JA24_060_DRRS_PACA FINAL_Redacted.pdf

Controlled By: DISA Controlled By: PSD/PS8511 CUI Category: PROCURE Distribution/Dissemination Control: FEDCON POC: Lara Chiaurro, JWCC Mailbox: disa.scott.ditco.mbx.ditco-jwcc@mail.mil

JUSTIFICATION & APPROVAL FOR FEDERAL ACQUISITION REGULATION

SUBPART 16.5 ACQUISITIONS

EXCEPTION TO FAIR OPPORTUNITY

Multiple Award Contract

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

Purchase Request Number: HQ06424101357 Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability (JWCC) Contract Number: HC105023D0003 Task/Delivery Order Number: To be Determined (TBD) Procurement Title: Defense Readiness Reporting System (DRRS) Estimated Value:

Statutory and Regulatory Authority: 10 United States Code (U.S.C.) 2304c(b) and FAR 16.505(b)(2)(i)(B)

EXCEPTION TO FAIR OPPORTUNITY

Number: JA24-060

Upon the basis of the following justification, I, as the Procuring Activity Competition Advocate (PACA), hereby approve this exception to fair opportunity pursuant to the Statutory Authority of 10 U.S.C. 2304c(b) and Regulatory Authority of FAR 16.505(b)(2)(i)(B).

1. REQUESTING AGENCY AND CONTRACTING OFFICE:

Requesting Agency:

Department Of Defense (DOD)/Office of Secretary of Defense (OSD) P&R Force Readiness DRRS Implementation Office (DIO) 4000 Defense Pentagon, UIC: DDAAJA Washington, DC 20301-4000

Contracting Activity:

Defense Information Systems Agency/Defense Information Technology Contracting Organization/PS8511

2300 East Drive Scott Air Force Base, IL 62225-5406

2. NATURE/DESCRIPTION OF ACTION(S):

This action is to issue a firm-fixed-price task order (TO) against the JWCC Indefinite Delivery/Indefinite Quantity Contract for Defense Readiness Reporting System (DRRS). This TO will be issued directly to MS Corporation. The anticipated period of performance (PoP) is for a 1-year base period, plus three 1-year option periods. The total estimated value is of Operations & Maintenance funds.

JA24-060 Defense Readiness Reporting System

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3. DESCRIPTION OF SUPPLIES/SERVICES:

Move the Defense Readiness Reporting System (DRRS) to a cloud environment. The DRRS Enterprise is both an IL5 environment called Defense Repository for Unclassified Information Data System (DRUIDS), and an IL6 environment designed for readiness reporting and supporting Business Intelligence (BI) applications and analysis, called DRRS-Strategic.

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)(B) - Only one awardee is 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.

(b) Description of the Justification.

DRRS is the DoD’s readiness reporting system of record established in accordance with Section 117 of Title 10, United States Code (U.S.C.), which requires the Secretary of Defense to establish and maintain a uniform reporting system that measures “in an objective, accurate, and timely manner” the military’s ability to execute the National Security Strategy (NSS), the Defense Planning Guidance, and the National Military Strategy (NMS). The system is required to measure unit readiness, training establishment capability, and defense infrastructure capability, as well as any “critical warfighting deficiencies.”

DRRS directly supports the Global Force Management (GFM) process and Joint Strategic Capabilities Plan (JSCP) assessments. It is designated a National Security System (NSS) by the Office of Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness (OUSD(P&R)). Upon inception in 2003, DRRS was designated a Mission Assurance Category I (MAC I) system. It is assessed as a: Confidentiality, High; Integrity, High;

Availability, High information technology system in accordance with the Risk Management Framework (RMF) Security Categorization.

DRRS is linked to over three dozen other information technology systems across the DoD, many of which are also mission critical (e.g. JOPES, JCRM, Orion, GFM tool suite, the Service Readiness systems, Advana, and all the authoritative data sources that form the input to the DRRS readiness assessment process). The process of migrating DRRS from the existing DISA on-premise datacenter environment will require reconnecting to each of those systems to the new Cloud Service Provider (CSP). All will require testing and certification before DRRS can complete the migration to full operations in the CSP’s cloud hosted data center.

DRRS is built on a Microsoft (MS) development environment and on a MS technological stack since 2004. The application environment is extensive and complex to include broad use of multiple MS Structured Query Language (SQL) Server Databases, the .NET Framework and C#, MS Windows Server, and the MS Visual Studio Integrated

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Development Environment (IDE). This drives the Government’s current need for compatibility and the ability of the CSP to seamlessly integrate with the Government existing software and infrastructure. Reengineering the existing system to a platform agnostic environment would not meet the Government’s current need of seamless integration with the Government’s existing environments.

The DRRS transition Plan of Actions and Milestones (POA&M) requires immediate transition to an IL6 accredited environment in the remainder of FY24 due to the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) Personnel and Readiness’ pending award of a new support contract called the Personnel and Readiness Infrastructure Support Management (PRISM) contract. The PRISM contract will potentially award a new prime contractor for the DRRS program at the start of FY25, to include all software engineering, management, and support of the DRRS enterprise. The transition to a new prime contractor in the middle of the migration of the DRRS enterprise from the on-premise datacenter to a cloud service provider would add unacceptable risk to the migration to the CSP. It would further risk the interruption of the flow critical readiness data provided by the DRRS program to the GFM planning community and the senior leadership of the DoD for decision making in areas of concern for the NMS. The DRRS program office requires completion of design and buildout of the DRRS environment in the cloud prior to the potential transition to a new prime contractor for the DRRS enterprise in FY25. At this time, only MS and Amazon Web Services are certified in the IL6 environment.

(c) Justification.

(1) Minimum Government requirements.

The minimum requirement is the completion of the design and buildout of the DRRS environment in the cloud, no later than the conclusion of FY24.

The DRRS is a critically important NMS and the Global Force Management (GFM) processes. The real-time readiness information on military units across the DoD and all the services is generated in DRRS and is vital to the GFM, Joint Planning & Execution Community (JPEC), and the Joint Strategic Capabilities Plan (JSCP) assessment processes. As such, the Government cannot accept risk in the design and development of a new hosting and deployment environment for DRRS. The current architecture must be readily migrated and hosted in the CSP without redesign, recoding, or refactoring the DRRS application environment.

The cloud service offerings must enable continued operation of an integrated architecture composed of 20 ASP.NET web applications, 2 Joint Service Provider applications, 11 distinct WCF and ASMX web services, 9 ASP.NET Web API framework REST interfaces, 9 Windows Service applications, and 30 SQL Server databases. These components operate cohesively within a unified container framework based on the use of Windows Server and the use of Microsoft IIS as the web hosting environment.

(2) Proposed sole source contractor. Microsoft Corporation

(3) Discussion regarding the cause of the sole source situation.

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DRRS is implemented as a large, complex set of integrated components. The system architecture evolved over a 20-year period and the full capabilities of the current system represent the results of that 20-year cumulative investment. The system is highly adapted to meet specific mission critical requirements and any attempt to engage in a major reengineering of its infrastructure and framework would not only be financially prohibitive but would also entail a significant risk of disrupting the availability of real-time mission-critical information for the DoD and its GFM and NMS planning processes as defined in DoD Directive 7730.65 DoD Readiness Reporting System, and DoD Instruction 7730.66 Guidance for the Defense Readiness Reporting System (DRRS). In accordance with DoDD 7730.65, DRRS will “provide a common understanding of strategic readiness to produce a complete picture of the DoD’s readiness to execute the strategies in the National Defense Strategy (NDS) to support U.S. national security interests and defense objectives [and] provide information to support decision making by using analytics that enable senior leaders to weigh options and make decisions informed by operational and strategic force-management considerations consistent with the NDS.”

The only cloud environment capable of hosting DRRS without engaging in a major reengineering effort is Microsoft Azure. DRRS was initially designed in and has evolved to leverage the MS ecosystem of servers and software frameworks. This leveraging of the cloud service provider’s integrated offering allows a system as complex as DRRS to be built at reduced cost and risk. However, a consequence of this choice is that the DRRS architecture cannot now be converted to another CSP’s technology stack without a very large scale, expensive, and high-risk re-engineering effort. This drives the Government’s current need for compatibility with its existing architecture. The MS Azure cloud offering is closely aligned with MS general technology stack. This close integration allows for the transition of DRRS from the on-premise DoD DISA datacenter to the Azure cloud offering with minimal re-engineering of the DRRS Enterprise’s underlying architecture. No other CSP can offer this seamless integration with the Government’s current architecture. In summary, DRRS is a very complex architecture with two decades of history in the MS IDE on a MS technology stack. Reengineering the system to an agnostic technology platform will not meet the Government’s current need for compatibility.

(4) Demonstration of unique source.

DRRS currently runs on Windows servers, using MS IIS Web hosting, and using SQL Server databases. MS App Services and MS SQL Database provide cloud native implementations of these same environments which provides a high level of confidence that the needs of the DRRS architecture can be met by MS.

MS SQL Server is used extensively in the DRRS data environment. Of particular concern in making the cloud transition is the ensuring the integrity and continuity of operating the DRRS data environment. DRRS uses very complex, highly nuanced data models and associated SQL code in our deployed MS SQL Server database. Making any significant change to our relational database system and models is challenging under any circumstances. Making such a change simultaneously with a cloud migration would be an extremely high-risk undertaking. While it is possible to operate MS SQL Server in a non-

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MS CSP environment, it would also negate many of the related PaaS benefits that will become available to DRRS in the MS Azure environment to include dynamic scalability of the compute resources with elastic pools and shared resources, managed solution of the maintenance, patching, backup and update of the environments, and improved security features supporting the Risk Management Frame (RMF) implementation. In addition, no other CSP can seamlessly integrate with the Government’s existing architecture, which is essential to meeting the Government’s current need. Thus, only Microsoft can meet the Government’s current need.

(5) Procurement discussion.

There is already an existing DRRS enterprise environment built on the MS development environment and technology stack. The MS cloud service offering is the only CSP that is immediately able to shift to supporting the resultant award associated with this contract action. This action will be procured on the JWCC contract.

(6) Impact.

The impact of switching to another CSP at this time is two years of additional development time, diversion of 75% of the DRRS software engineering development staff from new projects, no new software capabilities, or deliveries during the transition window. Further, the project would have a high risk of failure based upon our recent experience with incorporating disparately engineered Service (Navy, Marine Corps, and Army) IT readiness systems into the DRRS IT enterprise."

The DRRS Enterprise transition Plan of Action & Milestones (POA&M) is scheduled for the remainder of FY24. The OSD P&R is transitioning to a new support contract in FY25, PRISM, with the potential for a new prime contractor providing support to the DIO. The DIO will not consider simultaneously transitioning the DRRS IT environment from its existing on-premise data center location in the DISA Hosting and Compute Center (HaCC) to a cloud service provider, while concurrently transitioning to a new prime contractor for DRRS IT enterprise software development and support.

Due to requirement to move the DRRS to the CSP in FY24, there is insufficient time to retrain and obtain certification in another platform/technology. The OSD P&R office is concurrently transitioning the supporting contracts for the DRRS Enterprise prime contractors to a new contract in FY25, PRISM. The program office cannot risk a transition to the cloud during a transition to a new primary contractor for DRRS. The DIO POA&M requires the transition to the cloud to be completed before the start of

FY25.

5. COST/PRICE FAIR AND REASONABLE DETERMINATION:

A determination that the price is fair and reasonable will be based on a comparison of the contractor’s proposal to the independent government cost estimate and the JWCC Catalog pricing, including any discounts, which was previously found to be fair and reasonable and based on the contractor’s commercial pricing.

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6. MARKET RESEARCH: Market research for the basic JWCC Contracts was conducted and resulted in a signed market research report on 9 Nov 2021. After a survey of the market, it was concluded that the JWCC Contract is in the Government’s best interest due to technical feasibility and cost to the Government. In March 2023, ODASD(FR) selected a course of action to modernize readiness reporting that included migrating the Defense Readiness Reporting System (DRRS) to the cloud.

The ODASD(FR) led a research study on CSPs in May 2023. In exploring CSP options, the current DRRS environment and future cloud migration decision space was considered that included review of: Cloud Service Provider Catalogs, Cloud Service Models, Contract Agreements, Cost Considerations.

Separately from the research above, the DIO conducted a limited proof-of-concept analysis of migrating an unclassified sub-system of DRRS in September of 2023 and included a limited prototype of the IL5 environment. This prototype illustrated that migrating DRRS to the AWS environment would require a major reengineering effort and thus did not meet the Government’s current need for compatibility. In addition, market research revealed that no other CSP, other than Microsoft, could meet the Government’s need.

7. ANY OTHER SUPPORTING FACTS: Not Applicable

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

THAT LED TO THE EXCEPTION TO FAIR OPPORTUNITY:

(a) Procurement History: Not Applicable

(b) The DRRS environment will continue to rely heavily on the MS Integrated Development

Environment (IDE) and a MS focused deployment environment after the transition to a cloud service provider. The design of the DRRS architecture is not expected to fundamentally change due the transition from an on-premise datacenter architecture to a cloud based hosting solution.

(c) In order to overcome future barriers to competition, future development and enhancement of IaaS components will include the goal(s) of shifting components of DRRS to containerized platforms. This may enable multiple CSPs to meet the requirements which will enable the flexibility to shift workload based on financial and mission requirements in the future.