JA_MongoDB ELA_Final_Redacted.pdf

Control Number VA-26-00065164

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 firm-fixed-price delivery order issued under the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Solution for Enterprise-Wide Procurement (SEWP) V Government-Wide Acquisition Contract (GWAC) for brand-name MongoDB software licenses, maintenance support services, consulting services and training.

3. Description of the Supplies or Services: VA, Office of Information & Technology, Office of the Chief Technology Officer, Architecture and Engineering Services (AES) requires a brand-name MongoDB Enterprise License Agreement (ELA) to provide a secure, scalable, and centrally managed Not Only Structured Query Language (NoSQL) data platform for VA enterprise applications. The agreement will initially support the renewal of one MongoDB Enterprise Advanced (EA) license (256 Gigabyte (GB) of Random Access Memory (RAM)) and include maintenance such as software updates, patches, and bug fixes. In addition, the base period includes 75,000 MongoDB Atlas for Government Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) Enterprise Credits to support the initial stage of migration to MongoDB Atlas for Government. Optional tasks include up to 125,000 renewal Enterprise Credits currently in use by project teams and up to 800,000 additional new MongoDB Atlas SaaS Enterprise Credits to support the continued migration. There will also be optional tasks if needed for up to nine Mongo DB EA license renewals (per both 256GB of RAM and 128GB of RAM) which include maintenance such as software updates, patches, and bug fixes. Lastly, there will be optional tasks for consulting services, and training. Standardizing configurations, streamlining vendor support, and ensuring compliant, enterprise-wide data management objectives.

that can process files exceeding 100 Megabyte (MB), MongoDB ELA Control Number VA-26-00065164

4. Statutory Authority: The statutory authority permitting an exception to fair opportunity is Section 41 U.S.C. 4106(c)(2) as implemented by Revolutionary Federal Acquisition Regulation Overhaul (RFO) 16.507-6 capable of providing the supplies or services required at the level of quality required because the supplies or services ordered are unique or highly specialized.

5. Rationale Supporting Use of Authority Cited Above: Based on market research, as described in Section 8 of this justification, it was determined that limited competition is viable among resellers for the brand-name MongoDB EA software licenses and MongoDB Atlas for Government Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) Enterprise Credits, maintenance support services, consulting services, and training. These licenses service over 26 unique dataflows with varying levels of complexity, ranging from simple proxy services that still require in depth auditing capabilities, to intricate retrieval, storage, transformation and reporting flows. The size, structure, format and content of the files are variable, and routinely exceed 100MB. MongoDB EA meets VA's document-oriented NoSQL database requirement by storing data in JavaScript Object Notation -like documents with customizable fields, structures, and data models, enabling it to efficiently process unstructured and semi-structured data exceeding 100MB and accommodate the variations and associated customizations needed for data to be retrievable in a format that is usable to the partners on both ends of the flow. These dataflows transport data between VA systems and connect externally to other Government agencies and external vendors, mandating high security requirements which MongoDB EA is able to meet with their Federal Information Security Management Act high approval and Defense Information Systems Agency, Security Technical Implementation Guides Security Compliance baselines. The 26+ dataflows actively in production process millions of transactions weekly for the Service Treatment Records (STR), Disability Benefits Questionnaires (DBQ), Community Care, and medical imagery dataflows (Artifact Exchange, Medical Imagery Exchange and Radiology).

These dataflows include binary attachment payloads that routinely exceed 100MB.

Failure to process STRs and DBQs will disrupt the continuity of services and negatively impact Veteran compensation and pension benefits. Failure to process medical imagery will disrupt the continuity of services and negatively impact Veteran healthcare.

In order to meet the heightened security requirements of a system that stores Veteran PII and PHI which interfaces with multiple VA systems, as well as externally, MongoDB EA and Atlas provide end-to-end security with built-in security controls, encryption at rest and in transit and in use, and regular updates to patch any known vulnerabilities within 90 days. VA currently operates under MongoDB EA self-managed licenses and is assessing MongoDB Atlas for Government, a cloud-optimized SaaS solution, as the path forward for transitioning existing workloads to the cloud. MongoDB Atlas for Government meets VA's SaaS requirement by automating administrative tasks such as major and minor versioning upgrades, patching, backups, provisioning, and scaling, while ensuring security compliance and reducing the need for additional contractor resources. MongoDB Atlas is currently working with the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP) program to increase the accreditation of MongoDB Atlas from FedRAMP Moderate to High in Fiscal Year 2026. Upon such accreditation, use of MongoDB Atlas will expand into the production environment. MongoDB EA and Atlas are cloud agnostic, allowing VA to support a multi-cloud presence and facilitate communications between partners hosted on site, in VA Enterprise Cloud (VAEC) AWS and VAEC Azure.

The impact to partner systems and partner data, including Department of Defense, Oracle Health, Community Care providers, and other external agencies connected to VA must be considered. These partners depend on large, variable, and high-volume transactions that must be delivered securely and in real time. MongoDB was found to be capable of sustaining these exchanges without service degradation, ensuring VA remains compliant with statutory requirements for inter-agency interoperability under the 21st Century Cures Act (Cures Act) and Trusted Exchange Framework and Common Agreement.

If VA were to migrate to a new alternate database product, it would require engagement of scrum teams that support MongoDB and the dataflows, as well as a Build and Release scrum team and a Software Architect Services scrum team to migrate existing data, refactor code, rebuild services, and revalidate every data flow. A migration at this scale would delay disability adjudication under the Promise to Address Comprehensive Toxics Act, break Community Care access under the John S. McCain III, Daniel K.

Akaka, and Samuel R. Johnson VA Maintaining Internal Systems and Strengthening Integrated Outside Networks Act of 2018 (VA MISSION Act of 2018), and stall compliance with the estimated cost of moving to an alternate database solution is estimated at , with an estimated migration timeline of up to years, during which critical VA services would be at significant risk of disruption. Based on market research it is anticipated that these estimated costs will not be recovered through competition.

Finally, software maintenance support for the MongoDB software is required to maintain the integrity and security of the software. This software maintenance includes but is not limited to 24x7 support, patching and version upgrades/enhancements and security updates and upgrades. The software code is proprietary to MongoDB and therefore the software support/maintenance updates/version upgrades can only be provided by MongoDB, through its resellers.

6. Efforts to Obtain Competition: Market research was conducted, details of which are in section eight of this justification. The undersigned VA technical representative determined that, while limited competition is available among resellers for brand-name MongoDB licenses and related software maintenance and support, there are no alternative solutions available besides brand-name MongoDB. In accordance with RFO 16.507-7(c)(1)(i), this justification will be provided with the solicitation to all appropriate NASA SEWP V GWAC holders. Furthermore, in accordance with RFO 16.507-6(f)(1), 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: VA technical experts conducted market research in January through April 2026 of potential database products including Couchbase, MarkLogic, AWS DocumentDB, and DynamoDB. Each of these solutions fail to meet the Government requirement to natively process large file sizes. VA system dataflows regularly process files over 100 MB, particularly STRs, DBQs, and medical imagery, and often into the gigabyte range for radiology and genomic research. These payloads are essential to VA compliance statutes. Couchbase cannot support payloads over 24 MB; MarkLogic requires separate large binary storage and custom operational procedures for files above 1 MB rather than handling them as standard documents, making 100 MB across 26+ active high-volume dataflows; and both AWS DocumentDB and DynamoDB are optimized for many small records and cap each record at 16 MB and

0.4 MB which is far smaller than routine files of 100 MB or larger, so these products cannot hold a full file in one normal record and would require breaking files into pieces and custom code to manage them.

Additionally, the technical team posted a Market Research Request (MRR) 374871 through the NASA SEWP V GWAC from April 20, 2026 to April 28, 2026. The MRR was posted as a brand-name MongoDB or equivalent solution and included salient characteristics to define the minimum technical requirements an equivalent solution would need to meet

A total of seven responses were received. All seven respondents proposed MongoDB as their solution. Of the seven responses, three were submitted by Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned Small Businesses (SDVOSBs), two by Women-Owned Small Businesses (WOSBs), one by a Small Business, and one by an Other Than Small

Business. All seven respondents were assessed as fully capable of meeting the Government's requirements.

On June 3, 2026, the Contract Specialist searched NASA SEWP V GWAC Lookup Tool and identified multiple SDVOSBs resellers of brand-name MongoDB products, services, and solutions. Furthermore, NASA SEWP V GWAC has a dynamic catalog 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 contracts, items and services can be added to the catalog.

Based on the above market research, adequate competition is expected among resellers. T brand-name MongoDB licenses, software maintenance, and support can meet requirements; no other product satisfies both file size and security requirements.

9. Other Facts: N/A