

Pursuant to RFO FAR 8.401(b) and GSAR 538.7104-4, this brand name is required because Hootsuite is the only identified source that is both technically capable and available to provide the required solution. Hootsuite’s platform includes centralized scheduling, content review, account management, analytics, and reporting, allowing communications staff to plan and publish timely information while maintaining appropriate approval workflows and brand consistency that are essential to ICE’s requirements to increase public awareness about victims, victims’ families, and survivors of crimes linked to immigration. These capabilities support ICE’s need to educate key audiences through comprehensive communication, public awareness, and outreach initiatives. Other products explored during market research revealed that no other product could be modified or otherwise obtained to satisfy the requirement.

The results of market research indicate that the proprietary software offered by Hootsuite has several unique features and functions not presently available in the marketplace. The department that executed the BPA conducted market research prior to establishing the BPA. ICE reached out as part of the market research to other BPA holders, Sprout and Meltwater, who declined to engage with

ICE.

Hootsuite is a web and mobile based social media management platform that allows businesses, marketing teams, and individuals to manage multiple social media channels from a single dashboard.

Some of its key features include Multi-Account Management, allowing ICE OPA to connect and control dozens of social networks—including Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube, Pinterest, in one central portal.

ICE/OPA requires Hootsuite Enterprise, a software item peculiar to one manufacturer, as its enterprise platform for governing, publishing, monitoring, and analyzing the agency's official social media communications.

Acquisition of the Hootsuite software and licenses will enable ICE/OPA to administer its official agency accounts within a single governed environment providing role-based permissions, mandatory pre-publication approval workflow, and a complete audit record of published content, with licensing scaled to the number of authorized users and connected official accounts. This product also provides ICE with governance mechanisms and access control as well as role-based permissions, mandatory pre-publication approval workflow, and a complete audit trail of who drafted, approved, and published every item. For an agency publishing under a single official identity from distributed field offices, this is essential since it provides a control layer that prevents unauthorized posting on official accounts.

Given that ICE has had this product in place for approximately two years, another capability is institutional ICE-specific value. Approximately two years on the platform means accumulated historical conversation data, tuned query sets, established dashboards, and an account permission structure already mapped to ICE's public affairs hierarchy and official account inventory. That

FEDERAL SUPPLY SCHEDULE ORDERS

configuration is agency-specific and does not transfer to another product. Furthermore, Hootsuite possesses roughly two years of accumulated ICE data and tuned queries which would not migrate into a different product. Without a baseline, ICE cannot measure change over time and year-over-year reporting restarts at zero.

Procuring a different product poses an account re-provisioning risk. Every official ICE account would have to be disconnected and re-authorized to a new platform, with real risk of interruption to publishing authority on official handles during that window.

Procuring a different product would disrupt workflow and training. Every ICE public affairs user across headquarters and field offices would require retraining on the newly acquired software which with reduce capability throughout the transition.

The use of other products could result in inoperability, compatibility and/or interface issues with the existing ICE network.

5. Technical/Requirements Personnel Certification.

I certify that this requirement meets the Government’s minimum need and that the supporting data, which form a basis for this justification, are accurate and complete.

Technical Representative/COR Date

6. Contracting Officer Certification/Approval

Contracting Officer Date