RFQ_75D30119Q70308_LSJ.pdf

JUSTIFICATION FOR SOLE SOURCE PROCUREMENT (OPEN

MARKET OR GSA) UNDER $150,000

A. Program Office:

Center for State, Tribal, Local, and Territorial Support (CSTLTS) Century Center

1825, MS V18-4

Atlanta, GA 30345

B. Contracting Activity:

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Office of Financial Resources Office of Acquisition Services 1600 Clifton Road, MS D-03 Atlanta, GA 30329-4018

C. Identification of Requirement:

1. Nature of Action to be Approved by Contracting Officer:

a. Sole source acquisition of: Procurement of annual subscription to Thompson Reuters legal review service, Westlaw Edge.

b. Procurement Request (PR) Number (if available): 00HCBD12-2019-34435

2. Proposed Vendor and Estimated Procurement Amount (if available):

a. Proposed Vendor: Thompson Reuters

b. Estimated Procurement Amount:

3. Is the requirement on GSA Schedule? ☒ Yes ☐ No

If yes, provide schedule number: GS-02F-026DA

Rev. 5/15/17

D. Justification:

1. The justification for this non-competitive action is:

☐ In accordance with FAR 13.106-1(b)(1), “only one source [is] reasonably available” which states that, “For purchases not exceeding the simplified acquisition threshold. (i) Contracting officers may solicit from one source if the contracting officer determines that the circumstances of the contract action deem only one source reasonably available (e.g., urgency, exclusive licensing agreements, brand-name or industrial mobilization). (ii) Where a single source is identified to provide a portion of a purchase because that portion of the purchase specifies a particular brand-name item, the documentation in paragraph (b)(1)(i) of this section only applies to the portion of the purchase requiring brand-name item. The documentation should state it is covering only the portion of the acquisition which is brand- name.”

☐ Urgency ☐ Exclusive licensing agreements/Proprietary data ☐ Brand name required ☐ Industrial mobilization ☐ Other (e.g., compatibility, space issues, continuity, compatibility, etc.)

☒ In accordance with FAR 8.405-6 “Limiting Sources” which states that, “the only circumstances that may justify the action are – (A) An urgent and compelling need exists, and following the procedures would result in unacceptable delays; (B) Only one source is capable of providing the supplies or services required at the level of quality required because the supplies or services are unique or highly specialized; or (C) In the interest of economy and efficiency, the new work is a logical follow-up to an original Federal Supply Schedule order provided that the original order was placed in accordance with the applicable Federal Supply Schedule ordering procedures. The original BPA must not have been previously issued under sole-source or limited-sources procedures.”

☐ Urgency ☐ Only One Source ☐ Logical Follow Up ☒ Brand name required

2. Other facts supporting sole source procurement:

a. What can this product/service do that other products/services cannot do?

Thompson Reuter’s product Westlaw Edge provides the only legal research subscription service with a feature for comparing statutes and regulations as they change over time, with track changes clearly elucidated for the legal researcher to see. Additionally, Thompson Reuters Westlaw products have a vastly greater repository of tribal and territorial laws and regulations as compared to competitors in the current market.

b. What other products/services were considered and why did they not meet the need?

CDC’s Office for Public Health Law Services (OPHLS) provides research, policy surveillance, technical assistance and legal information to state, tribal, local, and territorial jurisdictions, CDC Centers, Institutes and Offices (CIOs) and other agencies and offices of the federal government. OPHLS’s research portfolio includes topics across all areas of public health law and populations. As such, OPHLS needs access to a large repository of legal documents, including, but not limited to Tribal Law, state and federal emergency declarations (i.e. executive orders), state statutes and regulations, and law review articles on public health law topics. These ongoing research endeavors, require the following specific capabilities:

Case law Legal journals

American Jurisprudence (most current edition) Forms State and federal regulatory law State and federal statutory law Side-by-side historical comparison of amendments to statutes and regulations year-to-year (exclusive to Westlaw) Secondary sources/treatises on the body of law for areas that are particularly relevant to OPHLS’s work (largest available repository is with Westlaw) Health Law Native American/Tribal law (largest repository is with Westlaw) Child health/welfare law 50-state surveys Netscan Executive Orders (scannable real time feed feature is exclusive to

Westlaw) State legislative history

Key Feature Justifications Territorial Laws: While most territorial laws, even those promulgated locally rather than at the federal level, are publicly available, without a third-party provider, it is incumbent upon the territorial government to update the code regularly. Depending on bandwidth and available resources or, as in the case in with the Caribbean territories who are often embroiled in repairing hurricane damage or emergency response activities, sometimes the most recent code is not updated or the website is down. Third party subscription services can mitigate this, but not all territories are included equally among the vendors currently operating in the market place.

Native America/Tribal Law: Tribal and territorial law are particularly important to OPHLS’s research needs. The Office for Public Health Law Services is located in the Center for State, Tribal, Local, and Territorial Support. It works in collaboration with the Center’s Office on Tribal Affairs and Strategic Alliances (OTASA). OTASA works closely with American Indian/Alaska Native (AI/AN) communities, providing technical assistance to tribal nations and tribal organizations; coordinating agency-wide data calls; and advising and improving input about CDC’s response to tribal issues, needs, and challenges. Tribal code books are proprietary and belong to the Tribes. They are often not publically available and are not distributed to non-Tribe members, even upon request. This means each Tribe must contract with an external entity to make the Tribal code book available to a third-party, non-Tribal entity. Access to such codes is almost exclusively given through a subscription service, such as those enumerated below.

Real-time Feed for Executive Orders: OPHLS also must keep abreast of the executive orders in order to provide the appropriate technical assistance to key stakeholders. The ability to review new executive orders is a real-time through an order tracking service allows for this. Further, if the changes are available in an updated feed then the need for state specific searches is eliminated and the time spent conducting searches can be better applied to providing technical assistance to affected state, territorial and tribal health departments. As many public health emergency responses involve an executive order, either to imbue the health department with more power than it would have absent an emergency or to invoke federal aid, this access is critical provision of timely and relevant support. Often the orders on a real time tracker are available well before they are on the accessible on a jurisdiction’s website. Although OPHLS attorneys and staff are capable of conducting searches, when it is vital to access the text of an emergency order immediately, the luxury of time to search is not there.

Side-By-Side Comparison of statutes and regulations over time: OPHLS requires the ability to compare statutes and regulations as they are amended over time. Currently, OPHLS staff attorneys spend hundreds of hours searching for and manually cross comparing amended versions of statutes and regulations and each iteration of a law over time. The ability to conduct such legal studies helps to identify and inform legal impacts on public health. It is one of the foundational components of a cutting edge science at CDC known as Legal

Epidemiology. Tracing and evaluating these trends in statutory changes helps to demonstrate the far reaching impacts of legal amendments on the population health. It has the significant capacity to inform law makers and to assist those state governments in legal planning for public health intervention strategies.

OPHLS’s research in the market has revealed only a single vendor that provides this capacity as part of their service. The ability to procure this automated analysis through subscription would save significant labor hours for OPHLS attorneys and substantially increase the capacity of OPHLS to support the demands for technical assistance to state, tribal, local and territorial health departments.

OPHLS determined that there are two other major legal research services for US Domestic Law: (A) Bloomberg BNA and (B) Lexis Nexis. OPHLS has investigated each of these services, based upon the expressed requirements outlined above with the following results.

A. Bloomberg BNA does not offer full statutes and regulations for US territories, nor does it offer tribal statutes, and therefore fails to meet the even the minimum requirements for OPHLS’s legal research service needs. Bloomberg also does not offer side-by-side comparison of laws and statutes as they are amended over time.

B. Lexis Nexis offers only a small repository of tribal codes the limited size of which greatly impacts the ability of OPHLS to support CDC agency level needs in the investigation of Tribal Affairs to support Native American requests for technical assistance. While Lexis Nexis does offer access to a search state specific search feature for executive orders, it does not offer and real-time scannable feed of the new executive orders. This impacts OPHLS substantially as there is not always time for OPHLS to conduct state specific searches when responding to State, Tribal, Local and Territorial Health Department of CDC OD requests for technical assistance during disasters. Additionally, LexisNexis does not offer year-to-year amendment tracking for statutes and regulations.

3. Program Office efforts to seek potential offerors:

OPHLS conducted internet searches and performed additional market research during the week of April 1, 2019.

OPHLS confirmed that Bloomberg (a) focuses primarily on stock and business-related resources, including news, financial holdings, and relevant cases (b) does not offer statutory and regulatory information for the territories, beyond court rules, (c) does not offer codes belonging to tribes (d) does not offer Net Scan (e) does not offer year-to-year amendment tracking for statutes and regulations.

OPHLS confirmed that Lexis Nexis (a) does offer Tribal codes, but further investigation revealed that the repository had 1/3 the amount of Tribal codes as compared to WestLaw (b) does offer statutory and regulatory information for the territories (c) does not offer Netscan Executive Orders (d) does not offer year-to-year amendment tracking for statutes and regulations.

E. Program Office Certification:

I have reviewed this sole source justification and certify the justification is true and accurate to the best of my knowledge and adequate to support other than full and open competition.

Center/Institute/Office COR/Program Official Name/Title:

Jessica L. Damon, MLS, MPH Senior Program Management Officer Management and Operations Unit, Office of the Director Center for State, Tribal, Local and Territorial Support