A043849 Attachment 1 Draft SOO Estate Planning Solution 31 Aug 2024.pdf

DRAFT STATEMENT OF OBJECTIVES (SOO)

Joint Service, Web Based Comprehensive Testamentary Planning and Document

Generation Solution

Air Force Office of the Judge Advocate General

Legal Assistance Policy Division (JACA)

Legal Information Services (JAS)

Army Office of the Judge Advocate General

Legal Assistance Policy Division (LAPD)

Information Technology Division (ITD)

Navy Office of the Judge Advocate General

Code 16 – Legal Assistance

Code 67 – Technology, Operations & Plans

Marine Corps Office of the Staff Judge Advocate to the

Commandant of the Marine Corps

Legal Assistance Branch (JLA)

Information Plans and Programs (JPI)

Coast Guard Office of the Judge Advocate General

Legal Assistance and Member Advocacy Division (LMA-

L)

Estate Planning Document Production COTS Product Requirements Office of the Judge Advocate General

I. STATEMENT OF OBJECTIVES (SOO) - INTRODUCTION

The Statement of Objectives (SOO) provides the basic, top-level objectives of a task order (TO), and is provided in lieu of a Government-written statement of work (SOW) or performance work statement

(PWS). It provides the contractor the flexibility to develop cost-effective solutions and the opportunity to propose innovative alternatives for meeting the objectives. The contractor must develop and submit a Performance Work Statement to meet these objectives.

Contract Number: (completed by the KO at time of TO award)

Task Order Number: TBD

Contractor Name: TBD

Tracking Number:

(completed by the KO when complete package is received)

Follow-on to Previous Contract and Task Order Number:

Not Applicable

II. BACKGROUND

The U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) and the Coast Guard (an armed force located within the

Department of Homeland Security) employ more than 4,600 legal assistance attorneys generating an average of 100,000 estate planning packages annually across 56 U.S. states and territorial legal jurisdictions.

While the military services avoid providing estate services to clients requiring complex planning, even the most basic estate plan must take into account each client’s unique personal history, family composition, and planning needs in the context of ever-changing state laws. Adding another layer of complexity, the JAG Corps is the only law firm in the nation in which individual attorneys must be capable of practicing an esoteric field of law across all U.S. jurisdictions (all states, the District of

Columbia and the U.S. territories). Under 10 U.S.C. § 1044, military attorneys are authorized to serve the great diversity of military members and their families, no matter what their state of origin or residence.

These factors of size, scope and complexity make access to a secure estate planning software solution with automated workflows, fully integrated estate planning tools, and legal research critical in the competent and effective provision of military legal assistance services.

Projected User Data. No specific licensing metric is required. However, the following projected numbers of basic users (attorneys and paralegals) is provided to help offerors develop solutions.

The solution shall be able to accommodate a surge of 10% in the number of users and/or licenses required.

a. Navy: Approximately 250 basic users per year

b. Air Force: Approximately 1800 basic users per year

c. Army: Approximately 2500 basic users per year

d. Marine Corps: Approximately 90 basic users per year

e. Coast Guard: Approximately 40 basic users per year

NOTE: The Government does not want to purchase individual licenses and desires and enterprise-level solution to service all users.

III. SCOPE

One of the core statutory missions of the Judge Advocate Generals Corps is to provide legal assistance and testamentary documents for military service members. The military Services provide this at Legal Offices throughout the world. 10 U.S.C. § 1044d authorizes military legal assistance attorneys to provide service members with estate planning documents for all fifty states, as well as the District of Columbia, Guam, Puerto Rico, Marianas Islands, American Samoa, and the U.S.

Virgin Islands. The DoD requires a single enterprise-wide web accessible solution to meet mission requirements and to minimize the logistical and training burdens on a system that is utilized in the joint environment by all services.

IV. PURPOSE

This Statement of Objectives (SOO) sets forth the objectives for an online comprehensive estate planning solution to support the joint military services’ legal assistance missions. Throughout this document, the “Services” collectively refer to military services’ legal assistance missions, including: Navy’s Office of the Judge Advocate General (OJAG) through the Navy Legal Service

Command’s (NLSC) geographically-disbursed Region Legal Service Offices (RLSOs); the Air

Force Office of the Judge Advocate General (AF/JA) Legal Assistance Policy Division (JACA) through the installation Staff Judge Advocate offices; the Army’s Legal Assistance Policy Division

(LAPD), Office of The Judge Advocate General, through the installation Staff Judge Advocate offices; the Marine Corps Office of the Staff Judge Advocate to the Commandant of the Marine

Corps through the Legal Assistance Branch, Judge Advocate Division (JAD/JLA) and 13 world-wide legal assistance offices; and the Coast Guard GC-LMA- L through District Staff Judge

Advocate Offices.

The Services are seeking creative proposals that leverage existing commercially available service or custom made software to provide military legal assistance attorneys a scalable, comprehensive estate planning solution that is maintained and updated to reflect changes to the estate planning laws. Proposed solutions must enable military legal assistance attorneys to generate the full range of estate planning documents, including Last Wills and Testaments, Advance Medical Directives

(health care powers of attorney and living wills), financial powers of attorney, nominations of guardian of the person and/or estate of minors or of other legal incompetents, dispositions of remains, testamentary trusts, and special needs trusts (collectively “estate planning documents”).

The solution would need to be fully functional at the date that contract performance is set to begin.

V. TASK ORDER OBJECTIVES

DoD’s approach to the provision of estate planning service must identify an effective set point along the cost and capability spectrum. Identification of this set point begins by defining the military’s high-level needs and requirements, and the challenges and benefits inherent in each corresponding approach.

DoD requires a secure estate planning online service with an attorney-side suite of workflows and tools for the planning, generation, and production of estate planning legal documents. The system is not intended to be a self sufficient client side system which produces documents independent of attorney or paralegal review.The solution must be capable of producing estate planning documents in all U.S. jurisdictions, which naturally requires monitoring and integration of changes to the law in each jurisdiction by licensed attorneys with expertise in estate planning. The solution must also strive for a balance between standardizing products across jurisdictions while allowing for jurisdiction-specific nuance/tailoring where needed.

Toward that end, the Services require a solution for comprehensive estate planning which meets the following requirements and outcomes under each of the primary objectives.

Objective 1 – Legal Document Generation

1. The solution must be: fully operational across all client services including the Coast Guard; and include required information as well as the capability to generate estate planning documents across all fifty states and six territorial jurisdictions.

2. The solution must produce a complete set of estate planning documents based on information collected through a series of interactive prompts (e.g. “decision tree”-type questions) the application supplies to the attorney user.

3. The solution must be scalable, meaning it can generate documents of different complexity levels depending on user responses to the interactive prompts provided by the application.

4. The solution must be capable of producing legal documents including, but not limited to:

a. Short (no testamentary trusts) wills;

b. Long (including pre-residuary/residuary testamentary trusts) wills;

c. Durable powers of attorney, general powers of attorney, springing powers of attorney, advance medical directives (durable power of attorney for healthcare and living will), documents controlling the disposition of remains, and pre-need nomination of guardians of minor children and other legal incompetents, and special needs trusts.

d. Auto-generation of mirror-image versions of the above-listed documents for a spouse, when applicable.

5. The solution must achieve an appropriate balance between standardizing legal documents across 50 states, Washington D.C., and 5 territories (American Samoa, Guam, the Northern

Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands) and, at the same time, allowing for jurisdiction-specific nuance/tailoring where needed:

a. Standardizing legal documents across jurisdictions encompasses (1) uniformity in formatting, layout and structure (for an efficient and universal JAG Corps workflow) and

(2) uniformity in will clauses/language dealing with common substantive law issues such as exoneration, lapse, apportionment, in terrorem provisions, Rule Against Perpetuities, simultaneous death provisions, to name a few.

b. Jurisdiction-specific nuances encompasses such things as (1) vocabulary variations across jurisdictions (e.g. Personal Representative v. Executor, Commonwealth v. State, Guardian

v. Conservator), (2) informational guidance (question/progress related info boxes) relating to jurisdiction-specific legal issues (e.g. an info box embedded in the relevant part of the will-generation tool warning that a Personal Property Memorandum is not permitted in listed states).

6. The solution must allow for creation of a default setting to insert 10 U.S.C. § 1044 language, provided to the vendor by the Services and updated upon notice by the Services when the law changes. The language to insert includes:

a. Military Testamentary Preamble language at the beginning of all estate planning documents and a Military Testamentary Instrument Self-Proving Affidavit at the end of all estate planning documents necessary to make the documents military testamentary instruments per 10 U.S.C. § 1044d;

b. Military Power of Attorney Preamble language per 10 U.S.C. § 1044b at the beginning of all applicable powers of attorney;

c. Military Advance Medical Directive Preamble language per 10 U.S.C. § 1044c at the beginning of all advance medical directives; and

d. Military notarization jurat/acknowledgment language per 10 U.S.C. § 1044aa, or alternatively, state notary language at the end of all documents (alternate language should exist to account for military and civilian notaries).

7. The solution must allow for the creation of documents addressing disposition of remains, to include military-specific options for selecting:

a. Military honors; and/or

b. Disposition of burial flags provided by the government and/or the estate;

8. The solution should be capable of producing documents with the following default stylistic requirements:

a. Document production in the most commonly used word processing formats and digital document commercial software;

b. Document printing/production capabilities in the most common printing formats and across the universe of commercially available printers;

c. Page numbers (Page X of Y) automatically placed on the bottom of each page, not including the Military Testamentary Instrument Self-Proving Affidavit;

d. All signature lines automatically placed on the same page, with at least three (3) lines of text preceding signature lines that land at the top of a page;

e. Document cover sheets;

f. Blocks at the bottom of each page for the testator to initial and, at the option of the attorney, two witnesses to initial.

9. The solution must produce documents with the following content at the option of the legal assistance attorney:

a. Automatically cite the name of the user/attorney drafting the will, the state where that attorney is admitted to practice law (with bar number if one is issued);

b. Ability to set as default the name, telephone number, and address of the legal assistance office where the attorney is assigned; and

c. Ability to set a default address for witnesses of estate planning document execution.

10. The solution must be drafter friendly, by creating all required estate planning and legal documents for a client without requiring repeated input of client data (e.g. mirroring client data to complete multiple documents simultaneiously). Additionally, the solution should be able to ‘mirror’ documents for married couples, creating all required estate planning and legal documents for both spouses without requiring repeated input of client/spouse data.

Objective 2– Integration of Service

1. The proposed solution shall utilize a commercially available web-based estate planning service.

2. The solution must be capable of being displayed and executed on all standard web browsers

(Chrome, IE/Edge, Firefox, Safari), including browsers on all major tablets.

3. The solution must meet applicable DoD and Federal data and information requirments for the protection of PII, Controlled Unclassified Information.

4. The solution shall not require any installable application software or browser extensions either for attorney users or administrators.

5. Protection of Personally Identifiable Information (PII). The Department of Defense defines PII in DoD 5400.11-R, Department of Defense Privacy Program, paragraph DL1.14, as

“information about an individual that identifies, links, relates, or is unique to, or describes him or her, e.g., social security number; age; military rank; civilian grade; marital status; race;

salary; home/office phone numbers; other demographic, biometric, personnel, medical, and financial information, etc.”

a. The vendor shall take appropriate steps to safeguard and protect all PII provided by the

Government and that passes through, resides on, or is transferred by its service, such as ensuring all information is encrypted during transfer and using only “https” protocols for transmitting information.

b. The solution shall utilize industry best practices for securing the transmission of client information to include SSL, TLS, and security keys that are publically trusted.

c. All contract personnel with access to PII must complete initial and annual PII training in accordance with DoD 5400.11-R.

6. Annual Subscription Model.

a. Once this solution is fully operational, estate planning services will be optionally renewable using an annual subscription model. No specific licensing metric is required; however, the

Services seek a licensing metric that minimizes administrative burdens, such as reassigning licenses between users and license audits.

b. If the licenses are tied to specific users, such licenses must be capable of being readily reassigned at the discretion of Service administrators since military personnel frequently change locations.

c. However, annual subscription fees must be reasonably predictable and apportionable between the Services based on some reasonable measure of usage. This is important, as some Services will use the solution significantly more than others.

7. Service Administrators. The solution’s license structure and permission levels should be able to accommodate the hierarchal structure of the military. For example, legal assistance attorneys and paralegals are the basic users. They operate out of different offices and locations around the world. They will need full access to the document-drafting interface, with the ability to generate the full array of estate planning documents for their specific clients. These basic users are supervised by management at these locations. Management may also need full access to the drafting interface, but management would also be responsible for license assignment/management at that location (depending on license structure). They would also need access to any features the product has which assist management in proper oversight of basic users. Finally, each Service has a Legal Assistance Policy Office that oversees all legal assistance programs. These offices would need full access to all administrative rights granted to their respective Service.

8. Look-and-Feel.

a. The solution must provide the required capabilities when accessed through each Services’

Non-secure Internet Protocol Router Network (NIPRNet) environment as well as from the commercial internet.

b. The solution must fully comply with Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973.

c. The solution should be intuitive to experienced estate planning practitioners, requiring minimal references to documentation or instructional material.

9. Substantive Legal Updates.

a. The solution must incorporate monitoring and integration of substantive legal updates (such as statutory, regulatory, or case law changes) into the estate planning documents across all

56 CONUS and US territory jurisdictions. As part of its solution, the bidder must ensure licensed attorney oversight and approval prior to integration.

b. Provide notification and a summary of substantive legal updates to the Contracting Office

Representative (COR) and the Service Representatives, within two (2) business days of changes that could affect documents generated by the service.

10. Service Availability.

a. As military legal assistance is provided worldwide, the service will be geographically available in all regions where Service legal assistance providers have access to their

Service’s unclassified network.

b. The service will have a service availability of 99.5%, excluding scheduled maintenance.

c. Service maintenance will be scheduled to maximize service availability to legal offices during duty hours.

11. Technical Support.

a. The Offeror will be responsible for technical support, at least telephonically, for users and administrators in multiple time zones having technical issues with the website from

Monday through Friday, excluding Federal Holidays, for a reasonable number of hours each day.

b. Technical support experts shall provide and have sufficient technical expertise to provide step-by-step guidance to account users and administrators.

12. Training and training materials.

a. Initial, online synchronous training shall be provided to 75% of users within sixty (60) days and 100% of users within 120 days of service development completion. Training will cover proper use of software (step-by-step) with estate planning document drafting examples, technical trouble shooting for common issues, including access and retrieval of documents.

b. If functional changes are made to the service, suitable training shall be created and delivered either in-person or by online synchronous or asynchronous methods. Training will cover the functional changes made and provide proper use of software (step-by-step) as necessary to communicate changes.

c. Any training content generated throughout performance of the contract will be recorded and made available to product users for the entirety of the product’s lifecycle.

13. Client will worksheet. The DoD intends to create a separate online client will worksheet tool which will have the purpose of importing client data into the vendor’s will service. Vendor should utilize an open standard format (JSON, XML, etc.) for any importable client answer files it uses in order to facilitate the Services creation of an importable worksheet. Upon request, the vendor will provide the government any necessary information about the will service to allow development of such a client worksheet tool. This could include providing the format and data mapping for any output data file the will service produces or data file it imports.

IV. REFERENCES: See Attachment.

V. CONTRACTING OFFICER REPRESENTATIVE (COR) or SERVICE

REPRESENTATIVE

Name Title/Position Phone Email

USN

USMC

USAF

USA

USCG

VI. GOVERNMENT TECHNICAL POINTS OF CONTACT (GTPOC)

Name Title/Position Phone Email

USN

USMC

USAF

USA

USCG

VII. PERFORMANCE METRICS

A summary of the metrics or standards used to determine if performance objectives and out-comes are met are provided in the PWS Service Summary. A Quality Assurance Surveillance Plan (QASP) is used by the Government to measure contract compliance with performance requirements. The contractor is required to provide a completed draft PWS. The PWS Service Summary elements may be used by the Government to construct the QASP for the awarded order.

VIII. CONSTRAINTS

The solution must provide appropriate estate planning and legal documents across 50 states, Washington D.C., and 5 territories (American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto

Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands) within twelve months after award of the task order. The

Government intends to purchase a minimum of 20 licenses during the base year to monitor the contractor’s ability to meet the requirements in the awarded order’s PWS. The remaining licenses will be purchased during the base year provided the solution furnishes appropriate estate planning and legal documents across 50 states, Washington D.C., and 5 territories (American Samoa, Guam, the Northern

Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands) as specified in the awarded order’s PWS.

The contractor shall provide the description of the strategy used to accomplish the aforementioned in the awarded PWS along with applicable milestones and deliverables in the Service Summary, Table of

Deliverables, and applicable PWS attachments as required. The Government’s intent is to purchase sufficient licesenses for all users once the solution meets all Statement of Objectives requirements.

The solution must fully comply with Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973.

The contractor should include a list of constraints, such as Government Furnished Equipment (GFE), Government Furnished Information (GFI), other required software and licenses, etc. as necessary in the PWS included in its task order proposal response.