OTD443_-_ACADIS_Justification_and_Approval.pdf

Justification for Other Than Full & Open Competition Requirement 2119209OTD443 – Acadis Readiness Suite

TSA CTC and Department of Defense Military Working Dog (DoD MWD) Program.

Approximately 420 students and canines are trained at the CTC annually.

In order to efficiently fulfill the TSA mission of protecting civil aviation assets and promoting public confidence in the nation’s civil aviation system, TSA personnel and law enforcement partners must be well trained and participate in lifelong learning. The TSA CTC plays a vital role in supporting the training needs of agency and law enforcement partners. As such, automation of records and data at the TSA CTC is not only critical to the ongoing success of agency training, but also allows the TSA CTC to focus more of its resources on instructional excellence rather than training administration.

The Acadis® Readiness Suite has been used within the TSA since the Federal Air Marshal

Service (FAMS) began using it in 2005 for the tracking of all course requirements, student testing, scheduling, FAMs certifications, training requirements, and accreditation requirements at the TSA Training Center in Atlantic City, NJ.

3. Description of Supplies/Services.

The desired Software as a Service (SaaS) is the Acadis® Readiness Suite. TSA CTC will use the Acadis® Readiness Suite to automate, standardize, and manage the following processes:

a. Set up and maintenance of course curriculum templates.

b. Instructor assignments.

c. Instructor certification and qualification tracking.

d. Student registration.

e. Student monitoring and progress reporting.

f. Test item databank archiving and test generation.

g. Test grading and analysis.

h. Student monitoring and progress reporting.

i. Resource (instructor, student, venue, and material) scheduling and usage monitoring.

j. Real time cost control and tracking.

k. Electronic document, form, and letter generation.

l. Standardized and ad-hoc management reports generation.

m. Curriculum and data archiving and retrieval.

n. Litigation support.

o. Federal Law Enforcement Training Accreditation (FLETA) Accreditation support.

p. System usage audit reports.

The CTC has five continuing learning courses supporting the TSA mission and CTC instructor cadre:

(1) Canine Management Course (CMC),

(2) Legacy Supervisor Course (LSC),

(3) Federal Security Directors (FSD) Summit,

(4) Regional Canine Training Instructor’s (RCTI) In-Service Training, and

(5) Instructor Development Course (IDC).

The CTC also conducts canine-only courses for pre-training, acclimation, imprinting, assessments, and evaluation of canines prior to being paired with student handlers. The Canine Attrition Replacement (CAR) course is taught only to canines requiring training and validation to be used as field replacements, such as for retiring canines.

The canine handler courses (HC) train approximately 180 students per year, accounting for roughly 10,800 hours of tracking and scheduling. The continuing learning courses account for 228 students per year, accounting for 1,140 hours of tracking and scheduling. The CAR course accounts for 119 canines produced and 11,900 hours of tracking and scheduling.

The CTC training venues include:

(1) 20 training laboratories;

(2) 5 classrooms (3 non-computerized and 2 computerized);

(3) 1 multifunctional classroom;

(4) 1 obstacle course;

(5) 1 outdoor learning facility; and

(6) four non-TSA-owned facilities throughout the San Antonio area.

The 116 training instructors and 30 administrative staff and supervisors require scheduling for internal recurrent training, and on- and off-site training.

All aspects of canine procurement, through validation, must be tracked by performance checks and tests. Disposition of the canines that do not complete the training is also required.

All classes, including canine-only classes, require the tracking of:

(1) course documents;

(2) student and personnel training;

(3) scheduling of students, instructors, canines, classrooms, and laboratories;

(4) written and performance test accountability;

(5) level 1, 2, and 3 survey data collection;

(6) completion data for students and canines;

(7) procurement data for canines; and

(8) evaluation of canines, students, and canine teams at CTC and Participant locations throughout the United States and territories.

The above description depicts the scope of the tasks associated with the training mission.

Tracking of such a large number of documents and data for so many students, for a variety of courses across a wide geographic area, is incredibly time consuming and inefficient when handled manually by various systems. Therefore, CTC requires a software system that can streamline and automate such tasks. As discussed below, the Acadis® Readiness Suite is the only currently available viable product that connects with the existing software in use by FAMS. The information is currently captured in spreadsheets. The information is then manually entered in the FAMs module of the software with its duplicate data capture and entry. The purchase of the Acadis® Readiness Suite software for use by CTC personnel will eliminate dual data entry by CTC staff.

4. Identification of Statutory Authority Permitting Other Than Full and Open Competition.

The statutory authority permitting other than full and open competition is 41 U.S.C. § 1901 “Simplified acquisition procedures,” implemented by FAR Subpart 13.5.

5. Demonstration that the Nature of the Acquisition Require Use of the Authority Cited.

The Acadis® Readiness Suite is considered highly specialized software, and possesses characteristics that make it uniquely capable of meeting TSA’s requirements. The U.S. Border Patrol Academy, the Immigration Officer Academy and U.S. Customs Academy initiated the development and implementation of an enterprise-class training management system to replace an antiquated dBase 3 application that could no longer adequately support the academies.

Envisage Technologies re-wrote the existing Academy Class Management System (ACMS) into a new internet-based training management system, named the Acadis® Readiness Suite, designed specifically to automate federal law enforcement training.

By utilizing the same Training Management System (TMS), Training and Development (T&D) and Standards and Integration (SI) have the ability to generate ad-hoc reports and track standards between the various TSA Training Centers.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) mandated the consolidation of disparate law enforcement training systems in 2007. Prior to 2007 the TSA/FAMS training system was manual and labor intensive. Currently, TSA/FAMS training organizations have been utilizing the commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) blended training management system, Acadis® Readiness Suite at TSA Training Center (TSATC) in Atlantic City, NJ and TSA Academy at Federal Law Enforcement Training Center (FLETC) in Glynco, GA and Charleston, SC. The Acadis® Readiness Suite is enterprise software designed specifically for federal and state law enforcement training organizations within various agencies such as DHS, Department of Justice (DOJ), DoD, and Public Safety organizations.

The Acadis® Readiness Suite is also operated in a Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP)-authorized cloud environment. This determination allows TSA to potentially re-use the Acadis authorization package without having to first conduct a full security assessment. Importantly, no other training management system found through market research has been authorized for use on DHS/TSA IT systems, so there would be an extensive amount of time needed to vet and incorporate other systems based on DHS/TSA IT standards and policies and FedRAMP standards. Such a delay would hinder TSA’s ability to streamline the tracking of training and related data, and to redeploy agency personnel to other critical security tasks.

Adding a different Training Management System to the current TSA platform would require additional hardware and software and require additional space on the TSA network. All reports generated under a different Training Management System would require the Training Center Division and Headquarters to duplicate efforts and spend additional resources in compiling reports and data collection required by TSA and DHS. Procurement of another system would not allow for the efficiencies and synergy desired for documentation and reporting requirements.

TSA CTC training operations will continue to be manual and labor intensive if the Acadis® Readiness Suite is not utilized. Use of the Acadis® Readiness Suite at TSA CTC is not only critical to the ongoing success of training, but also allows the TSA CTC to focus more of its resources on instructional excellence rather than training administration.

There are many expected benefits to TSA in centralizing this system, the most critical of which is data integrity. Operating multiple databases can lead to major data integrity issues. A centralized database would mean that each member will have one primary record, with primary contact information. Thus, required changes (e.g. new phone number or email address), would only have to be made in one location.

Having all information centralized will facilitate the development of reports for a the broad range of activities that personnel are engaged in. As demonstrated previously, the Acadis® Readiness Suite is the only enterprise software tool currently authorized for use on DHS/TSA IT systems that can provide such critical centralization.

With multiple databases, records need to be matched and the risk of duplicate records and/or loss of information increases; which in turn burdens staff personnel workload.. Having information pulled across automatically into the training management platform cuts out the chance of human error on TSA’s side.

Using a Acadis® Readiness Suite as a class management tool will help TSA manage and prioritize its work and training, efficiently. By utilizing Acadis® Readiness Suite TSA will have visibility into student registration/assignments and be able to correctly allocate resources is working on the right piece of work.

Another benefit of utilizing Acadis® Readiness Suite is that the learning curve for its users will be greatly reduced; as the software has already been used by TSA. The burden on IT staff is also reduced by cutting the cost of hiring and training IT support and reducing IT operating costs. Using the same suite will save hours of administrative work associated with getting the software up and running.

6. Description of Efforts Made to Ensure that Offers are Solicited from as Many Potential Sources as is Practicable.

Extensive market research has been conducted by TSA over the years. At least 15 companies have been reviewed and considered as potential agency contractors by TSA experts. None of

Patrol, another canine-centric organization, uses the Acadis® Readiness Suite, which provides the canine tracking capabilities not available in other programs. Therefore, synergy and collaboration throughout the various DHS components that use the Acadis® Readiness Suite would be lost if the system was not procured for CTC.

Transference of DHS employee information could only be efficiently accomplished with the Acadis® Readiness Suite. It would provide director-level manpower data, student performance scores, and availability of course requirements that enables Congressional-level briefing development.

The Acadis® Readiness Suite was initially developed for law enforcement agencies, and a large group of CTC students are law enforcement. The Acadis® Readiness Suite allows for the transfer of their student records from CTC to the gaining agency.

The benefits and efficiencies gained by procuring the Acadis Readiness Suite for CTC:

a. Reduces the working area, and the time it takes to schedule students and instructors by 90%.

b. Allows for course scheduling and tracking. Current scheduling is done through numerous Excel and Word documents, and is very time consuming. We cannot be sure all students are receiving the same number of days in various training environments, because it is to labor intensive.

c. Provides tracking of role players, canines, and students. This is currently done through multiple, separate excel sheets that cannot correlated with the current programs. Current methods are inefficient.

d. Maintains the instructor qualifications. Currently this is done through Word and Excel documents, which is inefficient. Because of the manpower hours required to track and verify, it is not updated on a regular basis.

e. Accounts for instructor time teaching in the classroom, which is not being done currently. This is one aspect required for FLETA accreditation. Capturing this information is also important for requesting and justifying and gaining approval for additional instructors.

f. Identifies gaps, shortages, and scheduling conflicts and easily resolving them.

g. Maintains course curriculum for each class for ease of reporting and providing information during investigations or inquiries.

h. Allows for online testing, including randomizing the questions per tests and per student through a question bank database. The online testing tracks high-miss questions, provides averages and accountability of questions as compared to course objectives for further analysis. Enables Standards & Integration and Training & Development staff to extract data immediately.

i. Allows for online surveys, enabling Levels 1, 2, and 3 surveys to be completed and tracked over long periods. Also enables Standards & Integration and Training & Development to extract data anytime it is required.

j. Provides for the tracking of FLETA required responses and supports data collection associated with accreditation.

k. Provides management with one tool instead of multiple tools at multiple locations for collection of canine-based tracking from procurement documents to performance checks and test, to training records and validation. Current methods are inefficient, labor intensive, and de-centralized.

l. Provides immediate verification of the rate of elimination of students and canines throughout the year and easily compares against previous year data. Currently, data comparisons are completed manually and is labor intensive.

10. A Listing of the Sources, if Any That Expressed, in Writing, an Interest in the Acquisition.

(a) Envisage Technologies,

(b) IBM Corporation,

(c) Noverant Inc.,

(d) Salesforce, Inc.

11. A Statement of the Actions, if Any, the Agency May Take to Remove or Overcome Any Barriers to Competition Before Any Subsequent Acquisition for Supplies or Services Required.

(a) Throughout the duration of the contract, the features of the Acadis® Readiness Suite will be assessed to identify any unnecessary features that can be taken out of technical requirements to make the specifications less restrictive.

(b) Market research will also be conducted to identify any new systems being used in the Federal Government that can meet the agency’s requirements.

(c) The requirement will be reviewed prior to exercising option periods, for new information that may impact the options.