Revised - Attachment 4 - Section LM - DateExtension.pdf

Instructions and Evaluation - HHS AI Power User Advanced Models and Features Pilot

Draft Statement of Objectives (SOO)

RFQ Instructions and Evaluation

HHS AI Power User Advanced Models and Features Pilot June 26, 2026

SECTION L – INSTRUCTIONS TO QUOTERS

L.1 Request for Quotes and Commercial Acquisition Basis This Request for Quotes is issued for the acquisition of commercial products and/or commercial services using Federal Acquisition Regulation Part 12 procedures.

This Section L provides instructions to Quoters and supplements any FAR Part 12 provisions incorporated elsewhere in the solicitation, including FAR 52.212-1, Instructions to Quoters—Commercial Products and Commercial Services, as applicable.

Questions may be submitted, no later than Monday June 6th, 5:00pmEST.

The Government intends to evaluate submissions in accordance with Section M. The Government may make award without discussions but reserves the right to conduct discussions, clarifications, or exchanges if determined necessary by the Contracting Officer.

Quoters shall submit Quotes that are clear, complete, internally consistent, and organized in accordance with these instructions. The Government may reject any quote that fails to follow instructions, omits required information, takes exception to a material solicitation requirement, or otherwise prevents the Government from evaluating the quote.

This is a Statement of Objectives-based acquisition. Quoters shall submit a proposed Performance Work Statement describing how the Quoter will achieve the Government requirements in the Statement of Objectives

(SOO).

The proposed PWS will be evaluated under State 3, Factor 1, Execution Approach, and may be incorporated into the resultant contract.

L.2 Quote Organization

Page limits apply to narrative pages. Cover pages, tables of contents, required representations and certifications, pricing schedules, roadmaps, other artifacts and completed Government-provided templates do not count toward page limits unless otherwise stated.

Quoters shall submit the following volumes:

Volume Title Page Limit

Volume I Responsiveness/Completeness and TAA/BAA Compliance Information 2 pages Volume II Pilot Success Viability

• Deployment Options (no pg limit)

• Commercial Parity Roadmap (no pg limit)

• Provider Reach-back and Authoritative Access (2 pg limit)

2 pages

Volume Title Page Limit

Volume III Execution Approach

• Performance Work Statement

• Quality Management Plan/Service Level Agreements

• Security and Authorization Plan with ATO Artifacts

5 pages

Volume IV Enterprise Risk, Dependency Transparency, and Government Protections

• Strategic Alliance and Dependency Disclosure

• Government Rights and Data Protection

• Exceptions and Assumptions

No page limit

Volume V Price No page limit

L.3 Volume I – Responsiveness and Compliance Volume I shall include information necessary to determine administrative compliance.

At minimum, Volume I shall include:

• Quoter legal name.

• Unique Entity Identifier.

• CAGE Code.

• Business size.

• Primary and alternate points of contact.

• Country of origin information

• Required representations and certifications.

• Confirmation that all required volumes have been submitted in accordance with the solicitation instructions.

• Proposed Individual LLM or Model Family.

• Trade Agreements Act / Buy American Act information

L.4 Volume II – Provider Reach-back and Authoritative Access Volume II shall describe how the Quoter will provide HHS timely, direct, and authoritative access to personnel responsible for the proposed capability. Quoters shall identify:

• The Quoter’s relationship to the model developer, platform operator, cloud provider, reseller, marketplace provider, or other intermediary.

• Organizational distance between HHS and the personnel responsible for product, roadmap, engineering, security, authorization, release, and commercial parity decisions.

• Escalation paths for routine, urgent, and critical issues.

• Approval layers, reseller relationships, marketplace dependencies, strategic alliances, or other commercial dependencies that may affect HHS’s ability to obtain authoritative information.

• How the reach-back model will be maintained throughout the period of performance.

Deployment Options (no page limit) The Government requires each Quoter to identify all deployment options through which the proposed capability can be made available to HHS.

For each option, the Quoter shall identify models, features, and access surfaces ( including web, desktop, native apps, CLI, API, administrative controls, and authentication) are available and which are not. The Quoter shall identify and explain what is different, reduced, or absent relative to the Quoter’s own commercial first-party offering. The Quoter shall provide the dates of their three most recent commercial releases an the date each became available under that specific deployment option.

Commercial Parity Release Plan (no page limit) The Government requires continuous alignment between the Contractor's commercial platform offerings and those made available to the Government. The Contractor shall align with commercial releases, identify parity gaps affecting Government access, and support rapid implementation planning to minimize lag between commercial and Government availability. Parity shall encompass all user experience surfaces including web, desktop applications (coding and collaborative work), CLI, and API access delivered through a unified authentication experience (e.g. Entra ID OAuth/OIDC). All access modalities shall support short-lived token authentication; long-lived tokens are not permitted. The Contractor shall provide release documentation and identify and escalate blockers to Government availability. The Contractor shall deliver a commercial parity release plan with target resolution dates.

L.5 Volume III –Execution Approach Volume III shall include the Quoter’s proposed Performance Work Statement and execution approach to fulfilling the Government’s Statement of Objectives (SOO).

The proposed PWS shall be written in a manner suitable for incorporation as an attachment into the resultant contract. The proposed PWS shall not merely restate the SOO. It shall describe the Quoter’s actual proposed performance approach, including tasks, deliverables, roles, responsibilities, assumptions, dependencies, schedule, reporting methods, and performance management approach.

The proposed PWS shall include a Quality Management Plan or equivalent (Service Level Agreements) addressing deliverable quality, reporting quality, issue management, escalation procedures, commercial parity monitoring, provider reach-back support, continuous improvement, and performance metrics.

At minimum, proposed performance metrics shall address deliverable timeliness, release notification timeliness, commercial parity reporting timeliness, issue response timeliness, provider SME access timeliness, and reporting accuracy.

Security and Authorization Plan with ATO Artifacts The proposed PWS shall describe how the Quoter will support security review, authorization activities, FedRAMP 20x-aligned evidence, boundary analysis, data-flow analysis, logging, retention, export, HIPAA/BAA analysis where applicable, and ATO or risk acceptance support.

Quoters shall include ATO artifacts (not applicable to the page limit) with their Security and Authorization Plan that the Government is able to use upon potential contract award to expedite security processes.

L.6 Volume IV – Enterprise Risk, Dependency Transparency, and Government Protections Volume IV shall describe material risks, dependencies, and protections related to the proposed response.

At minimum, Volume IV shall address:

A. Strategic Alliance and Dependency Disclosure The Quoter shall identify:

• Model provider.

• Platform operator.

• Cloud provider.

• Strategic alliances.

• Preferred-provider arrangements.

• Exclusivity arrangements.

• Subcontractors or subprocessors material to performance.

B. Government Rights and Data Protection The Quoter shall describe:

• Government data protections.

• Government data ownership.

• Indemnification rights.

• Prompt and output handling.

• Training exclusions.

• Model improvement exclusions.

• Data retention.

• Data deletion.

• Data export.

• Audit log access.

• Records considerations.

• Portability rights.

• Transition rights.

• Subcontractor and subprocessor disclosures.

• PHI, PII, CUI, and sensitive data handling.

• HIPAA / BAA posture, if applicable.

• Alignment with applicable federal AI, cloud, security, privacy, records, accessibility, and acquisition objectives.

C. Exceptions and Assumptions Quoters shall provide an exceptions and assumptions table.

For each exception or assumption, the Quoter shall identify the affected solicitation section, the nature of the exception or assumption, and whether the Quoter can perform if the Government rejects the exception or assumption.

L.7 Volume V – Price Volume V shall include pricing for all proposed CLINs, option periods, and quantity bands. See SOO Section 6, Contract Line Item, for the CLIN structure and pricing table layout.

CLIN-level pricing shall include supporting detail and discounting sufficient for the Government to understand the proposed price, pricing methodology, assumptions, and commercial constraints.

At minimum, Volume V shall include:

• Total price by CLIN.

• Unit prices, where applicable.

• Option period pricing.

• Quantity expansion pricing.

• Proposed CLIN 0002 FFP Enterprise-Wide Access Entitlement price.

• Native consumption unit pricing where applicable for commercial-equivalent reporting or pricing transparency.

• Enterprise discounts, if applicable.

• Pricing assumptions.

• User assumptions.

• Utilization assumptions.

• Adoption assumptions.

• Commercial-equivalent reporting assumptions.

• Usage envelope assumptions.

• Fair-use assumptions.

• Rate limits.

• Throttling conditions.

• Capacity limitations.

• Other commercial constraints applicable to the proposed response.

For CLIN 0002, Quoters shall propose an FFP Enterprise-Wide Access Entitlement. The Government is not ordering CLIN 0002 on a per-seat basis. Quoters may provide effective per-user, per-active-user, or per-native-unit analytics for transparency; however, such analytics shall not become contractual units of acquisition unless expressly accepted by the Government.

The Government will not be responsible for overages, replenishment, exhaustion of provider-native units, additional usage charges, or other additional charges unless expressly authorized by the Contracting Officer through the awarded contract, order, option exercise, or written modification.

Additional Requirement for Quoters With Existing HHS Enterprise Footprint If the Quoter currently provides, supports, operates, or has access to HHS-specific enterprise usage data for the proposed Individual LLM or Model Family, the Quoter shall provide such usage data as part of its price support for CLIN 0002.

The Quoter shall identify:

• Historical usage period.

• HHS tenant, deployment, workspace, contract, OneGov arrangement, pilot, or enterprise arrangement covered.

• Applicable performance period.

• Enabled users.

• Active users.

• Inactive users.

• Federal employee / contractor attribution where available.

• Organizational attribution where available.

• Program attribution where available.

• Native utilization metrics, including credits, tokens, AMUs, messages, requests, searches, tool invocations, agent executions, API calls, capacity units, or equivalent provider-defined metrics.

• Usage by model, feature, tool, API, agent, research, coding, or capability category where available.

• High-usage patterns and material outliers.

• Commercial-equivalent value under the Quoter’s standard commercial pricing.

• Methodology used to convert HHS-specific usage into the proposed CLIN 0002 FFP Enterprise-Wide Access

Entitlement value.

• All discounting, normalization, and adjustment methodologies applied.

If the Quoter’s HHS-specific usage data differs materially from Government-furnished usage data, the Quoter shall explain the difference, including any differences in reporting period, identity reconciliation, included usage surfaces, native meters, excluded usage, or attribution methodology.

If the Quoter does not possess HHS-specific enterprise usage data for the proposed Individual LLM or Model Family, the Quoter shall affirmatively state that fact and explain how it used Government-furnished usage data, analogous enterprise data, commercial benchmarks, adoption assumptions, and discounting assumptions to support its proposed CLIN 0002 FFP Enterprise-Wide Access Entitlement price.

Historical Usage Data, Pricing Adjustments, and Discounting The Government recognizes that historical AI usage data may not represent normalized, centrally governed, steady-state enterprise demand.

Historical usage may reflect decentralized access patterns, immature enterprise governance, limited capability-level attribution, incomplete use-case taxonomy, evolving identity reconciliation, contractor-supported activity, exploratory usage, release-driven volatility, training or onboarding effects, high-intensity outlier activity, non-recurring workflows, experimentation, proof-of-concept activity, or other factors that may materially overstate future normalized enterprise demand under a centrally governed enterprise entitlement.

Accordingly, the Government does not consider unadjusted extrapolation of historical list-rate usage, historical peak usage, or historical unconstrained consumption to be, by itself, an adequate basis for the proposed CLIN 0002 FFP Enterprise-Wide Access Entitlement price.

Quoters shall explain how historical usage data was analyzed, normalized, adjusted, discounted, or otherwise considered in developing the proposed FFP entitlement price.

For CLIN 0002, Quoters shall identify:

• Gross commercial-equivalent value of historical usage under standard commercial pricing.

• Historical usage period and data sources.

• Native units used to calculate the gross value.

• Adjustments for non-recurring, anomalous, exploratory, experimental, or outlier usage.

• Adjustments for immature telemetry, incomplete use-case attribution, or decentralized governance.

• Adjustments for Federal employee, contractor, unmatched identity, organizational, or program attribution where available.

• Adjustments for expected normalized enterprise demand.

• Adjustments for anticipated governance, allocation, reporting, and usage-management maturity.

• Proposed enterprise-wide FFP entitlement value.

• Difference between gross commercial-equivalent value and proposed FFP value.

• All discounts applied.

Quoters shall explicitly identify all discount categories applied to the proposed FFP entitlement price, including, as applicable:

• Enterprise discount.

• Public-sector discount.

• HHS-specific discount.

• Volume discount.

• Term discount.

• Pilot or baselining discount.

• Strategic adoption discount.

• Continuity discount.

• Enterprise-Wide Access Entitlement discount.

• Usage uncertainty / telemetry maturity discount.

• Historical usage normalization discount.

• Transition or future-enterprise-acquisition discount.

• Any other commercial, strategic, or pricing concession.

For each discount, the Quoter shall identify the discount basis, discount percentage, dollar value, period of applicability, applicable CLIN or option period, and any conditions or assumptions associated with the discount.

SECTION M – EVALUATION FACTORS FOR AWARD

M.1 Evaluation Overview This solicitation is issued using FAR Part 12 procedures for commercial products and/or commercial services.

The Government will evaluate quotes in stages.

Only quotes determined administratively compliant will proceed for initial further evaluation.

The Government may discontinue evaluation at any stage when a quote is no longer eligible for award (rated as unacceptable for any evaluation element/criterion) or when further evaluation would not affect the award decision.

The Government evaluation panel will conduct consensus evaluation throughout the evaluation process.

The Government will not conduct individual evaluation panel member evaluations and will not use numerical scoring, evaluator averaging, or mathematical rating formulas.

For award purposes, the Government may establish separate award groupings by Individual LLM, Model Family, platform, or AI service grouping. Grouping is an administrative award methodology and is not a separate evaluation factor.

M.2 Stage 1 – RESPONSIVENESS/COMPLETENESS AND TAA/BAA COMPLIANCE REVIEW

The Government will evaluate quotes for RESPONSIVENESS and COMPLIANCE to the solicitation on a Pass/Fail basis.

Compliance Element 1 – Proposal Responsiveness/Completeness Rating: Pass/Fail

The Government will evaluate whether the Quoter submitted all required volumes and followed solicitation instructions.

The Government will also evaluate whether the Quoter submitted required existing-footprint information, including either:

• HHS-specific enterprise usage data for the proposed Individual LLM or Model Family, if the Quoter currently provides, supports, operates, or has access to such data; or

• An affirmative statement that the Quoter does not possess HHS-specific enterprise usage data for the proposed Individual LLM or Model Family.

A quote may receive a Fail if required volumes, required pricing support, required existing-footprint information, or required usage-data information is missing, materially incomplete, inaccessible, unreadable, or organized in a manner that prevents evaluation.

Compliance Element 2 – TAA / BAA Compliance Rating: Pass/Fail

The Government will evaluate whether the Quoter submitted required Trade Agreements Act / Buy American Act information and certifications, as applicable.

M.3 Stage 2 – PILOT SUCCESS VIABILITY

RATING

ACCEPTABLE: The quote demonstrates a substantiated model that is sufficient to support successful pilot execution key to achievement of the SOO objectives.

UNACCEPTABLE: The quote does not demonstrate substantiated model sufficient to support successful pilot execution or presents material risk that HHS will be unable to obtain timely and authoritative access needed to achieve the SOO objectives. Quotes receiving unacceptable under the critical success factor will not be further evaluated.

The Government has determined that provider reach-back and authoritative access are fundamental to successful pilot execution.

The purpose of the pilot is not merely to obtain access to AI capabilities. The purpose is to generate operational evidence, commercial parity analysis, release-alignment strategies, enterprise feasibility determinations, authorization pathways, governance recommendations, attribution methodologies, and future acquisition recommendations.

Those objectives require timely and authoritative access to personnel responsible for:

• Product strategy.

• Product roadmap.

• Engineering.

• Security.

• Authorization.

• Operations.

• Release management.

• Commercial parity decisions.

• Enterprise implementation support.

The Government will evaluate whether the Quoter demonstrates an acceptable approach for providing HHS timely, direct, and authoritative access to those personnel throughout the period of performance.

The Government will evaluate whether the Quoter’s approach identifies:

• Responsible provider personnel or roles.

• Escalation paths.

• Expected response timelines.

• Organizational distance from decision makers.

• Access limitations.

• Approval layers or intermediary dependencies.

• Ability to support commercial parity, release alignment, authorization, enterprise feasibility, and future acquisition planning.

The Government will evaluate the Quoter’s DEPLOYMENT OPTIONS and COMMERCIAL PARITY ROADMAP for the substantiation of the Quoter’s approach.

M.4 Stage 3 – NON-PRICE EVALUATION FACTORS

RATING

HIGH MERIT: The quote demonstrates exceeding the required element(s).

MEETS / ACCEPTABLE MERIT: The quote demonstrates meeting the required element(s).

DOES NOT MEET / UNACCEPTABLE: The quote does not demonstrate meeting the required element(s).

Quotes determined to be Acceptable for Pilot Success Viability will be further evaluated by the Government using the following non-price factors.

Factor 1 – Execution Approach The Government will evaluate the Quoter’s proposed Performance Work Statement and the extent to which the proposed PWS demonstrates a clear, feasible, measurable, and effective approach for accomplishing the SOO objectives.

The proposed PWS will be evaluated as the Quoter’s proposed execution approach and may be incorporated into the resultant contract.

The Government will evaluate whether the proposed PWS provides a practical and executable approach for:

• CLIN execution, including CLIN 0001 frontier capability baselining; CLIN 0002 FFP Enterprise-Wide Access

Entitlement, CLIN 0003 adoption baselining if proposed; and CLIN 0004 frontier entitlement quantity expansion..

• Pilot execution, including onboarding, enablement, stakeholder engagement, pilot management, issue management, and schedule management.

• Commercial parity and release alignment, including release monitoring, parity gap identification, feature availability tracking, and rapid implementation planning.

• Enterprise baselining and reporting, including usage reporting, adoption reporting, consumption reporting, commercial-equivalent reporting, capability-level attribution, and ACU normalization support.

• Security and authorization support, including security boundary analysis, FedRAMP 20x-aligned support, ATO or risk acceptance support, data handling, logging, and retention support.

• Quality management, including deliverable quality, reporting quality, issue response, escalation management, and continuous improvement.

• Enterprise feasibility and future acquisition support, including recommendations related to scalability, governance, pricing, BPA/ELA planning, portability, transition, and competition preservation.

The Government may assess higher merit where the proposed PWS is specific, measurable, realistic, aligned to the SOO, and suitable for incorporation into the resultant contract.

The Government may assess lower merit where the proposed PWS is vague, generic, primarily restates the SOO, lacks measurable performance methods, lacks clear deliverables, or fails to address material CLIN requirements.

Factor 2 – Enterprise Risk, Dependency Transparency, and Government Protections The Government will evaluate the extent to which the quote identifies and manages enterprise risks that could affect successful performance, commercial parity, portability, competition, Government data protections, or future enterprise flexibility.

The Government will evaluate:

• Model provider, platform operator, cloud provider, reseller, marketplace, subcontractor, or intermediary dependencies.

• Strategic alliances, exclusivity arrangements, preferred-provider arrangements, and revenue-sharing arrangements.

• Risks to commercial parity, release cadence, roadmap visibility, provider reach-back, portability, transition readiness, and future competition.

• Government data ownership, prompt and output protections, training exclusions, model improvement exclusions, data retention, data deletion, export rights, portability rights, transition rights, records considerations, audit/log access, and sensitive data handling.

• Subprocessor transparency and HIPAA / BAA posture, if applicable.

• Alignment with applicable federal AI, cloud, security, privacy, records, accessibility, and acquisition objectives.

The Government may assess higher merit where the quote provides transparent disclosures, preserves Government data protections, supports portability and transition, minimizes lock-in, and avoids commercial arrangements that impair commercial parity or future competition.

The Government may assess lower merit/unacceptability where the quote includes unclear dependencies, exclusivity arrangements, limited export rights, weak data protections, unclear training exclusions, limited portability, or commercial relationships that could impede HHS enterprise flexibility.

Factor 3 – Exceptions and Assumptions The Government will evaluate whether the Quoter identifies all material exceptions and assumptions, provides viable fallback if they are rejected, and whether core performance requirements remain achievable if assumptions do not hold.

M.5 PRICE EVALUATION

Price will not be numerically scored.

The Government will evaluate reasonableness in price, including:

• Internal consistency.

• Understanding of requirements.

• CLIN pricing.

• Option pricing.

• Quantity expansion pricing.

• Proposed CLIN 0002 FFP Enterprise-Wide Access Entitlement price.

• Historical usage data treatment.

• HHS-specific usage data submitted by Quoters with an existing HHS enterprise footprint.

• Methodology used to convert usage data into the proposed FFP entitlement value.

• Gross commercial-equivalent value.

• Historical usage normalization and adjustment methodology.

• Discounting methodology.

• Explicit discount categories, percentages, dollar values, and applicability.

• Utilization assumptions.

• User assumptions.

• Adoption assumptions.

• Commercial-equivalent reporting assumptions.

• Usage envelope assumptions.

• Fair-use controls.

• Rate limits.

• Throttling conditions.

• Capacity limitations.

• Other commercial constraints.

• Whether the proposed price creates risk of hidden caps, degraded service, throttling, reduced functionality, or future funding exposure.

The Government may consider market research, competitive pricing, vendor-published pricing, historical pricing, Government-furnished usage data, Quoter-provided HHS usage data, the Independent Government Cost Estimate, and any other information available to the Government.

The Government may assess risk where pricing is materially inconsistent with the proposed PWS, relies on unsupported assumptions, fails to identify material usage constraints, fails to explain discounting, fails to explain treatment of historical usage data, or appears to price historical usage as unadjusted list-rate consumption without reasonable normalization, discounting, or enterprise entitlement treatment.

The Government may assess favorable price understanding where the Quoter provides a clear, well-supported FFP methodology that accounts for historical usage limitations, telemetry maturity, centralized governance maturity, commercial-equivalent value, discounting, and the no-additional-charge nature of the proposed entitlement.

M.6 Relative Importance The Pilot Success Viability Factor is fundamental to successful performance. A compliant submission must receive Acceptable under the Pilot Success Viability Factor to proceed.

Stage 3 Factor 1, Execution Approach, and Factor 2, Enterprise Risk, Dependency Transparency, and Government Protections, and Factor 3, Exceptions and Assumptions are of equal importance.

When combined, the non-price factors are significantly more important than price.

M.7 METHOD FOR AWARD

Best value will be determined through responsive/compliant response with demonstrated Pilot Success Viability, highest merit in State 3 Non-Price Factors and reasonable price. The Government intends to make a single award within each Individual LLM or Model Family grouping. For award purposes, the Government may establish separate groupings by Individual LLM, Model Family, platform, or AI service grouping.

Examples may include:

• OpenAI or equal.

• Anthropic or equal.

• Google or equal.

• Other model families identified by the Government.

The Government may make award to the responsible Quoter whose quote represents the best value to the Government within the applicable grouping.

The Government may make award without discussions.

The Government may discontinue evaluation within a grouping after identifying the quote representing the best value to the Government.

The Government is not obligated to evaluate every quote under every factor once an quote is no longer eligible for award or once further evaluation would not affect the award decision.

Grouping is an administrative award methodology. It does not create a preference, entitlement, or presumption of award.

The Government reserves the right to make no award in any grouping if no quote represents a reasonable or advantageous award to the Government.