140D0421R0024 Amendment 2 Response to Contractor Questions_0002.pdf

Subject: Contractor Questions and Government Response Date: April 28, 2021 Ref.: Solicitation No. 140D0421R0024: Statistical Production Modernization and Applications

Development Support Services for the BEA-EITS.

1. Upon reviewing the solicitation instructions, we noticed there are two due dates (on p. 2-

3 and 54-55) – April 26 and May 14. Please clarify which is correct.

Response: Amendment 1 was issued to respond to the error.

2. I am hoping to find out if there is an incumbent contractor currently performing these services, if similar services have been performed in the past, or if this is a new requirement.

If this is a follow-on requirement, could you please provide the previous contract or task order number?

Response: The incumbent contractor is Omnicom Consulting Group, Inc. under contract number 140D0419C0084.

3. We are compiling all of our questions but we want to ask about the statement, "Based on the successes and failures of these prior contractual engagements, BEA has determined that due to the unique nature of developing and supporting applications that process economic accounts and socioeconomic statistics, the Contractor shall be required to have significant prior specialized experience providing federal statistical system support to BEA. Conversely, prior experience with other Federal agencies and/or the banking/HR/payroll arenas has not been indicative of success in BEA’s unique applications development environment."

We do have similar and significant experience providing federal statistical system but not to BEA. This clause will restrict most of the small companies like us to compete for this opportunity. Would you consider removing this clause so more small businesses that have similar experience at other agencies can compete for this opportunity? Removing this clause will provide more options for your agencies to choose from.

Response: Having significant prior specialized experience providing support for the BEA statistical applications is a requirement for this contract. The BEA-EITS system is comprised of multiple highly integrated subsystems which are tuned to produce, analyze, validate, and publish the full suite of economic data produced by the bureau. These subsystems are interdependent and successful completion of the tasks outlined in the Statement of Work depends upon the contactor’s ability to demonstrate advanced knowledge of how updating an existing subsystem or building a new subsystem will affect the ecosystem.

The Statement of Work for this contract includes tasks to maintain and enhance existing subsystems. It is vital for the company to demonstrate a proven record of successfully implementing the OneBEA architecture because implementing a feature or calculation modification to one subsystem may have downstream impacts on another subsystem.

Failing to understand and account for each subsystem’s implementation of the economic principles underlying the statistics would put the accuracy and integrity of BEA data at risk.

The Statement of Work includes tasks to implement and migrate the core statistical subsystems from an on-prem datacenter into the Azure cloud. The BEA’s high-performance subsystems utilize a number of advanced Microsoft SQL feature sets. The success of the project to design and implement a cloud-hosted statistical platform, including an evaluation of all IaaS and SaaS SQL and webserver offerings in Azure, requires an in-depth understanding of the subsystems and a demonstrated experience implementing projects in line with the BEA SDLC. Failing to consider the unique features of the BEA subsystems would introduce cost and schedule risk to the bureau’s cloud migration plan.

4. Are there any requirements associated with CIPSEA for this opportunity?

Response: There are no CIPSEA specific requirements for this contract.

5. The RFP asks for PPQs to be submitted for each Past Performance reference, but also indicates that the Government will utilize CPARS. For contract references that have an active CPARS, is it necessary to have a federal customer complete the PPQ as well?

Response: The Government would still like to receive PPQ even if the contractor has an active CPARS account. Not receiving PPQ will not be held against a contractor.

6. The section Requisite Functional Experience outlines indicates that that BEA has had problems with their past contractors, but then indicates that only contractors with experience at BEA are considered relevant. Is it BEA’s intent to award this contract to an incumbent company?

Response: The intent of this statement is not to award to an incumbent contractor. This statement is included to let contractors know the environment is complex. If contractor’s do not have experience with BEA’s complex environment, they need to address how they are going to overcome the learning curve.

7. Based on the experience requirements in the section “Requisite Functional Experience”, would it be considered relevant experience if our organization has supported the system development, survey management, modernization, and enhancement of federal statistical systems at an organization like the Energy Information Administration (EIA).

Response: Experience building and maintaining survey processing systems is one requirement for this contract. The company may submit experience from another federal statistical agency, such as EIA, in conjunction with documentation displaying sufficient experience and expertise to satisfy the additional requirements outlined in the Statement of Work.