A8 J_A FAR8.4 FY20 ReConnect 2.2 Feature Dev v2 -.pdf

AOP No. 5, J&A-Other Than Full & Open Competition- Attachment 4

Limited Sources Justification United States Department of Agriculture

FAR 8.405 Federal Supply Schedules Multiple Award Schedule Program

Acquisition Title: FY20 ReConnect 2.2 Feature Dev Funding Number: TBD

Estimated Total: ; POP: Base 6 Month; Transition Option: 1 Month

Identification of the agency and the contracting activity.

United States Department of Agriculture, Rural Development Procurement Management Office (PMO), 1400 Independence Ave, SW, Washington, DC 20250.

The nature and/or description of the action being approved.

This acquisition will be for contractor services establishing, training, and executing against the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe), leveraging lean UX (user experience/user centered design principles, usability research), and agile implementation to deliver new and refine existing transactional products for the Transactional Portal, the ReConnect. The USDA proposes to enter into a new contract on a basis other than full and open competition negotiate a sole source, firm fixed-price contract with Deloitte Consulting, LLP, 1919 N. Lynn Street, Arlington, VA 22209-1742.

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

Project Title: FY20 ReConnect 2.2 Feature Dev

Project Description: As a result of the Secretary’s vision for One USDA, the ReConnect System was created as a Transactional Portal to enable self-service options for applications and tools for external and internal USDA customers. The objective of this effort is to utilize digital service techniques to identify and solve core ReConnect users’ needs through the development and release of products that support meeting the overall product vision. While all Rural Utilities programs are under the commercial/direct loan portfolio, there are similarities that must be leveraged and differences that must be accounted for through process alignment and platform capabilities. Part of the vision is to leverage the Salesforce platform for all programs under the Rural Utilities Program and to build on the synergies of the ReConnect system through re-use of specific sections and/or modular components.

At the conclusion of the current contract, Reporting & Compliance System (R&C) will only be capable of collecting customers’ quarterly operating statements. However, other key functionality is required such as, annual reporting requirements, ICAM and CLSS integration hosted on MuleSoft, internal review and reporting functionality, and customer data extracts. While implementing the current contract work, it was determined that additional Community Connect functionality outside the scope of the current contract would be required in order to open the Community Connect application window prior to the end of

Fiscal Year 2020, which is the USDA’s program deadline.

c. Total estimated dollar value and performance/delivery period:

The period of performance of this contract is approximately a six-month base period, plus a one-month transition option period. The estimated value is approximately

4. The authority and supporting rationale.

41 U.S.C. §3304 (a)(1), in accordance with 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 order and FAR 8.405-6(c)(2). The Contractor, Deloitte is uniquely qualified to provide these services to USDA. Deloitte has gained specialized knowledge and expertise to ensure immediate continuation of development efforts to allow USDA to meet several key goals:

1. Open the Community Connect application window prior to FY2021;

2. Deploy an initial R&C MVP product that can accept Telecom customers first required quarterly submission beginning on October 1, 2020;

3. Develop annual reporting requirements for all retail broadband projects

(spans multiple USDA broadband) as required under Section (6207) of the 2018 Farm Bill.

Deloitte previously defined user stories and mapped them to the FOA2 requirements as well as the Financial Reporting & Compliance and Community Connect tools specific for USDA’s ReConnect systems. The required additional increments(functionalities) rely heavily on the current R&C system architecture. Three prior program increments, which were developed by Deloitte teams, are especially integral to the additional functionality required for the Reconnect system to be efficient and robust. These additional functionalities rely on those prior three program Increments. Deloitte has the specialized knowledge and expertise to quickly accomplish developing the few additional requirement functionalities due to its work on the prior three increments. It is important that these follow-on additional required functionalities increments begin upon completion of the current PI3 ReConnect work being completed by Deloitte in May 2020, and continue without interruption of the current design and development program teams and without interruption to the overall completion schedule, until the added functionality work has been completed or USDA will not meet its expected timeframe to release the updated program.

Procuring the few additional program requirements as an open competition would result in duplication of efforts, resulting in duplication of costs and burdensome delays to this program completion if an award was issued to a contractor other than Deloitte.

By utilizing the Deloitte’s expertise and experience, USDA will minimize its delivery risk, accelerate completion of the Reconnect system and maximize economies and efficiencies that could not be achieved through a competitive action for this acquisition. Without utilizing Deloitte’s previously gained knowledge and experience in the ReConnect system, the costs for this new action would be comprised of at least twenty percent (20%) of the amount of the previous acquisition plus the cost of the new work, because a different contractor unfamiliar with the prior work would have a tremendous learning curve. It would take a different contractor months to learn about the existing system’s costs in order to implement the few robust addons required in the system, whereas Deloitte would not require any transitional/learning period or onboarding process, saving the agency and taxpayers substantial funds. Similarly, the transitional/additional learning period required by a different contractor to complete the few added functionalities would result in the project completion being delayed, inflicting injury to the American public that desperately need to benefit from this ReConnect system.

Accordingly, Deloitte is the only firm capable of providing the required services above without the USDA experiencing substantial duplication of cost that could not be expected to be recovered through competition and unacceptable delays in fulfilling its requirements.

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

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.

The CO has determined, after considering the level of effort and the mix of skills available for the tasks needed, that the proposed order respresents a reasonable total price and will be the best value for the Government, price and other factors considered.

An Independent Government Cost Estimate (IGCE) was developed based on the history of the existing similar work, current market conditions and program expectations. To ensure that the awarded price is fair and reasonable, the data from the IGCE will be compared with the proposal received from the offeror prior to award.

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

Market research was conducted by the USDA/RD TO and the Procurement Management Office to identify available sources and to evaluate the availability of the marketplace to meet the requirement.

Specific market research conducted included:

(i) Reviewed GSA Federal Supply Schedule, Salesforce Implementation Integration and Support Services (SIISS) Blanket Purchase Agreement (BPA) –

(ii) Reviewed the existing USDA-Wide contract vehicle Shared Services Lines of Business Solutions (SSLoBS) – .

Based on the results of market research, the government determined that a limited number of vendors were/are available that perform this type of work, but none possessed the capability to meet the implementation requirements without duplicating previous efforts, and incurring costs that will not be expected to be recovered through competition. Deloitte is the only available source for completion of the support tasks needed without creating duplication costs and substantial delays in task completion.

7. Any facts supporting the justification.

A solicitation will not be publicized The program office for this potential sources and arrived at the conclusion that bringing a new contractor without recent history and experience of the existing system on board would delay meeting the requirements.

Work that is being asked by the Agency Requestor (Policy & Outreach Division, Rural Utilities Service -RUS) is additional work that was identified through the current contract’s efforts. This additional work was discovered as being necessary for RUS to receive a viable product that it could use with the public. The reason this work was not fully realized at the time of the current contract solicitation and award was due to the underestimated complexity of achieving all the requirements.

The three program increments originally scoped into the current contract are not enough to complete the requirements needed by RUS to support mission objectives.

The execution of a sole source to complete these few additional required functionalities will result in economies and efficiencies, minimize delivery risk and accelerate product delivery that could not otherwise be achieved while still meeting RD’s business and mission objectives. For example, at the end of the current contract’s Period of Performance (PoP), the Reporting & Compliance System (R&C) Minimum Viable Product (MVP) will only support the collection of Telecommunications Program (Telecom) customers’ quarterly operating reports. With the work that will be completed in this acquisition, Telecom customers’ annual reports, such as construction progress, project performance, geo-coded locations of new subscribers, audits, and project close-out reports can be implemented and available. These annual reports are required to be submitted to USDA by end of year 2020 per customer’s legal agreements. Due to the level of effort associated with developing, testing, and deploying the annual report features, development of these features needs to be tightly integrated with PI3 in order to minimize delivery risk and the potential of missing the 2020 deadlines.

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

Competition is always the default acquisition strategy and will be pursued in accordance with FAR and USDA policies, procedures, and mandates. In this instance, the nature of the work, such as the expertise with the particularities of the ReConnect system, and short time frame in which would be provided to a contractor to complete the requirements of the requirement created the barrier to inhibited full and open competition.

The Government will continue to conduct thorough market research to gauge the marketplace capabilities for future requirements. Follow on requirements will be competitively sourced at logical junctures in this ReConnect project. For instance, an acquisition to further develop, modernize, and enhance the Broadband ReConnect solution will be competed in FY 2020. The solicitation for those requirements will be posted to SEWP, GSA, or FBO after the requirement is fully developed and readied to be acquired. The planned acquisition award date of a competitive follow-on to the project at hand is approximately 30 December 2020.