36C10B20Q0093-007.docx

Contract Opportunity Amendment to a Previous Combined Solicitation

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* = Required Field Contract Opportunity Amendment to a Previous Combined Solicitation D307 FMBT Interface and Data Conversion 07724 36C10B20Q0093

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N 541519 Department of Veterans Affairs Technology Acquisition Center 23 Christopher Way Eatontown NJ 07724 Amy Schmalzigan Amy.Schmalzigan@va.gov amy.schmalzigan@va.gov amy.schmalzigan@va.gov The purpose of this notification is to post answers to additional questions received from industry and to inform interested parties that Government intends to solicit this effort as Full and Open on General Services Administration IT Schedule 70 contract holders under North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) code 541519. VA is anticipating posting the solicitation May of this fiscal year.

Interface and data Conversion Support Services-RFI Questions & Answers

1. a. To ensure that the Government has a high-quality solution that takes maximum advantage of the learning from each release, recommend the following requirement be added to the PWS to support both data conversion and interface/software development ensuring requirements’ changes across multiple waves and for multiple value streams are adequately addressed:

I. The contractor shall be responsible to ensure that a set of software development life cycle (SDLC) deliverables and related working documents are consistent with each other, updated when any relevant information changes, and that requirements are traceable throughout each document.

Answer: Upon receiving this question, VA again reviewed the existing requirements and deliverables and determined that the list is complete. This requirement will not be added to this proposed action.

2. Upon reviewing the outline, we requested that the Contracting Office provide a list of the specific tools being used to perform the data cleansing and conversion work. Our only recommendation for improvement would be to add this listing of tools to the PWS.

Answer: The current development tools that are performing the data cleansing and conversion work are as follows: Red Hat JBoss EAP/Fuse/Camel, Red Hat JBoss CodeReady Studio, Corretto JDK 1.8, Maven, Git, Artifactory, Jenkins, Maven, Red Hat OpenShift, Perl, sqldeveloper, Notepad++, Java, git, TortoiseGit, oracle client, Oracle Sqlloader, MS Office, MS SQL Server client, Power BI, grepWin and Informatica ETL Tool.

3. If there are specific tools that VA requires to be used, it should be clear whether VA will extend those licenses for Contractors or if we will be responsible for those licenses as ODC or G&A cost. Also, since Momentum is a proprietary software product and the code is owned by 2 large companies, how will small businesses get access to the appropriate enterprise licenses and intellectual property agreements needed to operate appropriate Momentum development and test environments?

Answer: VA will extend enterprise licenses for specific application/tools as specified in paragraph 6.6 ( Government Furnished Property ) of the PWS. Momentum is a proprietary software product; therefore, small businesses need to reach out to the owners of Momentum for any licensing agreements to perform the tasks within the PWS.

4. a. To meet requirements for the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) circulars A-123, Appendix A, Internal Control over Financial Reporting and A-127, Financial Management Systems, recommend that key personnel and past performance demonstrate relevant A-123 experience, and that key personnel include Certified Public Accountants with Federal Agency level audit or pre-audit experience.

Answer: Upon receiving this question, VA again reviewed the level of expertise required for this effort. Based on this review, VA does not feel that this level of expertise is required to perform tasks within the PWS.

b. Given the size and complexity of VA’s effort to modernize its legacy core Financial Management System (FMS), recommend that key personnel and past performance demonstrate commercial, as well as government, leading practices for data migration and data integration.

Answer: VA will consider this recommendation for the final solicitation.

c. Recommend that VA include the iFAMS roadmap of planned or potential interfaces as part of the final PWS.

Answer: VA is currently in the process of iFAMS implementation, roadmap of planned and potential system interfaces is ongoing; therefore, there is not a planned roadmap to share.

d. For complex projects such as described in the draft PWS, believe that it is important to operate collaboratively with multiple contractor firms and work closely with the Systems Integrator (SI). We recommend that VA require and evaluate key personnel and past performance with the proven ability to merge application and data integration teams for interface development. In our experience, a collaborative team, where possible, lowers costs and enables faster interface implementation.

Answer: VA will consider this recommendation for the final solicitation.

e. Recommend that VA require and evaluate key personnel and past performance that demonstrate the ability to establish an integration “factory” to build foundational components for using pre-built APIs, connectors, adapters, process flows, etc. for faster implementation.

Answer: VA will consider this recommendation for the final solicitation.

5.

a. Given the importance of these Key Personnel to the program’s success, we recommend further clarifying the Section 5.1.9 – Key Personnel requirements for the signed letters of intent. Specifically:

I. All Key Personnel should be required to submit Letters of Intent. Regardless of whether they are currently employed by the company. Doing so benefits the Government as it mitigates “bait-and-switch” of Key Personnel and provides assurance from both the company and the actual Key Person that they are committed to the project.

II. Standardize the Letters of Intent commitment language for all bidders (e.g., a template is provided in the RFP). Standardization allows the Government to clearly define and stipulate how firm/mature of an agreement must exist between the employer and prospective employee. For example, to reduce risk to the Government, the Letter of Intent should confirm that:

III. The person is either currently employed by the company or that a contingent employment agreement has been finalized and accepted prior to proposal submission.

IV. The person consents to their resume being used in the proposal and understands the Key Personnel requirements of the proposal

b. The Government should clarify how signatures on the Letters of Intent are to be provided. With the current PII redaction requirements for resumes (i.e., how does someone sign a Letter of Intent while not revealing their name?). One recommendation could be that the Letters of Intent be submitted in a separate volume.

Answer: VA does intend to have offerors provide letters of intent for key personnel. Instructions will be provided within the solicitation.

6.

c. The first area is with Cybersecurity. NIST 800-37 and 800-53 are referenced as applicable documents, but without prior knowledge of the existing interfaces and authorization processes, it is unknown what specific resources should be provided by the contractor to fulfill these requirements. The VIP guidance also states that ATO activities are exclusive to the artifacts required for a Veteran-focused integration. It is recommended that the Government, if applicable, provide requirements to develop and integrate:

i. External Interfaces with outside organizations

ii. External Interfaces for Web-Accessible content

iii. Either adhere to RMF as defined by 800-37 under the assessment and guidance of another contractor / government security office, or provide RMF faculties as part of contractor proposal

iv. Adherence to 800-53 as part of existing vulnerability scanning, compliance scanning, code analysis, etc.; or provide security engineering faculties as part of contractor bid to develop these capabilities

Answer: These are standard Cybesecurity requirements of VA IT Software Development contracts and VA will specify the Cybersecurity requirements necessary. It is incumbent upon vendors to have technical approaches that satisfy these requirements.

d. The second area is with determining the number of systems and business processes that need requirements and business analysis. Based on the number of system interfaces and the maturity of the documented business processes, we will assist in the estimation process for determining the LOE for interface lifecycle development.

Answer: VA is currently in the process of iFAMS implementation, roadmap of planned and potential system interfaces is ongoing and is unavailable to share.

e. The Government should propose service level availability targets regarding the criticality, usability, and availability of the modernized system. Ex: Provide requirements that would lead the contractor to determine if the system should be designed for geographic disparity and/or elasticity.

Answer: This statement misinterprets the requirements. The contactor is not being asked to develop a modernized system.

7.

f. Recommend that, in the final RFP, the VA include information sufficient to accurately estimate the level of effort required to fully complete the tasks. For example, VA may provide more clarity on the specifications and planned implementation waves, to include:

i. The number of legacy source systems, the anticipated size and complexity of the records to be converted, known issues with the integrity of the data to be converted, and availability of legacy data owners to participate throughout the conversion process

ii. The number of interfaces and source systems

iii. Anticipated dependencies upon other parts of the FMBT program and the systems and interfaces included within each implementation wave

Answer: VA is currently in the process of iFAMS implementation, roadmap of planned and potential system interfaces is ongoing and unavailable to share.

8.

g. Legacy system interface development and conversion development are separate task areas but will have significant overlap during execution. We recommend these activities be linked in the task descriptions and deliverables.

Answer: VA agrees with this statement which is why both of these efforts are on a single contract. However, the task description and deliverables need to remain separate.

h. Configuration management scope appears to include all software, including the core accounting software managed under the separate systems integration contract, which may increase the complexity of governance across the FMBT program.

Answer: The Contractor is not being asked to do configuration management for the entire system, just for any software developed by the contractor on this contract.

i. Key personnel requirements list substantial specific Momentum experience, which may not be required for a large percentage of the work required. It may significantly reduce the pool of qualified staff available to the VA.

Answer: Momentum experience is necessary to efficiently and efficiently perform the tasks on this effort.

9.

j. The Draft PWS states that the Government has awarded a Systems Integration (SI)contract to CGI Federal, to support the FMBT program through an incremental deployment approach to migrate VA’s current financial management and acquisition environment to the new iFAMs utilizing Momentum. It would be helpful to us to understand more about the CGI contract team. We have supported Financial System Modernization and Transformation efforts similar to that in the PWS, and will work collaboratively with CGI Federal, and based on these experiences, more knowledge about the functions and organizational makeup of the systems integrator team could inform our own management approach, in terms of this collaborative effort.

Answer: Vendors are encouraged to reach out to other vendors as they feel necessary to gain the requisite knowledge.

k. Based on our experience at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Transportation Security Administration for their Financial System Modernization effort, and the United States Coast Guard (USCG) Financial System Data Cleansing and Migration project, We understands the value of an agile approach to requirements gathering, data cleansing, testing, and migration. Though there are some dates for the current progress toward general implementation, we would like to know more about the current progress toward interface development, and data conversion and migration. For instance, under the optional Transition Support task, the PWS says the contractor will be responsible for “Validating already delivered conversion programs and processes to ensure they are sufficient for waves in progress” (p. 27). A timeline of current conversion progress, activities, and future projections would inform our management proposal, and possibly staffing.

Answer: The wave schedule is an ongoing development effort. The first wave has been completed and future waves are currently being planned.

10.

l. PWS 5.1.2 Schedule Management: Please provide a more detailed plan around the implementation wave schedules and number of systems anticipated within each Wave, so that the offerors can better estimate the level of effort (LOE) needed to support this task.

Answer: The wave schedule is an ongoing development effort. The first wave has been completed and future waves are currently being planned.

m. PWS 5.1.2 Schedule Management: Please provide additional documentation that identifies the critical systems with VHA, VBA, NCA, and other VA Staff offices that will require interfaces and/or data conversion programs to adopt the iFAMS solution.

Answer: VA is currently in the process of iFAMS implementation, roadmap of planned and potential system interfaces is ongoing.

n. PWS 5.1.9 Key Personnel: As a leading firm in providing systems delivery expertise to the VA, we understand that developing interfaces through API platforms, and data conversion tools through ETLs, requires expertise in both the providing and consuming systems. While an understanding of the Momentum data schemas is critical to this effort, so too is the knowledge and expertise in the interface tool stacks (specified as JBoss), and interfacing systems. Would the Government accept alternate experience in the tool stack upon which Momentum is built, coupled with VA systems expertise and/or experience in developing and implementing interfaces and data conversion tools as a substitute for the requested Momentum experience?

Answer: Momentum experience is necessary to efficiently and efficiently perform the tasks on this effort and the Government does not believe that expertise with JBoss can adequately substitute for this.

o. Interface Development: Can the Government provide more details around the scope, number of interfaces, and number of data conversion programs that were included within the first implementation wave (July go-live), so that offerors can better under the scope of the requested support for the NCA deployment?

The following custom interfaces and data conversions were performed under the NCA wave and are not necessarily representative of any future waves:

eCMS ConcurGov

MinX

p. Interface Analysis and Requirements; Conversion Analysis, Requirements, and Planning: In the development of interface and data conversion programs, the availability of subject matter experts who understand the interfacing systems and data, and the ability to acquire sample and test data sets is critical. Who will be responsible for coordination with the systems that will need to provide source data and system SME resources to complete efforts in a timely manner?

Answer: The FMBT program office is responsible for coordination with the systems that will need to provide source data.

q. In addition, we recommend adding additional details to the final solicitation that describe the technical and functional requirements for FMBT, and to clarify the scope between the two targeted contracts. We recommend providing these additional details via the final PWS and/or a robust Bidder’s Library of supporting documents. Additional details will provide a wide range of qualified primes and supporting teammates to better understand FMBT’s full project scope and VA’s plans for modernization. Examples of additional task details include:

► Scope and Task Requirement Artifacts. Include relevant scope artifacts which the VA already owns as a result of paying for work on the legacy Financial Management System (FMS) and the new iFAMS. Sharing these artifacts will ultimately provide bidders the ability to develop the most cost effect and effective solution. Some examples include:

■ A list of all required interfaces (including types, styles, and volumetrics);

■ Interface Control Documents (ICDs) that specific technical interface details;

■ Data Mapping Documents that show the mapping between legacy and target schemas;

■ Business Requirements Documents (BRDs), User Guides, Database Schemas, etc. for both the legacy FMS and the new iFAMS systems.

► Specific SLA and Rules of Engagement Requirements. Specify in as much detail as possible the Rules of Engagement for changes/fixes (i.e., defective, adaptive, and preventive maintenance) and service management (i.e., tiering/escalation model for incident resolution), including:

■ Hand-offs/ Service Demarcations;

■ SLAs (e.g., Respond times, Recovery times, Repair times); and

■ SLA management (i.e., who monitors SLAs and when, such as Tier 1 monitoring activities by Tier 2 resolver teams to ensure progression of tickets).

► Installation and Readiness Specifications. Provide detailed specifications needed for successful installations across the enterprise and other contracts (i.e., identify the “Definition of Done” for both:

■ Installation of SaaS software ready for ingestion of converted data and

■ Determination of “Readiness for Service” at the site and instance level.

Answer: The requirements of the SaaS solution contract is a matter of public record and vendors are encouraged to reach out to other vendors as they feel necessary to gain additional requisite knowledge.