47QTCA18D0081-012.pdf

Control Number TAC-20-54729

LIMITED-SOURCES JUSTIFICATION

1. Contracting Activity: Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Office of Procurement Acquisition and Logistics

Technology Acquisition Center 1701 Directors Blvd

Austin, TX 78744

2. Description of Action: The proposed contract action is for firm-fixed price (FFP) delivery order issued under General Services Administration (GSA) Federal Supply Schedule (FSS) 70 contract 47QTCA18D0081 to Executive Information Systems (EIS), LLC for Statistical Analysis Systems (SAS) Software Maintenance and Support in support of data analysis activities serving the users within the Office of Productivity and Efficient Staffing, Inpatient Evaluation Center, VA Central Office, and Veterans Health Administration Support Service Center.

3. Description of the Supplies or Services: VA, Office of Information and Technology (OI&T), Service Delivery and Engineering, Infrastructure Operations (IO) has a requirement to renew existing continued annual software maintenance and support for 27 VA-owned SAS software licenses. The SAS software licenses provide VA with several high profile business intelligence data analytics, some of which are updated daily and utilized by VA senior leadership.

Departments that utilize the SAS software include the Office of Productivity and Efficient Staffing, Inpatient Evaluation Center, VA Central Office, and Veterans Health Administration Support Service Center. The software maintenance support will consist of software upgrades to include major releases, point releases, service releases, and security releases of applicable software on a quarterly basis, and/or within 48 hours in cases in which a high risk vulnerability fix becomes available. This software maintenance is necessary for IO to be able to operate successfully and is required to ensure the software remains operational. The proposed action is for services only. No software will be renewed or procured under this proposed action. The period of performance for this action shall be for 12 months from October 01, 2019 – September 30, 2020 and two (2) 12-month option periods from October 01, 2020 – September 30, 2021, and October 01, 2021 – September 30, 2022, if exercised. The total estimated price of this proposed action including all options is ( for the base software maintenance and support, for option period one, and for option period two).

4. Authority: This acquisition is conducted under the authority of the Multiple- Award Schedule Program. The specific authority providing for a limited source award is Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) Part 8.405-6(a)(1)(i)(B), “Only one source is capable of providing the supplies or services required at the level of quality required because the supplies or services are unique or highly specialized.”

FY20 SAS Institute License Renewal & Maintenance

5. Rationale Supporting Use of Authority Cited Above: The proposed source for this action is EIS, LLC, 6901 Rockledge Drive, Bethesda, Maryland 20817. EIS is the only authorized reseller allowed to sell Statistical Analysis System (OEM) SAS products available through GSA and SAS does not conduct business directly with the Government. No other brand name software can function with the existing environment of SAS software and applications that are coded to work with the SAS Brand software and current VA Infrastructure Operations systems.

IO infrastructure is based on existing SAS software and only SAS, and its authorized reseller EIS, can provide SAS software maintenance support. SAS’s software coding is proprietary in nature and is not released to any other party.

Any source must have access to this code to ensure the services provided are proelry configured and the updates are properly developed and pushed to the software. No other software provider has the capability to develop and issue software updates, patches and fixes for SAS software necessary to support existing IO statistical and analytical requirements without access to SAS proprietary software code. Due to the nature of the intellectual property and software codes to perform the needed support services, proprietary copyrighted by SAS, no other software brand products would offer the same capability. The proprietary source code and proprietary data formats are necessary in order for the existing infrastructure and configuration to run properly.

Furthermore, SAS software maintenance will ensure that all support services are performed and properly configured to the VA-owned SAS software which can only be provided by those who have access to the proprietary software code.

Additionally, no other software products could meet VA’s interoperability and compatibility requirements and would require a complete replacement of the current SAS infrastructure. Because this code will only run in the SAS software environment, substituting with another brand name product would render this existing code useless, thereby negatively impacting the research studies already done in efforts to improve Veteran care. Using another brand name analytic tool other than SAS will break all of the current codes, and it will be an astronomatical duplicated cost to the Governemnt to replace the current analytic database in the amount of an estimated $4M for software and $8M to reaccomplish the analytic programming codes for non-SAS databases with new analytic non-SAS language. These estimates are based on previous similar efforts. The current SAS environment components communicate through software that is SAS based and using proprietary sourced codes. Additionally, the time it will take to install, test, and train VA staff on the use of new software would cause multiple project delays and system downtime. SAS software maintenance will ensure that all support services are performed and properly configured to the VA-owned SAS software. If the software should not be properly maintained by the contract, the risk of failure would affect the hundreds of reports and applications depending on its functionality. Any other brand name software would require a time consuming and expensive redevelopment effort to satisfactorily emulate the currently fielded production applications that communicate with the SAS brand name software. The brand name SAS software maintenance and support is the only software maintenance and support that meets the Government’s requirements.

6. Efforts to Obtain Competition: Market research was conducted, details of which are in section 8 of this justification. This effort did not yield any additional sources that can meet the Government's requirements. Based on market research, EIS is the only authorized reseller of SAS software licenses renewal and maintenance support. The ordering activity will post the justification along with the request for quote to e-Buy in accordance with FAR 8.405-6(b)(3).

Additionally, in accordance with FAR 5.301 and 8.405-6(a)(2), this action will be synopsized at award on the Federal Business Opportunities (FBO) Page and the justification will be made publicly available within 14 days after award.

7. Actions to Increase Competition: VA has extensive investment into its current implementation and customization of the SAS software licenses used throughout VA. The Government will continue to conduct market research to ascertain if there are changes in the market place that would enable future actions to be competed.

8. Market Research: The Government’s technical experts performed market research in March and April 2019. The market research reviewed similar software packages and associated software maintenance such as Anaconda, WPS Analytics, and IBM Statistical Package from Social Sciences (SPSS) Statistics to ascertain if these software products can meet the Government’s requirement. None of these three (3) software packages offer interoperability and code compatibility with the current IO’s platforms. Only SAS software meets all the VA’s functional needs as described in the previous paragraphs. The Government’s technical experts also researched trade publications such as Forrester Research, Gartner Research, and technical mainframe websites and web-based forums related to the performance mainframe requirements to identify other potential performance mainframe software solutions that could meet the Government’s requirements. As a result of the market research, it shows that no other provider or software product is capable of performing the services requested due to the proprietary source code required to issue updates, and SAS is the only source capable of providing the required maintenance and upgrades for SAS software. No other firm has the capability of developing and issuing software updates and fixes for SAS software necessary to support existing IO requirements. Based on this market research, this Government’s technical experts determined that only SAS software can meet all the Government’s requirements. Executive Information Systems (EIS) is the only authorized reseller of SAS software and maintenance. At the time of the writing of this Justification, there have been no new entrants to the marketplace that can provide these services.

The Contract Specialist (CS) contacted SAS by phone in May 2019 and received an email confirming that it only conducts business with the Federal Government through its only authorized reseller, Executive Information Systems (EIS), a small business under its GSA contract. EIS was also contacted in May 2019, and spoke to a representative who confirmed that software maintenance and support only can only be purchased on its GSA FSS 70 contract.

9. Other Facts: None.