Questions_and_Answers.pdf

Sources Sought Notice Number 910031-18-FSASSN Questions and Answers

No. SSN page

SSN

Section Question Answer

What is the current number of contractor IT support personnel supporting the environment?

FSA will not answer this question as the answer would reveal business proprietary information of the current contractors.

How are those contractor resources distributed?

FSA will not answer this question as the answer would reveal business proprietary information of the current contractors. However, there are many more servers and products in ITA than in ESB or EBC; this information may be helpful in estimating resource distribution.

How many users are in the environment?

EITA

User numbers depend on the environment in question, such as Development, Testing, and Production Environments. The data center owns the production environments and therefore there are no users in this environment (development and test environments are used by other contractors but are owned by the EITA contractor).

EBC

User numbers depend on the environment in question, such as Development, Testing, and Production Environments. There are approximately 8,000 end users in the EBC Production environment.

How many physical locations/sites supported?

Currently both the Virtual Data Center (VDC) and the Next-Generation Data Center (NGDC) are supported, but in the future only the NGDC will be supported. The NGDC is located in Virginia and will require remote support.

Additionally, the EITA requirement will likely require support for applications deployed in the cloud, such as AWS.

EBC supports Virtual Desktop Environment (VDE) and NGDC. The EBC requirement has 6,000 site collections/sites.

Has consideration ever been given in the past to supporting these

EBC is currently supported under its own contract. ESB and ITA are currently supported under the EITA contract (along with AIMS). In a past contract, EITA taskings (EBC and EITA) under separate contracts? If yes, what prevented the separation of tasks?

supported ITA, ESB, AIMS and EBC, but the planned EITA requirement is only for ESB and ITA. FSA will review and determine whether it is appropriate to combine the EITA and EBC requirements under one single contract.

What is the common thread or primary reason that led to both the EBC and EITA taskings to be offered as a single contract?

FSA has not consolidated the EBC and EITA requirements or determined the appropriate contract vehicle for each of these requirements. Responses to the Sources Sought will be considered when FSA conducts its consolidation and acquisition strategy reviews.

Has the current PM support structure ever been changed? If yes, why was the change made?

Without having the PM acronym defined by the questioner, FSA is unable to answer the question in full. However, there are multiple FSA investments funding EITA, EBC, and, separately, security activities (including AIMS). FSA will consider recommendations; however, only recommendations in Sources Sought submissions will be considered.

Associated Recommendation:

Considering additions to the PM support structure to include\add the equivalent of a Quality Control Manager to provide\ensure continuity of service across the separate\different tasking of EBC and EITA ?

Clarification Request: Does the scope of this request include any level of support for the NGDC, along with support of the EBC and EITA tasking? It is stated that both EBC and EITA are

Yes, the EITA and EBC vendor(s) is expected to work closely with the NGDC vendor, including making configuration recommendations for products and servers, working on Root Cause Analyses for incidents, and completing multiple other tasks as described in Government’s requirement. Also, the NGDC vendor owns the production environments, and therefore the EITA and EBC vendor(s) are responsible for informing the NGDC vendor how to configure the installed products.

implemented on the NGDC Infrastructure, which is managed by NGDC Staff with consultation from EBC and EITA Staff. Would this consultation include any technical tasking in this effort specific to the NGDC?

The following technical questions pertain to the details about the hardware in the Next Generation Data Center and the work environment:

EITA

A & B: EITA: For FAFSA, physical servers are used. For other ITA-hosted apps, virtual servers are used. There are approximately 90 servers supporting ITA-hosted applications, mostly LINUX, and very few Windows. (different info for

EBC)

C, D, E, F: Desktop workstations, laptops, mobile devices, and printers are supported under different contracts.

G, H, I, J: Network Hardware includes CISCO, Load Balancers F5. Regarding firewalls, FSA uses firewalls (with details considered sensitive) and uses DMV and secure zone. Regarding SAN, FSA currently uses LUN storage.

K-P: These sub-questions are not applicable to this procurement.

EBC

FSA expects the RFP for the EBC requirement to address these questions.

a. How many physical servers broken down by operating system, such as Windows Server, UNIX, LINUX, and IBM Mainframe?

Are you using blade servers by, IBM, HP, or Dell?

b. How many virtual servers?

c. How many desktop workstations and what kind/vendor?

d. How many laptops and what kind?

e. How many mobile devices and types? iPhone, iPads, Android

f. What types of printers and how many?

g. What type of network hardware is in the data center? Cisco, Juniper, HP, Dell, etc.

h. What type of load balancers do you use? Cisco ACE, F5, or NetScaler ?

i. What type of firewalls and IDS/IPS do you use?

Cisco, Check Point, Palo Alto, For_net, etc.

j. What type of SAN and NAS storage is being used?

k. Where are you in your hardware refresh lifecycle for desktops?

l. Where are you in your hardware refresh lifecycle in the data center network, security, storage?

m. What type of wireless is used in the environment, if any?

n. Is VoIP used in the environment? If so, what vendor/brand?

o. What type of audio visual equipment is used in the conference rooms?

p. Is IPv6 deployed in the LAN environment ?

SBA encourages the use of the mentor/protege program. Will the Department of Education/FSA allow the past performance of a mentor that is not a small business to be used in this RFI when teamed with the small business protege?

Yes, but only if the mentor team member will be used to complete the specific work for which the mentor’s experience aligns with. Based on FSA’s Market Research findings, FSA will consider allowing mentor/protégé teams for future solicitations.

EBC ONLY QUESTIONS BELOW THIS

POINT EBC ONLY QUESTIONS BELOW THIS POINT

11 2 Has there been any change to the key initiatives? No, there have not been changes to key initiatives.

12 2 Did the EBC meet these objectives?

Which objectives were most challenging?

Yes. User adoption has been the most challenging.

13 2 What is the size of the existing EBC team, and does FSA expect the winning team to be of a similar size?

FSA will not answer this question as the answer would reveal business proprietary information of the current contractors.

14 6 2.2

How is InfoPath being used? How widespread is its usage? Are InfoPath forms being migrated to another COTS platform?

InfoPath is being used for small back office automation forms. It is fairly widespread and we currently do not track where it is being used. At present there is no plan to migrate InfoPath forms to a 3rd party product.

15 2.2

What is the size of the SharePoint 2013 farm. When was it last updated? What were the notable challenges with previous upgrades?

About 4 terabytes is the size of the SharePoint farm. FSA cannot answer the question asking when “it was last updated” as FSA requires clarification on the how updated is defined in this question’s context. FSA did not experience notable challenges with previous upgrade to SharePoint 2013.

16 2.2 What is the average concurrent user FSA does not have this information readily available to provide.

usage on a day to day basis each for EEBC and PEBC? Combined? For SharePoint? K2? Serena?

17 2.2

Are any of the 17 technologies being sunsetted? And if so, what is the migration plan and target platform for migration?

Yes: K2 and FASTSEARCH. Migration and retirement is planned for in the next six months.

18 8 3.1 What type and volume of work do Enhancement Services entail?

It is a consultative task that helps the Government look at ways it can improve the environment and best leverage the technologies that are available. It is expected to be ongoing and not expected to be a high volume task in comparison to incident management and problem resolution.

19 4

Will FSA provide access to all Directives listed in the applicable directives list for those that are not readily available online?

FSA plans to provide access to all directives during the solicitation process.

20 11 5.1 Is the contractor a member of the PMO? If so, is the PMO government-run with contractor assistance?

The Government’s Program Office will not be staffed by personnel resulting from the EBC procurement.

21 7.2

EBC Sr Tech Lead doesn't list SharePoint, K2 or Serena as a knowledge requirement. Since they are key components in the architecture, should the EBC technical lead have some experience with these COTS platforms?

See section 7.2, items 3 and 8 of this list.

22 28 9

For SharePoint, do you have an inventory of all the third-party webparts installed? Please provide a list if possible.

Bamboo Solutions Polling Web Part and List Rollup Web Part.

23 5.1.1 How many times per month will Project Managers present Project Plans and Schedules and briefings?

Please refer to the PWS for requirements. In the absence of requirements, the Contractor may propose an appropriate frequency.

24 5.1.1

Please explain "Develop and provide technical requirements for acquisition" - typically technical requirement efforts are organized by the Project Manager, gathered by the Business Analyst and appropriate technical staff, and driven by stakeholders. Is that the appropriate scenario for the requirement?

The provided scenario is appropriate. However, in the event of a Change Request, the Contractor may be required to propose performance requirements in response to a Statement of Objectives.

25 14 5.1.6 Are all or some of the artifacts listed already created? (SDLC, QAP, QC, etc.)

Yes, artifacts listed are created.

26 5.2.2

Are all products in EBC currently at N-1? Will the contractor be expected to recover from a current deficit?

Most EBC products are at N-1. In areas where EBC is not N-1, it is an exception and may be required for various reasons (development project not ready to upgrade, higher priority project freezing changes). Contractor will work with FSA in making everything N-1 and is not solely responsible for the recovery for items not N-1 upon award.

27 16 5.2.4

Regarding the following excerpt from the EBC PWS, "from the Contractor's failure to adequately coordinate these changes with the NGDC", how is contractor failure assessed and by whom?

Failure is assessed by the COR and determined by failure to complete a task requiring coordination with NGDC and resulting in an extended outage or disruption due to a clear omission by the vendor to perform their contracted task.

28 5.2.4 Can FSA provide any details around the current level of effort required to support root cause analysis?

FSA will not answer this question as the answer would reveal business proprietary information of the current contractors.

29 5.2.5

Is there guidance on how much time Tier 2 technicians spend on an incident for "supports to FSA Application Owners and the NGDC for trouble-shooting, incident resolution, root cause analysis, and remediation support in relation to

FSA will not answer this question as the answer would reveal business proprietary information of the current contractors.

EBC."

30 18 5.2.6 How many change requests per year? How many emergencies requests per year?

Approximately 350 standard change requests and approximately 10 emergency requests.

31 5.2.6 What tools are utilized to support the FDA Enterprise Change Management processes?

Rational for Enterprise Change Control Board SharePoint list for EBC Change Control Board

32 5.2.6

Regarding "Respond to emergency change requests as needed," would this be 24/7 support for emergency issues?

Yes, this would be a 24/7 support item.

33 5.2.8 Is a consistent set of test data provided in each environment below PROD?

Yes.

34 5.3.2 What tools are currently used to log Incidents and Problems? Rational and SharePoint

35 5.3.2

How many tickets are being handled today? What are your current Service Level Agreements? What is the ticket breakdown by product and technology? Internal and external?

Average about 100 per month.

36 20 5.3.3 Please list all documentation that the current EBC contractor will provide for transition?

The Government will provide the appropriate documentation but does not have this information at this time. However, respondents may provide recommendations on additional documentation that needs to be transferred from the incumbent EBC contractor for a smooth transition and to allow a new Contractor to become operational as quickly as possible.