SF 1014 JEFOC Brand Name Adobe products and services_Rev_Redacted.pdf

DEPARTMENT OF THE TREASURY

SF 1014 - JUSTIFICATION FOR AN EXCEPTION

TO FAIR OPPORTUNITY

Treasury Standard Form – 1014 (Rev 10/23)

Prescribed by Treasury: DTAP 1016.505 Tracking No.

1. Identification of the requiring activity and the contracting activity: The Requiring Activity: The Office of the Chief Information Officer (OCIO) for the Treasury Departmental Offices (DO) Contracting Activity: IRS Procurement, Office of Information Technology Acquisitions

(OITA)

2.a Nature and/or description of the action being approved:

The purpose of this Justification for an Exception to Fair Opportunity is to obtain approval to award a Firm Fixed Price (FFP) contract for the purchase of Brand Name Adobe products and services described in section 3.a below, as well as maintenance, upgrades, corresponding support under both perpetual and subscription licensing models, and, under certain circumstances, training and/or professional consulting services directly affiliated with the implementation and/or use of the products. This is a brand name action because only one brand manufacturer, Adobe Systems Incorporated, is capable of providing the supplies or services required at the level of quality required because the supplies and services purchased are unique and highly specialized. The current task order, 2032H5-21-F-00930, for these items will expire on September 29 2024. The period of performance for the new contract will be for a 12-month base period and two 12-month option periods, as follows:

Base: September 30, 2024 – September 29, 2025 OPY1: September 30, 2025 – September 29, 2026 OPY2: September 30, 2026 – September 29, 2027

2.b Name of the vendor. N/A 2.c Requisition No.:

2.d Bridge contract: ☐ Yes ☒ No 2.e Brand name: ☒ Yes ☐ No 3.a A description of the supplies or services required to meet the agency’s needs:

The proposed acquisition is to acquire the following Brand Name Adobe products as well as any Adobe brand name products developed and released during the period of performance that will be required to meet DO operational goals.

Adobe Technical Suite Enterprise Term Adobe Acrobat DC Professional Term Adobe Captivate Enterprise Term Adobe Document Services AEM Term License Adobe FrameMaker Enterprise Term Adobe RoboHelp Office Enterprise Term Adobe Creative Cloud Desktop App Adobe Creative Cloud Desktop App - InDesign Only Adobe Creative Cloud Desktop App - PhotoShop Only Adobe Creative Cloud Desktop App - InCopy Only Adobe Stock Enterprise SW Adobe Systems, Inc Adobe Dreamweaver Enterprise Term Adobe Animate Enterprise Term Adobe Illustrator Enterprise Term Adobe Systems, Inc Adobe Audition Enterprise Term License

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Treasury Standard Form – 1014 (Rev 10/23)

The Adobe suite of creative desktop and mobile apps, such as PhotoShop, InDesign, and Illustrator that compilate each other in a seamless and efficient manner. Similarly, there is no complete alternative to Adobe Acrobat Pro. Acrobat users can create, edit, convert, share, sign and combine documents from the Adobe platform. It provides for digital experiences that enable team to collaborate and work from any device, anytime, anywhere. From a Creative Cloud standpoint, there are a few smaller companies such as Affinity, Gimp, Inkscape, but they’re inferior to the Creative Cloud applications and are not accepted as ‘industry standard.’

From an Acrobat Pro standpoint, there are key area where our competitions provide inferior features.

• Accessibility: Adobe sets the standard for accessibility and is trusted by governments around the world for complying with accessibility standards. Adobe has the accessibility to ensure all documents are 508c.

• Integrations: Only Adobe Pro Document Cloud offers enterprise-level integrations and the partnership with Microsoft enables customers to maximize their Microsoft investment.

• Language: Acrobat supports 34 languages whereas the competitors only support 6.

The table below provides the Adobe competitor products and functionality.

Name of Competitor/Product

Ability to edit XML Data

Ability to create portable document format

Ability to edit portable document format

Affinity N Y Y Gimp N Y Y Inkscape Y N Y

No other competitor products can meet all the required functionality. Additionally, other similar products or workflows typically require the use of Adobe Acrobat PRO to augment or enable its accessibility support. Furthermore, Adobe Acrobat PRO has functionalities that are unique for PDF documents. Adobe Acrobat PRO is an application that creates and edits PDF files to make them accessible. It has a number of tools for evaluating and repairing the accessibility of PDF files, including access to the structure root through the tags panel, the ability to directly manipulate the reading order through the order panel, a built-in accessibility checker, and the Touch Up Reading Order tool which provides a graphical mechanism for assessing and repairing the accessibility of a PDF document. Adobe Acrobat Pro can generate and modify any PDF to be accessible from almost any source. In other words, PDF documents created by other PDF authoring software can be imported into Adobe Acrobat Pro and be manipulated via Adobe Acrobat’s tag tree to increase accessibility. The aforementioned functionalities are not available in any other competitor’s tools; all other tools currently in the market offer singular functionality.

Adobe’s integrated environment enables agency employees to perform their day-to-day tasks without facing critical productivity challenges, such as file type incompatibility, document

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Treasury Standard Form – 1014 (Rev 10/23) format loss, and pdf functionality limitations. Applications developed to run within the Adobe environment often require a significant remediation to run on another product, even when similar capabilities exist in the alternate products. Additionally, Adobe products are locally installed on desktops and do not require users to be "on-line" to access and edit documents, like competitor applications. The comprehensive and seamless integration across the Adobe product sets is critical for interoperability within Treasury and the Federal Government.

Adobe is needed to maintain reliable, consistent supportability to maintain mission critical activities that are needed to support every agency’s mission.

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Treasury Standard Form – 1014 (Rev 10/23)

While the market research showed there is growing competition in this space, it is for products with singular functionality. No single competitor has the full breadth and depth of capabilities to match Adobe, or the capability to seamlessly integrate products that are currently used within the existing Federal environment. In addition, alternate software solutions were found to be unable to seamlessly support the continued use of the existing portable document format file formats, applications built within the existing tools, or user interfaces. Switching to alternative products or running mixed environments would lead to migration complexities, learning curves, tool limitations, application limitations, costly initial setup expenses, and in-house expertise resources that are not available.

5. A determination that the anticipated cost to the Government will be fair and reasonable: The Contracting Officer will determine the agreed upon price is fair and reasonable based on an analysis of the received quotes, a comparison with published price lists, or through other appropriate means, and will validate it represents the best value for the government for this effort.

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Treasury Standard Form – 1014 (Rev 10/23)

6.a Any other facts supporting this justification:

Adobe brand name software and licenses were previously procured under task order 2032H5-18-F-01236, which ended on September 29, 2021, and more recently under 2032H5-21-F-00930, which will end on September 29, 2024.

The current vehicle used to purchase Adobe software licenses has reached the contract ceiling due to unexpected needs across DO following COVID. Individual offices may purchase Adobe software licenses on a contract-by-contract basis; however, this method is administratively burdensome and does not allow DO to have a single provider of licenses and maintenance across the offices. These individual awards have historically resulted in large price differences;

offices with smaller requirements, or offices that purchased licenses/maintenance intermittently without aggregating at the office level, were not able to leverage their spend on Adobe products. In addition, a contract purchase would not meet the needs DO has for acquiring licenses on an urgent or short notice basis (i.e., less than one week). As such, a vehicle allowing DO to buy licenses via an immediate order is necessary.

Without the needed Adobe products and services identified in this procurement, the Treasury DO will be unable to sustain collaboration and continued support of the mission for Treasury with creating, editing, and signing documents to fulfil mission critical elements that are needed for day to day operations.

6.b Attachments: ☒ Yes ☐ No PWS, IGCE, Market Research Summary Report

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Treasury Standard Form – 1014 (Rev 10/23)

9.b Advocate for Competition (if over $750,000, but not exceeding $15 million) (Contracting Activity). I have reviewed this justification for an exception to fair opportunity and find it to be accurate and complete to the best of my knowledge and belief. Therefore, unless additional approvals are required as prescribed below, as the ordering activity’s Advocate for competition, I hereby approve this justification based on the authority specified in 4.a above.

Name: Date:

Signature:

9.c Head of the Procuring Activity or Authorized Designee (if over $15 million, but not exceeding $75 million) (Contracting Activity). I have reviewed this justification for an exception to fair opportunity and find it to be accurate and complete to the best of my knowledge and belief. Therefore, unless additional approvals are required as prescribed below, as the head of the procuring activity or authorized designee, I hereby approve this justification based on the authority specified in 4.a above.

Name: Date:

Signature:

9.d Treasury Chief Information Officer (for IT requirements that are over $75 million). I have reviewed this justification and find it to be accurate and complete to the best of my

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Treasury Standard Form – 1014 (Rev 10/23) knowledge and belief, and representative of the Government’s need. Therefore, I hereby consent to the approval of this justification.

Name: Date:

Signature:

9.e Senior Procurement Executive (if over $75 million) (Contracting Activity). I have reviewed this justification for an exception to fair opportunity and find it to be accurate and complete to the best of my knowledge and belief. Therefore, as the senior procurement executive, I hereby approve this justification based on the authority specified in 4.a above.

Name: Date:

Signature: