36C10B19C0043-001.pdf

JUSTIFICATION

FOR AN EXCEPTION TO FAIR OPPORTUNITY

1. Contracting Activity: Department of Veterans Affairs (VA)

Office of Procurement Acquisition and Logistics Technology Acquisition Center 23 Christopher Way Eatontown, NJ 07724

2. Description of Action: The proposed action is for a sole source, firm-fixed price (FFP) delivery order (DO) for a technical refresh effort for the development, testing and delivery of a hosting metrics collection solution for Geriatrics Late Life Depression, Geriatrics Cognitive Impairment, Goals of Care Conversation, and Crash Cart Gaming Products.

3. Description of the Supplies or Services: The proposed action is to provide technical refresh effort for the development, testing, and delivery of a hosting metrics collection solution for the Geriatrics, Goals of Care Conversation, and Crash Cart gaming products. Veterans Health Administration (VHA) Employee Education System (EES) eLearning Gaming office seeks to reuse the current hosting data collection metrics baseline out of the Veterans Affairs Virtual Medical Center (VAVMC) for implementation into the Geriatrics, Goals of Care Conversation, and Crash Cart Gaming products.

These training modules were developed and delivered from 2016-2017 and hosted in the VAVMC. This hosting solution provides the collection of user data metrics and the export of reports. The main scope is to leverage current VAVMC user data collection functionalities by incorporating these capabilities into the Geriatrics, Goals of Care Conversation, and Crash Cart Gaming products.

The Gaming Educational training products were designed, developed, tested and delivered as educational training applications to ensure that VA Healthcare Providers and staff personnel are adequately trained in specific medical procedures and/or processes as outline in the learning objectives for each game. At the time of initial deployment, the Games were hosted and service by the VAVMC providing VHA the ability to capture user data and the exporting of reports. Since the initial Gaming product baselines were established, the VAVMC no longer can support the collection of user data and the exporting of such data in the form of reports.

The purpose of this effort is to reuse current VAVMC Hosting and Services capabilities, to integrate the ability to collect user data and export dashboard reports for Geriatrics, Goals of Care Conversations, and Crash Cart Gaming products, and to reuse the VAVMC hosting and services current baseline for the purpose of integrating metric data collection and reporting capabilities into each one of the following games:

•Geriatrics Late Life Depression •Geriatrics Cognitive Impairment •Goals of Care Conversations eLearning Gaming Hosting Services – TAC-19-56030

•Crash Cart

The contractor shall package and deliver the metrics collection solution compatible to the VA Virtual Medical Center format including visual metrics and graphs for the purpose of collecting total number of Sessions, Sessions per Profession Demographic, Average Total Score, and Average Score by Profession Demographic. The solution will also include a web form for the export of raw data in a Comma Separated Values (CSV) format for the purpose of opening the raw data in excel. The period of performance is one (1) 12-month base period with two (2) 12-month option periods.

4. Statutory Authority: FAR 13.106-1(b)(1) For purchases not exceeding the simplified acquisition threshold, Contracting Officers may solicit from one source if the contracting officer determines that the circumstances of the contract action deem only one source reasonably available.

5. Rationale Supporting Use of Authority Cited Above: The proposed source for this action is Engineering and Computer Simulations, Inc. (ECS) 11825 High Tech Avenue, Suite 250, Orlando, FL 32817. ECS is the owner of “NEXUS”, which is the original baseline Source Code for VA solutions such as the Goals of Care, Geriatrics, and Crash Cart gaming products utilized by the EES eLearning Gaming Office. Only ECS can provide these services as the hosted solutions are owned by ECS and contain proprietary information within the cloud hosted platform. Though the training solutions are VHA financed, the platform is a commercial product and any modifications required by the computing environment require access to source code and configurations that are proprietary to ECS. If any other offeror were to attempt to modify this code, it would result in an invalidation of all licenses and agreements with ECS and VA would be evicted from the current hosting environment. For the purposes of return on investment and learning outcome measurement, VHA now requires data collection on learners in order to track training objective outcomes per simulation training product. VHA also requires the hosted solutions in the Cloud to be re-configured to capture user data for each training product.

In November 2017, VHA investigated the ability to migrate all solutions, i.e., Geriatrics, Goals of Care Conversation, and Crash Cart, to a new environment. However, this process would require new development of Application Programming Interfaces which is estimated to take at a minimum two years for full operational capability. This would result in downtime for the current educational games and would significantly reduce the return on investment for the training product.

The contracting vehicles in place for the previous efforts did not include the purchase of source code data. Not only is ECS is the sole developer of the Geriatrics, Goals of Care, and Crash Cart products, but ECS has no authorized resellers and it does not subcontract out any of the required work. Based on the above, ECS is the sole contractor capable of meeting this requirement.

eLearning Gaming Hosting Services – TAC-19-56030

6. Efforts to Obtain Competition: Market research was conducted, the 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; therefore, no competition is anticipated for this acquisition. Additionally, the proposed action will be synopsized on the Federal Business Opportunities Page in accordance with FAR 5.201. Any proposals that are received shall be evaluated.

7. Actions to Increase Competition: 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: Market research was conducted by the Government’s technical experts in July 2019 by reviewing the capabilities of the Serious Educational Games Prime Contract holders: Systems Kinetics and Engineering, Creative Veteran Productions, Advanced Computer Learning Company, and MTS, Inc. Though all of these companies are likely capable of providing the required development, none have access to the proprietary source code used in the ECS cloud environment. On July 11, 2019, the Contract Specialist contacted ECS to confirm that is the sole owner of the Source Code, that it did not have any authorized resellers, and no subcontracting opportunities exist; ECS confirmed the foregoing via email on July 17, 2019. As a result, the market research confirmed that ECS is the only service provider capable of meeting the Government’s requirements for this effort.

9. Other Facts: None.