A06 - FFIP_DM_FAR 8.4_JOFOC 7_28_21 9 month contract_bridge.pdf

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United States Department of Agriculture Limited Sources Justification for an Order/BPA Exceeding the Simplified Acquisition Threshold

Federal Supply Schedules/Multiple Award Schedule Program

FAR 8.405

Control No. (if applicable) ______________________

1. Identification of the agency and the contracting activity.

U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), Farm Production and Conservation (FPAC) Business Center, Financial Management Division, serviced by U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), Department Administration (DA), Office of Contracting and Procurement (OCP), Procurement Operations Division

(POD)

2. Nature and/or description of the action being approved.

The USDA OCP POD proposes the issuance of a sole source bridge Blanket Purchase Agreement (BPA) call against the Federal Supply Schedule Shared Services Line of Business Solutions (SSLoBS) Master BPA using a firm fixed price call to sustain FPACs current FSA Financial Improvement Program (FFIP) Data Management (DM) Support. Awarding the logical follow on call to the current contractor enables Farm Service Agency (FSA) and Commodity Credit Corporation (CCC) to fulfill its mission goals while providing auditable financial data under USDA Financial Management Modernization Initiation (FMMI) program and enables USDA the ability to achieve a clean financial audit opinion and efficiently manage the resources provided by Congress.

3. Description of the supplies or services required to meet the agency’s needs (including the estimated value).

TeraThink is the current contractor on BPA call 12314418F0661 and has established the necessary data management expertise required to support the program and is familiar with the tasks. This support shall include the following DM tasks:

• Data profiling

• Data cleansing

• Data conversion

The scope of the work is to provide data management support such as data discovery and profiling, data cleansing and data conversion for the FFIP program. The offeror will collaborate with the FFIP program management team to integrate the data management activities into the FFIP integrated master

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The program has identified iterative implementation phases based on program groups, impacted business area, and complexity. The offeror will participate with the FFIP Business Process Re-engineering team to determine financial data to be converted from the source systems and provide support for making data remediation decision making. The offeror is responsible for providing a “ready to load” data file of clean and converted FSA/CCC financial data for ingestion to USDA FMMI system.

This call order will provide FFIP Federal Product Management support in assessing conformance of FSA/CCC program financial data to USDA financial and FMMI requirements, cleansing non-conforming data, conducting mock conversions to assess readiness, designing post-conversion reconciliation procedures, and preparing final load-ready conversion files.

The period of performance will be a 9-month base period at a value of $ $1,126,373 with (1) 3-month option period valued at $373,627 for a total estimated value of $1,500,000.

4. The authority and supporting rationale.

The following circumstance justifies limiting the source under FAR 8.405-6:

FAR 8.405-6(a)(1)(i)(C) – In the interest of economy and efficiency, the new work is a logical follow-on to an original Federal Supply Schedule.

The USDA FPAC requires support services to ensure the culmination of the FFIP DM activities.

USDA proposes to issue a sole source BPA Task Order directly to TeraThink against their existing multiple award BPA. This was previously competed under the SSLoBS Master BPA with TeraThink being the successful offeror and the original order was placed in accordance with the applicable Federal Supply Schedule ordering procedures. This award represents a progression of the work completed to date and ensures timely continuation of the objectives of the FFIP Data Management Contract.

TeraThink has the benefit of being currently on-site. They have been supporting the FFIP DM requirement since September 2018. They have developed specialized knowledge of the FMMI relevant data and data quality required for decision making and successful data conversion. They have the current tools and access to the environments necessary for data profiling, cleansing, and conversion. They have currently badged employees with government laptops, re-establishment of badging and laptop issuing is currently a 3-4 month lead time due to COVID laptop supply chains are disrupted with uncertain delivery timeframes. A new vendor would simply not be able to get “fingers on keyboards” until almost half-way through the planned PoP at no fault of their own.

FPAC is working on a new procurement (Chestnut) with a planned award in FY2022 Q2 for the Program Financial Services functional area and is expected to include the FFIP requirements.

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It isn’t in the government’s best interest to award a duplicative effort to another vendor and multiple vendor transitions within 12 months.

Multiple transitions will require overlapping vendors adding potentially an additional 120 days of transition costs to the effort not accounting for delays in onboarding/GFE provisioning

5. A statement demonstrating the unique qualifications of the proposed contractor or the nature of the action requiring the use of the authority.

The FFIP DM call was competed on SSLoBS and awarded to TeraThink, in Jul 2018. The program was initially organized in four phased deployments. The contract awarded to TeraThink supported data discovery and profiling, data cleansing, and data conversion for the four-phase program. After successful migration of Phase 1 programs in October 2019, FPAC and OCFO leadership transitioned to agile delivery using SAFe and is no longer organizing the program in large phases. TeraThink was instrumental in developing the data profiling, cleansing, and conversion processes for the successful migration of FPAC vendor/customer data to FMMI production in November 2020. TeraThink is now supporting the data cleansing activities for the initial group of FPAC farm programs (CFAP 1 & 2) slated for migration to FMMI. TeraThink has the current tools and access to the environment as well as the knowledge of the FMMI relevant data and data quality required for decision making and successful data conversion. FPAC is preparing a migration of the initial FSA farm programs to FMMI in 2022 and subsequent migrations of FSA farm programs incrementally thereafter. As a key team member, TeraThink has the in depth knowledge to provide the FFIP project team with information and metrics pertaining to the quality of the source data used by FPAC for decision making which was critical to the success of FPACs customer’s conversions and their mission.

Awarding a call order to TeraThink ensures the retention of data management expertise required for cleansing and converting FSA/CCC program financial data to FMMI without introducing risk to the USDA and FSA/CCC financial audit.

All efforts under BPA Call 12314418F0661 is on-going and necessary to continue FPAC’s DATA Management conversion efforts for FSA and CCC and seamlessly cannot be transferred to a new vendor without impeding progress. TeraThink possesses the institution knowledge and intellectual capital gained through performance of the original contract. This institutional knowledge cannot be transferred to a new contractor without a substantial duplication of time resulting in a duplication of costs, missed milestones, delivery delays in obtaining efficiencies and effectiveness for FPACs conversion efforts in support of FSA and CCC. TeraThink developed the “ready-to-load” data file of clean and converted FSA/CCC financial data for ingestion to USDA FMMI system and TeraThink is uniquely qualified to continue the current progression processes which provides the final converted financial data in support of FPACs mission.

Award of a bridge contract will capitalize on time and financial investment already made to FFIP DM work. If a bridge contract is not permitted, a new vendor would have to begin the Financial Improvement Program Data Management work independently, wasting previous investment and seriously delaying the conversion of identifying new data in the source systems migrations. Transition of the current performance by TeraThink will hinder the cleansing of non-conforming data, the ability to conduct mock conversions to assess readiness, the capacity to design post-conversion reconciliation procedures, and prepare final load-ready conversion files. This will result in a significant increase in

Page 4 Version 05042021 cost to achieve the end goal for FSA/CCC. The Government will not be able to continue the mission critical FSA/CCC conversion without the award of a bridge contract to TeraThink and will have a direct impact associated to loss of investment already made in conversion efforts.

6. Description of the market research conducted among schedule holders and the results or a statement of the reason market research was not conducted.

The USDA performed market research and 9 vendors are available via the USDA-wide BPA Shared Services Line of Business (SSLoBS). Shared Services Lines of Business Solution (SSLoBS) & IT Governance Management Support Services contract holder TeraThink was identified as having the capability to provide USDA FFIP DM Support. In addition, as part of the market research, the below techniques were utilized.

• Spoke with existing users and customers

• Reviewed interested/ potential vendors databases

• Reviewed DAITSS for potential vendors

• Reviewed CALC for rates

The SSLoBS BPA was previously competed on GSA and established a USDA-wide contract vehicle.

GSA pricing has already been determined fair and reasonable. Competing to all vendors on the SSLoBS would lead to additional cost that would not be made up via competition.

Further market research was not conducted because the only solution ensuring the integrity and quality of the Data Management processes, and their timely and effective execution by the organization is to award a bridge contract to TeraThink. In the unlikely event the work is not completed during the duration of the bridge contract, this effort will be fully re-competed and resulting extensive market research conducted.

7. Any other facts supporting the justification.

TeraThink ensures the retention of data management expertise required for cleansing and converting FSA/CCC program financial data to FMMI without introducing risk to the USDA and FSA/CCC financial audit. The only solution ensuring the integrity and quality of the financial data management processes, and their timely and effective execution is to continue with TeraThink. The DM costs associated with contractor turnover is estimated at $398,000. This effort is impacted by the length of time required to onboard a new vendor with the USDA. The current lead time is between 33 and 49 business days, causing an estimated start date of six to eight weeks after award to fully onboard a new team with the Government. The new vendor would then require time to allow for knowledge transfer from the incumbent contractor-on average this is a two to three-week process. The SSLoBS Master BPA expires August 31 of 2022, which is the original contract vehicle that was used to place the call for this FFIP DM effort. If this call is re-competed now amongst all SSLoBS vendors, the entire program runs the risk of a new contract vendor potentially 2 times within 12 months which will have a severe impact on FPACs customer base and mission. Once onboarded, training and team forming will impact the current Agile Release Train (ART) velocity and will impact the continuation of the phase process leading to failures across the USDA. Today the ART averages 20 features a PI whereas post award velocity is anticipated to dip by 50% for an additional 1-2 PIs at an estimated cost of $180,000 to $360,000.

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8. Statement of actions the agency may take to remove or overcome any barriers to competition if subsequent acquisitions are anticipated.

Acquisition planning is in progress for the new Chestnut requirements in Fiscal Year 2022. Chestnut is an FPAC wide acquisition strategy planned to support all FPAC program financial service requirements.

9. Determination by the ordering activity Contracting Officer (CO) that the order represents the best value consistent with FAR 8.404(d).

Call represents best value: GSA has already determined the prices of supplies and fixed-price services, and rates for services offered at hourly rates, under schedule contracts to be fair and reasonable.

Certifications & Approval

The information provided for this justification has been reviewed and certified accurate and complete by:

Doug Pursley Program/Technical Personnel.

Contracting Officer (not exceeding $750,000). I have reviewed this justification and certify it to be accurate and complete to the best of my knowledge and belief.

Approved.

Reviewed and forwarding to the Procuring Activity Advocate (MASCO or Delegate).

John Flores Contracting Officer

Additional Reviews & Approvals

Signatures are required at each threshold up to the total estimated dollar value of the acquisition

Advocate for competition for the procuring activity (MASCO or Delegate approved by HCA for USDA) (if over $750,000, but not exceeding $15 million). I have reviewed this justification and certify it to be accurate and complete to the best of my knowledge and belief.

Approved.

Reviewed and forwarding to the Head of the Procuring Activity/HCA.

Rick Jiron Mission Area Advocate for Competition

DOUGLAS

PURSLEY

Digitally signed by

DOUGLAS PURSLEY

Date: 2021.08.02 15:37:41 -05'00'

JOHN

FLORES

Digitally signed by JOHN FLORES Date: 2021.08.04 09:04:33 -06'00'