LSJ - Bridge contract award Final Signed lep JHS.pdf

JUSTIFICATION AND APPROVAL FOR OTHER-THAN FULL-AND-OPEN COMPETITION

1 CONSUMER FINANCIAL PROTECTION BUREAU (CFPB), 1700 G STREET, NW WASHINGTON, DC 20552

LIMITED SOURCES JUSTIFICATION

NEW TASK ORDER TO CONTINUE WORK

PERFORMED UNDER

TFSACFPBPA14004 Call 20343019F00007

1.0 Agency Name & relevant office(s): Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (“CFPB” or “the

Bureau”); Technology and Innovation (T&I)

2.0 Nature and/or description of the action being approved, the supplies or services needed, and estimated dollar value.

The proposed action is to issue a sole source task order to Smartronix, Inc. under GSA Schedule 70 Contract Number 47QTCA19D0094, to continue ongoing mission critical CFPB Cloud Infrastructure System Administration Services until a new CFPB Cloud Engineering Blanket Purchase Agreement (BPA) and respective calls are awarded. The work currently performed under BPA #TFSACFPBPA14004, Call 20343019F00007 will be continued under a single new BPA, which will result from the current competitive procurement process, but has not yet been awarded. The existing BPA, awarded on behalf of the Bureau by the Bureau of the Fiscal Service (BFS), has expired, and no new orders can be issued against it.

Further, CFPB cannot issue an in-scope modification and place additional funding to the current BPA Calls because BFS, which is administering the BPA and all Calls thereunder, included a BPA ceiling that has been reached, and is unwilling to allow such modifications to include additional funding to existing orders. A short-term bridge contract is therefore necessary to continue this mission critical T&I support. This task order will replace TFSACFPBPA14004, Call 20343019F00007, awarded to Smartronix for Cloud Infrastructure System Administration Services.

Quotations to continue these current services are under evaluation. The Bureau is making a good faith effort to evaluate quotations and make an award decision as soon as practicable, and begin any necessary transition processes. In the interim, a bridge contract is necessary to continue obtaining mission critical IT support, and following the normal competitive procedures would result in unacceptable delays.

Under this bridge task order, the Contractor shall provide only the minimum services required to maintain and operate the CFPB suite of applications on selected cloud infrastructure. Additionally, the Contractor shall continue to implement both daily and emergency procedures and the monitoring of CFPB applications. The Contractor shall provide performance reporting and metrics, and ensure the overall reliability of the environment, responsive operations through both proactive planning and rapid situational response.

2 CONSUMER FINANCIAL PROTECTION BUREAU (CFPB), 1700 G STREET, NW WASHINGTON, DC 20552

The Contractor shall provide system administration services to manage the infrastructure supporting the CFPB website(s), portal(s) and other hosted applications, including cloud-specific administration to support capabilities such as automatic bursting and scaling.

Designing, delivering and operating cloud deployment architecture for continuous availability and scalability is a significant component of system administration responsibilities.

T&I is requesting approval of this bridge task order, with a base period of three (3) months and three (3), one-month option periods, to be exercised at the discretion of the Government.

The estimated value of the task order is up to $3,695,206.00, if all option periods are exercised. The order will cover a base period of performance of January 18, 2020 to April 17, 2020, and possibly up to July 17, 2020, if all options are exercised.

3.0 Authority for other-than full-and-open competition (proposed contractor’s unique quals, etc.)

The period of performance of the current BPA Call that provides these services expires on January 17, 2020. This bridge order is being placed under FAR Part 8.405-6 (a)(1)(A), which permits the placing orders if an “urgent and compelling need exists, and following the procedures would result in unacceptable delays.” Failure to continue these critical services will result in key Bureau IT systems and applications becoming inoperable.

The new follow-on requirement is currently under technical evaluation pursuant to a competitive procurement. The Government anticipates issuing the BPA and Call 0001 within the base period of this bridge task order; however, additional time will be necessary to allow for adequate transition time and completion of the security clearance process for onboarding contractor personnel. The optional performance periods of the bridge task order is anticipated to allow sufficient time for both transition and clearance of contractor personnel.

The critical services that will be performed under this bridge task order will assist the CFPB with maintaining and supporting key IT systems and applications that are used by the Bureau. If a lapse were to occur, the CFPB network (including Network file services (H:, Q:, Z;), Enterprise Monitoring (SolarWinds) Support, Remote access support (Citrix), Always on VPN, SQL Support for the enterprise, ConnectDirect Support, Enterprise Backup Support), applications, cybersecurity support, AWS environment cloud support and iPhones, would not have support and would risk either running at a degraded level or fail completely.

All of these areas are critical to the CFPB’s entire infrastructure and must continue to be performed to ensure a failure does not occur. A full failure would be detrimental to the CFPB mission as this team also supports the backup systems that would be required to restore CFPB to operational status in case of disaster recovery efforts. The Government does not have the resources to maintain these services independently and any service interruption would result in unacceptable risk to ongoing program operations.

Without contractor staff to maintain these systems and applications, CFPB would need to rely on in-house personnel, which is significantly limited, and which would require training and re-training, as well as overtime and/or compensation time for knowledge transfer of the

3 CONSUMER FINANCIAL PROTECTION BUREAU (CFPB), 1700 G STREET, NW WASHINGTON, DC 20552

Bureau infrastructure and any new processes or procedures. Given the expected short timeframe to the gap in service and the time-sensitivity involved, both training and dedicating CFPB personnel to manage and maintain the systems and applications, in addition to their regular area of responsibilities, is not a reasonable solution.

4.0 Best Value Determination.

In the interest of economy and efficiency, the Contracting Officer will negotiate the same rates currently being used by Smartronix on TFSACFPBPA14004, Call 20343019F00007 for use on this order. Those rates have previously been determined to be fair and reasonable and the contemplated order would represent the best value consistent with FAR 8.404(d).

First, GSA has already determined the prices of supplies and fixed-price services, and rates for services offered at hourly rates, under schedule contracts to be fair and reasonable.

Therefore, ordering activities are not required to make a separate determination of fair and reasonable pricing, except for a price evaluation as required by FAR 8.405-2(d). Second, the original BPA Call was competitively placed under CFPB’s Cloud Infrastructure System Administration Services (TFSACFPBPA14004) awarded by BFS and that award was based on adequate price competition, where two or more BPA holders, competing independently, submitted priced offers that satisfied the Government’s expressed requirement. As such, I determine that using the same rates under this bridge contract is fair and reasonable and represents the best value to the Bureau for these services, as the work will continue at the rate the Bureau is currently paying while avoiding a costly transition.

5.0 A description of the market research conducted and the results, or a statement of the reason market research was not conducted.

Market research was not conducted for this order, as delays in the procurement process to put in place the upcoming Cloud Engineering BPA has necessitated a bridge task order contract for continuing these services based on an urgent and compelling need.

6.0 A description of efforts made to ensure that offers are solicited from as many potential sources as practicable, including whether a notice was, or will be, publicized as required by Subpart 5.2 and, if not, which exception under 5.202 applies. Include a listing of sources, if any, that expressed a written interest in the acquisition as a result of the FBO posting.

A notice of intent to issue or a notice of award will be publicized before award at the Governmentwide Point of Entry (GPE) website https://beta.sam.gov/ in accordance with FAR 8.405-6 (a)(1)(C) and FAR 8.405-6(a)(2)(i).

7.0 A statement of the actions, if any, the agency may take to remove or overcome any barriers to competition before any subsequent acquisition for the supplies or services is made.

Services performed under this bridge task order will be migrated to the newly competitively awarded BPA as soon as possible. Further, this order has been structured with a three-month base period of performance and three (3), one-month option periods, to be exercised https://beta.sam.gov/ https://beta.sam.gov/

4 CONSUMER FINANCIAL PROTECTION BUREAU (CFPB), 1700 G STREET, NW WASHINGTON, DC 20552 at the discretion of the Government, to allow the CFPB to discontinue services as soon as practicable.

8.0 A determination by the contracting officer that the anticipated cost to the Government will be fair and reasonable.

The labor categories and pricing proposed by the Contractor will be verified to ensure they are consistent with the current Smartronix Call 20343019F00007 rates. At the time of the BPA award, the Contractor’s pricing was deemed to be fair and reasonable based on competition and data related to prices (such as market research, comparison of the proposed price with prices found reasonable, and comparison to the Independent Government Cost Estimate (IGCE)). An IGCE has also been created for comparison before award of this order. The CO has determined that these prices, and the resulting estimated cost, represents the best value to the Government.

9.0 Approvals.

9.1 TECHNICAL/REQUIREMENTS PERSONNEL. All supporting data that is the responsibility of technical or requirements personnel, and which form a basis for the justification, are hereby certified as complete and accurate by the technical or requirements personnel.

Name: Jill Smith Date:

Title: Supervisory Program Analyst (Procurement & Budget) – T&I

9.2 PROCUREMENT STAFF. To the best of my knowledge and belief, I certify that this justification is accurate and complete.

Name: Laurent E. Pichet Date:

Title: Contracting Officer

Name: Joshua Galicki Date:

Title: Competition Advocate

01/02/2020