Redacted_JA13-116_JOPES_Sustainment_Final.pdf

JUSTIFICATION & APPROVAL

Multiple Award Schedule (MAS) / Multiple Award Contract (MAC)

Orders under MAC/ Fair Opportunity – Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) 16.505, Defense Federal Acquisition Regulation Supplement (DFARS) 216.505-70, Procedures Guidance, and Information (PGI) 216.505-70

JUSTIFICATION FOR AN EXCEPTION TO FAIR OPPORTUNITY

Number: JA13-116

Upon the basis of the following justification, I, as the Head of Contracting Activity (HCA), hereby approve this exception to fair opportunity pursuant to the authority of FAR 16.505(b)(2)(i)(C).

1. REQUIRING AGENCY AND CONTRACTING OFFICE:

Requiring Agency:

Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) Program Executive Office (PEO) Command and Control Capabilities (C2C) Joint Planning and Execution Services (JPES) P.O. Box 549 Ft. Meade, MD 20755-0549

Contracting Office:

Defense Information Systems Agency Defense Information Technology Contracting Organization - National Capital Region Acquisitions Building 6914 Cooper Ave.

Ft. Meade, MD 20755-7090

2. NATURE/DESCRIPTION OF ACTION(S):

The nature of the contractual action for which approval is requested, is for a follow-on sole source, Cost Plus Fixed Fee (CPFF) order to Pragmatics under ENCORE II contract HC1028-08- D-2010 VC16. This task order will utilize Fiscal Year (FY) 2013 and 2014 Operations & Maintenance (O&M) funding.

JOPES Sustainment and Synchronization-JA13-116

Tracking No. 621300086.00 Page 2 of 6 Pages

3. DESCRIPTION OF SUPPLIES/SERVICES:

The scope of this effort is to provide software engineering and systems engineering support to the Joint Planning and Execution Services (JPES), Joint Operational Planning and Execution System (JOPES) by providing software development lifecycle activities, operational support and technical services necessary to analyze, design, integrate, test, certify and accredit, deploy, sustain/synchronize, maintain and deliver quality software to the warfighter.

The contract is for a base year with three (3) one-year options plus a six (6) month extension of services in accordance with (IAW) FAR 52.217-8. The estimated life-cycle cost of the procurement is $XXXXX

4. SUPPORTING RATIONALE, INCLUDING A DEMONSTRATION THAT THE

PROPOSED CONTRACTOR’S UNIQUE QUALIFICATIONS OR THE NATURE OF

THE ACQUISITION REQUIRES USE OF AN EXCEPTION TO FAIR OPPORTUNITY:

(a) Exception to Fair Opportunity.

FAR 16.505(b)(2)(i)(C) - The order must be issued on a sole-source basis in the interest of economy and efficiency because it is a logical follow-on to an order already issued under the contract, provided that all awardees were given a fair opportunity to be considered for the original order.

(b) Description of the Justification.

Recently the JOPES program has been realigned under the JPES Program Management Office (PMO) to focus the agency’s efforts for the Joint Planning and Execution Community (JPEC). While the change has been beneficial overall, there has been significant effort on the Government side of the program to become knowledgeable in JOPES functionality, processes and Concept of Operations (CONOPS). The PMO is pursuing a logical follow-on to the JOPES IT Sustainment effort because the scope, period of performance and the value of this effort remains unchanged from the current effort that is in place. The PMO believes this action is in the best interest of the government due to cost and schedule impacts that might occur. This effort has been solicited under full and open competition several times in the past and has been awarded to the same vendor every time due to the scope and also the complexity of the legacy JOPES IT system.

(c) Justification:

(1) Minimum Government requirements. The scope of this effort is to provide software engineering and systems engineering support to the JPES PMO by providing software development lifecycle activities, operational support and technical services necessary to analyze, design, integrate, test, certify and accredit, deploy, sustain/synchronize, maintain and deliver quality software to the warfighter. Currently the system relies on a number of legacy technologies (Tcl/Tk, Perl, UNIX extensions, Oracle Secure Global Desktop) to

Page 3 of 6 Pages function properly, requiring a specific skill set to support the system. In addition, the system relies on a number of legacy, system-proprietary mechanisms to enable synchronization and replication across four (4) geographically dispersed production instances to meet system Joint Requirements Oversight Council (JROC)-defined Key Performance Parameters (KPPs).

(2) Proposed sole source contractor. Pragmatics, 1761 Business Center Drive, Reston, VA 20190 has been the prime contractor on this effort for the last 15 years. As the system has matured so has Pragmatics. They possess the historic knowledge of the JOPES IT system as well as the experience and expertise with this effort. Pragmatics in-depth experience has enabled DISA to respond to operational issues in a timely fashion with no operational impact to the end user. JOPES is considered a legacy system and understanding the design of JOPES and how to sustain/maintain it for operational use is of paramount importance. As discussed below, Pragmatics continued support of this requirement would allow the Government to avoid a substantial duplication of costs and avoid an unacceptable delay in the program schedule.

(3) Discussion regarding cause of the sole source situation. If this effort is not sole sourced, the ramp up time for a new contracting team would be at least six (6) months to one (1) year due to the complexity of JOPES as well as some of the legacy technologies used within the system baseline. A new vendor would inherit a very large and complex code base employing a number of different coding languages, some of which are no longer widely used. Within the system there are a number of sub-systems such as JOPES Editing Tool (JET), Rapid Query Tool (RQT), TPFDD Management Tool (TMT), JOPES Permissions (JPERMS), etc. for creating, updating and controlling access to the Time-Phased Force and Deployment Data (TPFDD). Understanding these subsystems not only requires a technical background in all of the technologies used within each but also an operational knowledge of how the tools are used by the Joint Planning and Execution Community (JPEC) to manipulate the TPFDDs. In addition there are a number of components such as the JOPES Synchronization Processor (JSP), JOPES Data Network Services (JDNETS) and JOPES Subscriptions (JSUB) that utilize a combination of COTS and GOTS solutions that keep the four globally distributed JOPES Strategic Server Enclaves in synch as well as provide data access to a number of critical external interfaces. Having a deep understanding of these systems is critical to the current operational posture of JOPES and any upgrades to the system would be highly dependent on this knowledge in order to mitigate the risk to operational failure. In order for a new vendor to understand the system and the tools that work with JOPES it would cost the government approximately $XXXX in lost productivity and support to the user community in the form of security patches, operational fixes and infrastructure upgrades.

While the contractor is in this transition period there is little chance that they will be able to support these critical functions which will then most likely be distributed to personnel at the Ft. Meade lab and the Joint Staff Support Center (JSSC), the operational support center for the JOPES system. This redistribution of workload would result in the need for additional funding from the PMO to be sent to cover the cost of these functions.

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(4) Demonstration of unique source. Pragmatics has been the prime contractor on this effort and reliability of the JOPES system during the past 15 years has been essentially 100%. During Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom, there have been no known reported JOPES outages. The current JOPES IT system interfaces with 20 Defense Information Systems, 13 of these interfaces are deemed critical by the Joint Staff. The ability to maintain uptime by quickly identifying and handling operational problem incidents can be directly correlated with the expertise of the incumbent Pragmatics team. Introducing a new contractor to sustain JOPES IT, would result in increased risk that troubleshooting and issue resolution timeframes may not be as short as current operations, which would result in an inability to maintain conformance with Operational Availability performance requirements. A new contractor at this point in the program schedule would cause an estimated XXXX duplication of cost and a delay in schedule of six (6) months to one (1) year.

(5) Procurement discussion. The decision to retire the JOPES IT System in FY17 has produced the new requirement to explore a modernized JOPES system. The analysis and planning of a modernized JOPES system started in December 2012 and that contract was competitively awarded. Without Pragmatics on the existing legacy JOPES IT system contract to share their knowledge and their JOPES expertise, the JOPES Modernization efforts will be delayed and may result in the JOPES Modernization effort making incorrect assessments of the system if a new contract support team would be brought on to replace Pragmatics who would not have the same knowledge and experience to offer without a substantial duplication of cost or unacceptable schedule delay.

(6) Impact: The impact to the JOPES IT system not being a logical follow-on would be substantial both in cost and schedule. Changing contractors at this point, while JOPES legacy system is scheduled for retirement in FY17 and while working to develop the new JOPES Modernization system that will take the place of the current system, would greatly increase the risk to the current level of support received by the operational community. A change in contractor would also cost the GovernmentXXXXX in transition cost and add approximately 1 year to the schedule. The loss of historical JOPES knowledge would also impact the JOPES Modernization effort’scost and schedule. The JOPES Modernization team would be forced to do extensive research to obtain the required historical information that is known by the ongoing support from the Pragmatics contractor. This would require additional resources and also would add months to the JOPES Modernization schedule that is currently in the implementation planning stage.

5. COST/PRICE FAIR AND REASONABLE DETERMINATION:

The Contracting Officer will obtain certified cost or pricing data, in accordance with Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) 15.403-4 and will use this information to determine fair and reasonableness. After completion of negotiations, a Certificate of Current Cost or pricing Data will be obtained.

6. MARKET RESEARCH:

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A Sources Sought Announcement was posted to Federal Business Opportunities (FedBizOpps) in May 2013 for the purpose of identifying small businesses, under the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) 541512 - Computer Systems Design Services, capable of meeting the JOPES IT requirement. The small businesses were evaluated against the scope of work addressed in this task area. Thirty-seven small business companies responded to the Sources Sought Announcement. Based on the market research, a determination was made that the proposed work should not be set aside for small business because there was not a reasonable expectation of receiving offers from two or more responsible small business contractors that can perform this work due to the magnitude of scope, and the lack of a widespread set of operational, developer, and technical engineers who have functional JOPES field experience and who can maintain critical relationships with COCOMs, Joint Staff (JS), Office of Secretary of Defense (OSD), and DISA required for program success as the C2 Program of Record.

7. ANY OTHER SUPPORTING FACTS:

The purpose of this contract is to provide software and systems engineering support necessary to “Do No Harm” to the current operations, by providing software development lifecycle activities, operational support and technical services necessary to analyze, design, integrate, test, certify and accredit, deploy, sustain/synchronize, maintain and deliver quality software to the warfighter. The contractor shall sustain and synchronize multiple JOPES baselines, as well as provide minimal operational enhancements required for conventional war force planning & execution requirements of JOPES for the Joint Staff and Combatant Commands. Additionally, the contractor shall provide transition support to the JOPES Modernization effort with regard to current and planned JOPES releases.

8. ACTIONS THE AGENCY MAY TAKE TO REMOVE OR OVERCOME BARRIERS

THAT LED TO THE EXCEPTION TO FAIR OPPORTUNITY: (16.505(b)(2)(ii)(B)(7).

(a) Procurement History. The Government does not have the in-house resources to do this work. This effort was competed as a full and open competition using Fair Opportunity procedures starting in 1990. Pragmatics, Inc. was awarded the Task Order during the initial award and has won every subsequent recompetition effort via Fair Opportunity under ENCORE II. Procurement history over the last five (5) years is listed for review; currently this effort is under contract HC1028-08-D-2010 VC16, awarded to Pragmatics with a period of performance to include a base plus one (1) option year beginning in April 2011 at a total lifecycle cost of $XXXX. Prior to April 2011, this effort was under Next Generation (NexGen) DCA100-02-D-4006 TO 0042, which was awarded in April 2009 with an award amount of $XXXXF, and TO 0040 which was awarded in May 2008 with an award amount of $XXXX. The complete procurement history for the JOPES IT effort dates back to 1990.

(b) It was determined that a sole source award to the current contractor is the most advantageous option for the Government to fulfill the JOPES requirement considering cost and schedule based on historical information and the results of the market research performed in April 2013. Market research revealed that no small businesses would be able to fulfill the full scope of the JOPES requirement. The JOPES effort

Page 6 of 6 Pages has been regularly recompeted at the conclusion of each task order and each time Pragmatics has shown to be the best qualified to complete the effort. The system is set to retire in FY17 and the increased risk and cost of the transition to a new contractor is not in the best interest of the Government.

(c) In Accordance With (IAW) FAR 16.505(b)(2)(ii)(D) the Justification and Approval (J&A) will be made publicly available at the Government Point of Entry (GPE) http://www.fedbizopps.gov within 14 days after contract award. The justification will remain posted for a minimum of 30 days.

9. REFERENCE TO THE APPROVED ACQUISITION PLAN (AP): A written Streamlined Acquisition Plan (AP) has approved and signed. The final AP is filed in the official contract file.