JA_VATAS Software Licensing GovTA and Automation Station_redacted.pdf

Control Number VA-24-00083744

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, New Jersey 07724

2. Description of Action: The proposed action is for a Firm-Fixed-Price delivery order to be issued under the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Solutions for Enterprise-Wide Procurement (SEWP) V Government-Wide Acquisition Contract (GWAC) for brand name United Kronos Group’s (UKG) GovTA software licenses and brand name Lentech Automation Station and AutoArchive Purge software licenses. This software comprises the overall VA Time and Attendance System (VATAS) system to support the VA Financial Services Center (FSC) enterprise-wide time and attendance reporting that provides payroll and personnel benefits for approximately 550,000 Title 5 and Title 38 VA employees.

3. Description of the Supplies or Services: Enterprise-wide time and attendance reporting that supports payroll and personnel benefits is among the primary financial services managed by the FSC. Time and attendance functions for all VA employees, which includes approximately 550,000 Title 5 and Title 38 employees, are managed in VATAS. VATAS requirements include creating, updating, and editing employee profiles;

processing employee leave requests, overtime/compensation time requests, and environmental differential requests; as well as processing, correcting, and validating timesheets against VA business rules. VATAS must provide these functions for both Title 5 and Title 38 employees that work for VA. Specifically, VATAS is required to have the capability to provide time and attendance functionality for Title 38 employees in medical and healthcare occupations for which the working conditions are significantly different than standard Title 5 federal employees, including regularly working outside of normal business hours, having different overtime provisions, and several different pay scales. Additionally, VATAS is required to interface with both HRSmart and Human Resource Payroll Application System (HRPAS) in order to import personnel data for VA employees, such as leave and pay entitlements, and is also required to interface with the Defense Civilian Pay System (DCPS) in order to transmit timesheet information to execute payroll for VA employees.

The proposed action is to renew the annual software licenses for VATAS which currently include 550,000 brand name UKG GovTA software licenses and 550,000 brand name Lentech Automation Station and AutoArchive Purge software licenses.

Additionally, it is anticipated that the user base (i.e. VA staff across the enterprise) may expand by potentially 25,000 per year. As such, inclusion of an optional task to procure additional licenses to support an expansion of up to 125,000 users over the life of the order will be necessary. The resulting delivery order will have a 12-month base period

VA Time and Attendance Solution (VATAS) Software Licensing – GovTA and Automation Station / Control Number VA-24-00083744 that source code; this has been verified as of May 2024. Therefore, due to the proprietary nature of that source code, no other vendor could properly modify, patch and maintain the currently fielded software without the knowledge of, or access to, the proprietary UKG source code that can only be obtained by renewing the annual brand name software licenses. Additionally, GovTA software license functionality requires the use of Lentech Automation Station and AutoArchive Purge, an integration tool, to provide a total solution for seamless operability between the two separate systems.

Only Lentech Automation Station and AutoArchive Purge can be configured (i.e., compatible) to provided communication and data for GovTA software licenses and the licenses must be configured together to ensure operability. Therefore, these two brand name requirements must be procured through a single vendor to allow for installation and configuration efforts to occur concurrently to ensure success of the overall solution and the effort to maintain, expand and upgrade VATAS, a vital tool for the Agency that provides critical reporting and payroll services to all VA employees. Due to these proprietary constraints, use of any other brand name software and integration tool solution would not allow for interoperability and compatibility with the current infrastructure and would necessitate a complete redesign and redevelopment of a new solution. If VA pursued a redesign and redevelopment effort, technical experts estimate that it would result in a 24-month delivery delay and approximately $25 million in duplicated costs associated with modify a new commercial software solution, or developing a custom solution, as well as rebuilding the required interfaces with HRSmart, HRPAS, and DCPS, in order to meet VA’s time and reporting requirements as specified in Section 3. Additionally, an Authority to Operate (ATO) would be required for the new system which would further delay deployment of a new system by an additional 12-18 months. Finally, a new system would require phased deployments with performance and load testing conducted after each VA installation transitioned to the new system to ensure there is no loss of operation as the system expands to support the entire VA workforce of 550,000 employees. As part of the phase deployment, extensive training would be required to be provided both through web-based as well as in-person, to provide not only user training that is relevant for both Title 5 and Title 38 employees, but also training specific to the individual user roles: Approver, Supervisor, Timekeeper, Employee, and Station Administrator. The estimated time and cost for deployment and training is estimated at an additional 24 months and $3.5 million in duplicated costs. These estimates of duplicative time and cost are based on historical costs of designing and developing similar infrastructure and include the time to reprocure an alternative software and run the existing software in parallel, while all the necessary data is transitioned from the existing software to the alternative software.

These estimated duplicative costs are not expected to be recovered through competition. Failure to be able to maintain the current VATAS solution via these requirements would result in the inability for VA employees to enter time and attendance and be paid thereby jeopardizing day to day operations of VA to delivery products and services to Veterans including the provisioning of critical, life-saving patient care.

6. Efforts to Obtain Competition: Market research was conducted, details of which are in Section 8 of this justification. However, based on the proprietary nature of the UKG GovTA software, no other brand name software licenses would be able to integrate and communicate with the current VATAS solution due to a lack of interoperability and compatibility. Additionally, GovTA software licenses require an integration tool for operation compatibility that can only be provided by the brand name Lentech Automation Station and AutoArchive Purge to deliver the total solution. In accordance with FAR 16.505(a)(4)(iii)(A)(1), this justification will be provided with the solicitation to all appropriate NASA SEWP V GWAC holders. Furthermore, in accordance with FAR 5.301, 16.505(b)(2)(ii)(D), and 16.505(a)(4)(iii), the award notice for this action will be synopsized on the Contracting Opportunities website and this justification will be made publicly available within 14 days of award.

7. Actions to Increase Competition: The Government will continue to conduct market research to ascertain if there are changes in the marketplace that would enable future actions to be competed.

8. Market Research: Market research for time and attendance software to support VATAS was conducted by VA FSC Financial Technology Service (FTS) Program Management Office (PMO) IT project managers from January 2024 through April 2024 to determine if there were other software solutions capable of meeting VA’s requirements. Market research included web searches and reviewing capabilities of alternate commercial software in the marketplace, searching the Acquisition Gateway to identify commercial software currently in use by other Federal Departments and Agencies, as well as discussions with the Department of Defense regarding the viability of VA transitioning to its Automated Time and Attendance and Production System (ATAAPS), inclusive of a demonstration, as a potential alternative to VATAS. Alternate Human Capital Management (HCM) software solutions reviewed included Dayforce (formerly Ceridian) HCM, isolved People Cloud, Workday HCM, and Run Powered by ADP. All of the alternate software solutions reviewed lacked key features necessary to meet VA’s requirements such as Title 38 employee capabilities; leave/premium pay requests submission capabilities to include approval, revert to pending, and deny;

timecard validation; and timecard certification. Additionally, the Acquisition Gateway search performed found that that there are only two solutions currently in use by Federal Departments and Agencies, which include Paycheck8 and GovTA. Paycheck8 was reviewed as a potential alternate solution; however, it was determined that this software could not be integrated into the current VATAS solution due to an absence of interoperability and compatibility with the proprietary constraints of the GovTA/Lentech software solution in place and would therefore require a complete redesign and redeployment effort, as detailed in Section 5 of this justification, to implement for VA.

FSC PMO also determined that DoD’s ATAAPS solution would not be able to support time and reporting functions for Title 38 employees, and therefore was not a viable option for VA. Finally, the transmission of data between VATAS and HRSmart, HRPACs, and DCPS is critical to ensure CoP for VA employees; the interfaces between VATAS and these systems are operational based on the current configuration of the system which is the GovTA/Lentech software solution. As such, none of the alternate solutions reviewed by the VA FSC PMO can replace the current GovTA/Lentech software solution without a complete redesign and redeployment effort as detailed in Section 5 of this justification.

In May 2024, additional market research was performed by the Contract Specialist utilizing the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Solutions for Enterprise-Wide Procurement (SEWP) V Governmentwide Acquisition Contract (GWAC) Provider look-up tool to identify resellers of the required GovTA and Lentech software. The search identified three resellers of the Lentech Automation Station and AutoArchive Purge software licenses and GovTA software licenses that hold NASA SEWP V GWACs which include Architecture, Four Points Technology, and RedHawk IT. The resellers are all Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned Small Businesses (SDVOSBs). To make progress against VA’s small business goals, the Request for Quotation will be issued among NASA SEWP V SDVOSB GWAC holders under the North American Industry Classification System code 541519. NASA SEWP has a dynamic catalog for each GWAC holder where line items can be added based on customer requests; therefore, as long as the required item or service is within scope of the NASA SEWP V GWAC, items and services can be added to a GWAC holder’s catalog on a daily basis. Based on this, there is a reasonable expectation that limited competition exists on the NASA SEWP V GWAC that can provide the required brand name UKG GovTA software licenses and brand name Lentech Automation Station and AutoArchive Purge software licenses.

9. Other Facts: None.

10. Technical and Requirements Certification: I certify that the supporting data under my cognizance, which are included in this justification, are accurate and complete to the best of my knowledge and belief.

Name: Date: _______________________________

Program Manager Signature:

11. Fair and Reasonable Cost Determination: I hereby determine that the anticipated price to the Government for this contract action will be fair and reasonable based on comparison of the proposed prices received in response to the solicitation. Additionally, the proposed price will be compared to the successful offeror’s NASA SEWP catalog pricing, which has been determined to be fair and reasonable by NASA SEWP. Finally, the proposed price may be compared to the Independent Government Cost Estimate

Name: Date: ________________________________

Procuring Contracting Officer Signature:

12. Procuring Contracting Officer Certification: I certify that this justification is accurate and complete to the best of my knowledge and belief.

Procuring Contracting Officer Signature:

13. Office of General Counsel (OGC) Review: I have reviewed this document and find it legally sufficient, based on the representations set forth in the documents and, if any, attachments. The Head of the Contracting Activity’s approval is an independently supported decision not wholly reliant on the legal sufficiency determination.

Office of General Counsel Signature:

7/18/2024

7/17/2024

Approval

In my role as Head of the Contracting Activity, based on the foregoing justification, I hereby approve the acquisition of VATAS Software Licensing on an other than fair opportunity basis pursuant to the authority cited in Section 4 above, subject to availability of funds, and provided that the property and services herein described have otherwise been authorized for acquisition.

Date

Head of the Contracting Activity Technology Acquisition Center Office of Procurement, Acquisition, and Logistics Department of Veterans Affairs

7/19/2024