142083-27-0002_NOAAPort-Industry_Questions_and_NOAA_Response.pdf

1. Industry Question 1

Is the Government interested in capability statements from small businesses that could support a larger systems integrator as a subcontractor, particularly in project coordination, technical documentation, cybersecurity support, and program execution?

NOAA Response to Industry Question 1

Yes. The Government welcomes information from small businesses regarding capabilities relevant to the requirement, including capabilities that could support performance as a subcontractor. Responses should explain how the identified capabilities relate to the scope described in the RFI. Potential teaming arrangements, including the identification of partners and allocation of responsibilities, are for industry to determine. This RFI does not establish a preferred teaming structure or commit the Government to a particular acquisition approach.

2. Industry Question 2

Are there specific technical qualifications, past-performance requirements, or areas of the

NOAAPort replacement effort that would make a small-business subcontractor particularly useful to the eventual prime contractor?

NOAA Response to Industry Question 2

The Government will use the responses received through this RFI to inform the development of the acquisition strategy and associated schedule.

3. Industry Question 3

RFI Section 3.11: Throughput. Is the 100 Mbps minimum the sustained aggregate of all current

SBN channels combined, or a per-endpoint requirement? What peak aggregate rate and product growth (for example GOES-U imagery and higher resolution model output) should respondents plan for through 2030?

NOAA Response to Industry Question 3

The current operational aggregate peak is around 70-80 Mbps. In the RFI we set the floor at 100 Mbps, knowing we need at least that but would expect much higher burst capabilities.

4. Industry Question 4

RFI Section 2 and 3.14: Latency. Is there a numeric end-to-end latency budget, measured from

NCF ingest to the customer ingest node, for life-safety products such as warnings carried on

NWWS, and a separate budget for radar Level II and Level III and for satellite imagery

NOAA Response to Industry Question 4

The NWS wants to guarantee that life-safety and mission-critical information are prioritized onto alert streams that execute direct, near-zero-wait delivery paths to achieve minimal end-to-end latency. NWS is interested in what is achievable.

5. Industry Question 5

RFI Section 3.11: Endpoints and Operating Model. Approximately how many external

NOAAPort receive sites and organizations does NWS expect to serve? Does NWS envision a

Government-owned distribution service operated by a contractor, a commercial managed service, or a Data-as-a-Service model in which external users pay their own cloud egress?

NOAA Response to Industry Question 5

The NWS is interested in considering any of these options as we determine paths for complying with statutory mandates, meet mission requirements while maintaining cost efficiency

6. Industry Question 6

RFI Section 3.3 and 3.42: Formats and Integrity. Should the replacement preserve the existing

SBN product framing (WMO headers and AWIPS identifiers) so that current LDM-based ingest software can be adapted with minimal change, or is a new message envelope acceptable? Does

NWS have an existing PKI that a replacement should use for product signing and source authentication?

NOAA Response to Industry Question 6

The NWS is moving away from WMO Headers towards web-native such as MQTT topic hierarchies and JSON discovery metadata. However, the timeframe is not clear. Thus, the NWS would be interested in approaches that accommodate both.

We don't currently use PKI for public data access, and any future solutions will be handled at the enterprise level.

7. Industry Question 7

RFI Section 3.41: Transition. Does NWS plan to run the SBN and the replacement in parallel for user testing before August 31, 2027, and if so, from approximately what date? How should the replacement relate to existing NOAA cloud distribution such as the NOAA Open Data

Dissemination program?

NOAA Response to Industry Question 7

NWS plans to run existing SBN and alternate data sources concurrently for as many months as possible.

8. Industry Question 8

RFI Section 4: Is NWS considering a small business set-aside under NAICS 541512 for the resulting requirement?

NOAA Response to Industry Question 8 development of the acquisition strategy as well as any set-aside decision.

9. Industry Question 9

Is this contemplated acquisition a successor to an existing contract or task order? If so, please identify the applicable contract number and incumbent.

NOAA Response to Industry Question 9

This is a new effort.

10. Industry Question 10

Is NOAA considering a standalone competition or acquisition through an existing contract vehicle?

NOAA Response to Industry Question 10 development of the acquisition strategy.

11. Industry Question 11

Is NOAA considering separate awards for cloud-platform implementation, data distribution/connectivity, and ongoing operations, or an integrated award covering all functions?

NOAA Response to Industry Question 11 development of the acquisition strategy.

12. Industry Question 12

Is there an anticipated solicitation and award schedule, and will an industry day or teaming-focused engagement be held?

NOAA Response to Industry Question 12

The acquisition timeline has not been finalized. The Government will use the responses received through this RFI to inform the development of the acquisition strategy and associated schedule.

13. Industry Question 13

RFI Section 3.1.2 and 3.1.4: Does NOAA have target end-to-end latency objectives by product class, including a measurable latency objective for life-safety warnings?

NOAA Response to Industry Question 13

14. Industry Question 14

RFI Section 3.1.4: Will NOAA provide an authoritative product-priority taxonomy, or should respondents propose classification rules for life-safety, mission-critical, routine, and bulk products?

NOAA Response to Industry Question 14

Respondents are welcome and encouraged to provide product priorities; NWS will provide final priority categories if a solicitation is issued.

15. Industry Question 15

RFI Section 3.2.2: For non-internet fallback, should respondents assume the backup path must support the entire data feed, or only life-safety/priority products? Please identify the approximate number and geographic distribution of endpoints requiring fallback.

NOAA Response to Industry Question 15

For fallback capabilities, it's fair to assume that the NWS may limit feeds to only life-safety and mission-critical data.

16. Industry Question 16

RFI Section 3.3: What security categorization and NOAA-specific security requirements should respondents assume, and must the solution operate within a particular FedRAMP-authorized cloud boundary?

NOAA Response to Industry Question 16

The final solution will be part of the Operational NWS cloud environment and will reside in either a FISMA-moderate or FISMA-high enclave.

17. Industry Question 17

RFI Section 3.4.1: What parallel-operation period with the existing NOAAPort SBN should respondents assume before final deactivation?

NOAA Response to Industry Question 17

The NWS plans to run existing SBN and alternate data sources concurrently, for as many months as possible.

18. Industry Question 18

RFI Section 3.4.2: Are interface specifications, schemas, authentication patterns, or sandbox/test endpoints available for HIVE and CIRRUS integrations?

NOAA Response to Industry Question 18

Technical interface details will be provided as needed should a solicitation be issued.

19. Industry Question 19

RFI Section 3.5.3: For ROM purposes, should respondents include commercial cloud data-egress charges, consumer-side hardware/connectivity, and alternate satellite/telecom transport, or may those elements be presented as separate cost categories?

NOAA Response to Industry Question 19

Respondents should identify all material costs necessary to establish, operate, and sustain their proposed approaches. Respondents should identify costs assumed to be Government-furnished or borne by external consumers.

20. Industry Question 20

RFI Section 3.1.3: Selective Subscriptions - Will the replacement carry the full product set the

SBN broadcasts today, including the products currently encrypted or licensed on NOAAPort (for example ECMWF and NLDN lightning), or a subset? If a subset, will the list be published before responses are due?

NOAA Response to Industry Question 20

For the purposes of this RFI respondents should focus on capabilities that provide a minimum of 100 Mbps throughput.

21. Industry Question 21

RFI Section 3.1.1. and 3.4.2: Delivery and Interoperability - External AWIPS and LDM operators match products on their WMO headers and AWIPS identifiers. Does NWS intend the replacement to preserve those identifiers, and is an LDM-compatible or IDD-style feed among the delivery methods contemplated, alongside APIs and MQTT?

NOAA Response to Industry Question 21

The NWS expects to move away from WMO Headers towards web-native protocols such as MQTT topic hierarchies and JSON discovery metadata.

22. Industry Question 22

RFI Section 3.4.1: Timeline - Section 1 of the attachment gives deactivation "as early as August

31, 2027." Will the replacement operate in parallel with the SBN before that date, and for how long, so that external partners can validate parity product by product before cutover?

NOAA Response to Industry Question 22

The NWS plans to run existing SBN and alternate data sources concurrently for as many months as possible.

23. Industry Question 23

RFI Section 3.5.1: Contracting Model - The SBN is received without charge today. Does NWS contemplate the replacement being free of charge to external consumers, or a subscription or consumption model in which consumers pay the provider?

NOAA Response to Industry Question 23

While no cost is preferred the NWS is open to other options as part of reviewing responses received through this RFI.

24. Industry Question 24

Section 1 of the attachment (Hive and Cirrus) - Will external parties have any direct access to

CIRRUS interfaces, or is the replacement capability the only external path?

NOAA Response to Industry Question 24

CIRRUS will be the data environment for the NWS and will include external data access.

25. Industry Question 25

RFI Section 6.4: Responses - Is a response that addresses only the consumer-facing questions

(3.1.3, 3.4.1, 3.4.2) useful to the Government's market research, given that the respondent would not propose to build or operate the national capability?

NOAA Response to Industry Question 25

Yes, NWS is interested in potential solutions to those questions.

26. Industry Question 26

Does the Government anticipate competing the replacement as a single integrated award, or as separable scopes, with transport capacity on one side and the consumer-facing subscription, compatibility, and onboarding layer on the other?

NOAA Response to Industry Question 26 development of the acquisition strategy and associated schedule.

27. Industry Question 27

RFI Section 3.1.1: Can the Government specify the expected peak aggregate throughput and peak concurrent endpoint count during a major severe-weather outbreak (versus steady-state)?

NOAA Response to Industry Question 27

For the purposes of this RFI, respondents should focus on capabilities that provide a minimum of 100 Mbps throughput.

28. Industry Question 28

RFI Section 2 and 3.1.4: How is the ≥99.99% availability requirement measured — per-region or whole-system, and what constitutes a countable outage? Is a higher target (e.g., 99.999%) expected specifically for the prioritized life-safety/alert path versus bulk data

NOAA Response to Industry Question 28

The NWS's objective is to meet or exceed 99.99% operational availability. Specific details on availability and outage criteria will be included if a solicitation is issued.

29. Industry Question 29

RFI Section 3.1.1: Can the Government specify the "thousands of concurrent endpoints" for

SBN?

NOAA Response to Industry Question 29

The to-be system must be able to support thousands of concurrent users.

30. Industry Question 30

RFI Section 1: Can the government specify whether downstream systems at commercial weather entities, emergency managers, and interagency partners will be able to use the the SBN replacement by the deactivation date of August 31, 2027?

NOAA Response to Industry Question 30

The NWS plans to run the existing SBN and alternate data sources concurrently for as many months as possible.

31. Industry Question 31

Will the replacement architecture require edge transformation between legacy weather binary formats (e.g., GRIB2, BUFR, NetCDF) and modern web-friendly formats (e.g., JSON, REST, WebSockets, MQTT)?

NOAA Response to Industry Question 31

The Government is interested in all feasible approaches to replace NOAAPort functionality.

32. Industry Question 32

RFI Section 3.1.4: Regarding Section 3.1.4, where specifically is latency measured (e.g., NCF producer egress, cloud gateway, or consumer ingest)? Will message header inspection and API-level traffic shaping be accepted to dynamically route life-safety alerts so they bypass bulk queues?

NOAA Response to Industry Question 32

33. Industry Question 33

RFI Section 3.3: For Section 3.3, will NWS require centralized OAuth 2.0 / OpenID Connect authentication, mutual TLS (mTLS) termination, and fine-grained role-based access control

(RBAC) at the edge before payload distribution to public endpoints?

NOAA Response to Industry Question 33

All data will be categorized; authentication for fully public data is not required, but the Government would like to have methods for tracking users. There must be a way to identify and control access if use of Government resources is deemed out of acceptable rules of behavior. If the solution does not require authentication, then the solution must ensure no access to restricted data (e.g. Government's SLA with data provider does not allow distribution).

34. Industry Question 34

Which Cloud Service Provider hosts the NWS Enterprise Cloud (NEC), and what FedRAMP security authorization baseline (Moderate vs. High) will be required for the integration and API management layer?

NOAA Response to Industry Question 34

The solution should be multi-cloud and capable of handling FISMA moderate and high data.

35. Industry Question 35

RFI Section 3.4.2: To support Section 3.4.2 regarding users with varying technical agility, will the Government mandate an open-standards Developer Portal (e.g., OpenAPI, AsyncAPI) with automated self-service onboarding, API key provisioning, and SDK generation to reduce long-term O&M costs?

NOAA Response to Industry Question 35

The Government mandates a solution that adheres to FAIR principles and industry standards with a preference to open standards.

36. Industry Question 36

What interfaces or APIs currently exist on the producer side within NCF, CIRRUS, and HIVE, and will the contractor be responsible for building new integration connectors to extract data from these upstream repositories?

NOAA Response to Industry Question 36

Yes, the contractor will be responsible for integration connectors to upstream connectors. The sources for the data for the near-term solution will be defined as part of tasking if a contract is awarded for this work.

37. Industry Question 37

RFI Section 3.4.1: For Section 3.4.1, what is the anticipated duration for a dual-run / parallel-operation window between the legacy NOAAPort SBN and the replacement platform prior to the

August 31, 2027 deactivation target?

NOAA Response to Industry Question 37

The NWS plans to run the existing SBN and alternate data sources concurrently, for as many months as possible.

38. Industry Question 38

RFI Section 3.5.1: Regarding Section 3.5.1, is the Government open to SaaS / consumption-based managed service models for the API governance and integration software components, and has a preferred GWAC or IDIQ vehicle been identified?

NOAA Response to Industry Question 38

The Government is open to SAAS and managed service models. The Government will use the responses received through this RFI to inform the development of the acquisition strategy.

39. Industry Question 39

RFI Section 3.2.2: Non-Internet / Redundant Fallback - What percentage of current legacy

NOAAPort consumers operate in environments without high-speed internet access, and what is

NWS's target maximum hardware capital expenditure per non-internet endpoint?

NOAA Response to Industry Question 39

The Government is interested in all feasible approaches to replace NOAAPort functionality. The Government is interested if any options are dependent on number of users.