ACWS Industry Day_Post-Event_Questions_Answers.pdf

ACWS Call for Solutions Official Questions and Responses from Industry Day and Post-Industry Day

Questions Responses

Will this presentation be made available to industry post-presentation? Yes

The Call mentions the MVP architecture. Can you tell us more about the history of the MVP architecture, its characteristics, and your pain points?

Current MVP architecture as mentioned, is on the Appian platform leveraging the CON-IT baseline as the starting point in mid-2023 and adding on selected unique Army capability over the past 3 years. Along with developing Army unique capability, the program also leverages code-sharing with services and imported development done by the Air Force/Navy.

Current pain points seen are how the platform works with respect to code-sharing. Merging code-baseline is time-consuming and can lead to issues where work must be redone or bugs introduced. Other pain points are AI limitations within the platform, as well as how to integrate it with enterprise AI modules seamlessly.

What is the rationale for emphasizing industry low-code/no-code solutions if the end product will still be a custom solution? Is the expectation that the government will be able to modify and maintain the low-code/no-code components directly, or that vendors will develop reusable modular components that can be leveraged across future efforts to reduce cost and implementation time? More broadly, what specific advantage is low-code/no-code intended to provide over a conventionally developed custom industry solution?

LC/NC is an Army CIO initiative preferred due to is speed and ease of development. While the development currently a custom solution, the underlying platform is LC/NC and is open for integration with COTS solution either in the LC/NC platform or externally. Reusable module components are preferred as these are shared across the services; however, there is an expectation that the government will be able to modify and maintain the low-code/no-code components directly as needed to meet requirements.

Will IL5 and IL6 be hosted on different platforms? Yes, currently IL5 is hosted in DLA PIEE; whereas IL6 will be a separate instance hosted in cArmy. As far as the underlying platform, Army prefers that the platforms/baseline be the same, only modified for IL6 restrictions.

Is VCE on a different hosting platform than ACWS? If yes, is the vision to have them operate on the same hosting platform?

Yes, VCE is currently hosted cArmy, while ACWS is hosted in DLA PIEE. The vision is to have both systems operate on the same hosting platform.

Will the incoming contractor have to perform any PADDS file migration? The PADDS data migration is scheduled to be completed by 04NOV. No file migration tasks are expected from the contractor.

Are the Epics in priority order? Generally, yes, but we have embraced Agile and we are open to re-prioritizing based on what makes most sense to include level of effort estimates.

For the IL-6 requirement, must the offeror already possess an IL-6-authorized solution and the required facility and personnel clearances at proposal submission, or may the offeror propose a defined approach, schedule, and Government-supported path to achieve IL-6 authorization after award?

Offeror may propose a defined approach, schedule, and Government-supported path to achieve IL-6 authorization;

however, it must align with the schedule outlined earlier by the government. It’s important to note that the Government may request personnel clearance validation at the time of award.

Teams may require more than two pages for all the member certifications. Would the government be willing to increase the page limit (i.e. two pages per team member)?

The government will take this request under consideration.

Can you explain the contractor’s role in Tier-2 service desk? The contractor will not have a role in Tier-2 support. The Functional Sponsor has lead for Tier-2 support.

Will industry day participants be shared afterward to help facilitate teaming discussions. Yes, a list of vendor registration for Industry Day will be posted to SAM.gov

Is it the Government’s intent to only award this to a single large systems integrator? The expectation to meet all requirements under one submission precludes engagement from specialized commercial firms that specialize in specific capabilities.

The Government’s objective is that all requirements be met, either by a single vendor or by a team under a single submission. As stated in Section 5.2, the Army places no restrictions on how Primes/Teams are organized.

Is this event recorded, and will the recording as well as the slides be available after the event? If so, where can we access the materials?

Yes, this event is being recorded. The link to the recording, along with the presentation will be posted to SAM.gov.

Will there be a right seat/left seat transition with the incumbent contractor? If so, how long? Yes, a 30-day transition period with the incumbent is planned-- if necessary.

Given the hosting requirements, is SaaS not allowed? The Army is exploring the best way to resolve the technical debt from the current MVP architecture and deliver a modern LCNC solution. Per Section 7.1, we will evaluate the Technical Merit of all proposed solutions, whether they optimize the existing platform or propose a compelling alternative.

Will the IL6 deployment be in the PIEE IL6 environment or will it be hosted in cARMY? The government currently anticipates that the IL6 ACWS environment will be hosted in cArmy enclave.

Questions and answer 4 seems to imply that SaaS options are not being considered, can you validate this? SaaS offerings will be considered, provided they meet the capability requirement described throughout, including ability to be implemented at IL6. Since SaaS offerings vary significantly in scope, the Government requests offerors to clearly state whether a SaaS offering meets all requested criteria today or if additional work is required to fully satisfy capability requested, and timeline and cost needed to complete this work.

Expression has an operational phase III ready SBIR solution, sponsored by ASA(ALT) that is available today to meet this exact requirement. can we demo this for you?

Government cannot accept any demo at this stage, but contractors may cite the SBIR solution and operational status in their proposal, and if elected government may request a technical demostration during Phase 2.

Section 3 states ACWS currently holds an ATO for DLA PIEE hosting, and that solutions requiring a new ATO must supply a timeline and milestones. Given the Phase 1 due date of 25 August and anticipated award of 4 November, does the Government have a required date for initial operational capability that would constrain how much ATO risk it can accept?

And relatedly, would a solution that remediates technical debt within the existing accredited platform be evaluated as equally responsive to Requirement 1’s modernization objective as a solution proposing migration to a different LCNC platform?

The Government does not have a specific requried date for IOC capability that would drive ATO risk tolerance;

instead, the Government requires that there must be no disruption of service to the existing operational environments currently supporting our Warfighters. Government is unwilling to accept the risk of an unaccredited system.

A proposal that remediates technical debt within the existing accredited platform will be viewed as equally responsive to Requirement 1’s Modernization objective. The Government is not intending to dictate the technical solution and is open to remaining on the existing platform if industry partners believe this is the most appropropriate course of action.

For the “Service Desk Support: Tier 2 and 3,” is ACWS looking for these technical support offerings to be provided 24x7x365, or a model supporting business days (Ex, during the workweek 0800-1700)?

The contractor will not provide Tier 2 support. Tier 3 support is 8 hours for the Business Day with core hours 0800- 1700ET. Additional support may be required in the 4th quarter of each Fiscal Year, with peak in September.

Question 1: Appendix D identifies a broad set of future capabilities and modernization initiatives. For ROM and schedule development, can the Government provide a prioritized Appendix D backlog or identify which Appendix D capabilities are considered mandatory for Initial Operating Capability, expected for implementation during the base year and early option periods, and deferrable to later releases or option years?

Question 2: For purposes of developing a common ROM and schedule baseline, what existing ACWS resources will be Government-furnished to the awardee, including the current Appian platform, Appian licensing, DLA PIEE hosting environment, infrastructure, cybersecurity services, development/test/staging/production environments, integration environments, and related support services? Additionally, for the current ACWS environment, will the Government provide or define a roles-and-responsibilities baseline among the Government, hosting provider, platform provider, and solution contractor for infrastructure operations, patching, monitoring, incident response, backup/restore, capacity management, disaster recovery, Tier 2 technical support, Tier 3 support, release support, and defect resolution?

Question 3: For purposes of developing a common ROM and schedule baseline, what resources, if any, will be Government-furnished for any new hosting environment(s), including cloud services, infrastructure, development, test, staging, production, disaster recovery environments, cybersecurity services, and environment operations support?

Question 4: For purposes of developing a common ROM and schedule baseline, should Offerors assume that any proposed replacement or additional software platforms, platform licensing, subscriptions, and associated cybersecurity services are contractor-provided unless otherwise identified by the Government?

Question 5: For purposes of developing a common ROM and schedule baseline, what AI/ML resources, if any, will be Government-furnished, including model services, AI platforms, computing resources, development environments, enterprise licenses, and approved AI capabilities available for use under this effort?

Question 6: Section 8 states that Non-Government Advisors may participate in evaluation activities and that industry is responsible for independently executing NDAs with disclosed Non-Government Advisors. To ensure compliant submission, will the Government identify any Non-Government Advisors and provide sufficient information for Offerors to execute required NDAs prior to submission? If NDAs are required, by what date must they be executed and submitted, and in which proposal file, attachment, or section should they be included?

If Phase 2 pitch sessions are conducted, does the Government anticipate oral presentations only, technical demonstrations, prototype demonstrations, architecture walkthroughs, technical challenges, or a combination of these? If demonstrations are anticipated, will the Government provide environment, data, security, or demonstration constraints in advance?

Question 8: For ROM and schedule development, what facility, access, clearance, and connectivity assumptions should Offerors use for contractor personnel supporting IL-6 activities? Should Offerors assume work will occur in Government-furnished facilities, contractor-provided cleared facilities, approved remote classified access mechanisms, or another Government-approved access model?

1: Any new platform must, at a minimum, provide the same capabilities as today’s operational environment as an Initial Operating Capability / Minimum Viable Product. The Government does not desire to degrade Warfighters‘ capabilities during any technology transition periods. Capabilities which are not yet implemented in today’s ACWS solution are negotiable in timeframe; as described by the Functional Sponsor, ACWS is employing a Weighted Best Value approach to prioritizing requirements which combines operational benefit with technical feasibility.

2: The Government will provide additional technical information with the CFS.

3: Hosting environment would be PIEE/cArmy, but an offeror should provide estimate to run solution capable of supporting 9,000 users and Army procurement activities.

4: That is a valid assumption.

5: Assume the Government will not provide AI resources.

6: Instructions regarding NDAs have been revised in the final CFS.

7: Phase 2 Pitch Session content is intended to be open-ended. If the Offeror has a product or technology they believe is appropriate to demonstrate, they are welcome to use this block to demonstrate the product using their own sanitized data sources and environments and discuss which capabilities they believe it supports. The Government will not be providing cleansed data sets / models for Phase 2 purposes.

8: Offerors should expect SECRET / NOFORN at a minimum for all resources assocaited with the IL-6 implementation and support, and potentially TOP SECRET for any resources performing Cybersecurity or similarly elevated roles. If the Offeror has access to an existing accredited facility they intend to use for this scope of work, the offeror should propose such. Government will attempt to provide secure facilities in the event the offeror does not already have appropriate facilities. Government will not sponsor new facility build-outs or accreditations and will not be able to provide SIPR laptops or other virtual SIPR devices for use off-site.

1) To ensure accurate ROM pricing, does the Government require contractors to price recurring, non-developmental hosting, licensing, and AI token expenses? Alternatively, will these operational resources be provided as Government-Furnished Property/Services? Specifically, if agreements already exist (such as with current ACWS licenses), will those agreements be transferable to the contractor?

2)The ACWS Draft indicates that Phase 1: White Paper and ROM Price would be due on 25 August 2026, as listed in Appendix E: Schedule of Events. However, the ACWS Industry Day Final presentation states on Slide 17 that Solution Briefs would be due by 1200 CST on 11 August 2026. Can the government clarify the correct target date for this submission?

1: Offerors should distinctly call out recurring non-developmental hosting, licensing, and AI token expenses associated with their proposed offering. If the Government is able to provide these operational resources, this will be investigated; however, offerors may already have existing agreements that provide better value or lower total costs than the Government is able to secure.

2: The timeline is revised in the final CFS.

The Industry Day session described both continued sustainment of the currently fielded ACWS/VCE instance and the modernization/IL-6 build-out as within scope. Please clarify the government’s expectation regarding concurrent operation of the two: a. Is the awardee expected to own, operate, and maintain (including Tier 2/3 support) the existing fielded ACWS/VCE production instance serving the ~9,000 users at the same time it is developing and standing up the modernized solution and the IL-6 instance? b. If so, does responsibility for sustaining the currently fielded instance begin at contract award, or after a defined transition-in period? c. What is the anticipated duration of concurrent operation (running the legacy/current instance in parallel with the new solution), and is a defined cutover or phased migration approach expected?

The Government is not intending to dictate the technical solution and is open to remaining on the existing platform if industry partners believe this is the most appropropriate course of action. If offerors elect to propose an alternative, then they are exprected to perate and maintain the existing unclassified version of ACWS and VCE for the duration of the contract at the same time they are developing and fielding the IL-6 solution, which will run concurrently with migration to the solution proposed by the Offeror. Responsibility for sustaining the currently fielded instances of ACWS and VCE will begin after a transition-in period, to the extent possible, in which the awardee operates alongside the incumbent provider. Any migration to new technology platforms must not degrade existing warfighter capability, so any transition to a new technology platform is expected to not result in protracted downtime or capability downgrades. Concurrent operation for a new technology platform and the existing platform is expected to be as short as possible to manage costs and support user adoption. Offerors should be prepared to describe a possible transition approach, such as big-bang or specific capability-by-specific capability, resulting in users operating completely in the target-state environment.

(1) Does the Government intend to include acquisition requirements-generation capability, supporting the Services Requirements Review Board (SRRB) process and the ATP 410-series requirements development process, within ACWS scope? The current workflow and the Appendix D backlog appear to begin at Purchase Requisition; will upstream requirement-generation functionality be folded into ACWS? [Request: Industry-General]

(2) Is the Government seeking Appian specifically as its LCNC platform, or are other LCNC providers acceptable? If alternative platforms are acceptable, how does the Government envision Appian and other LCNC platforms coexisting? Is the objective a single environment supporting multiple technology stacks, or convergence onto one unified platform and stack? [Request: Industry-General]

(3) For Technical Merit and any past performance consideration, how will the Government define “relevance”? Will relevance be assessed on similarity of technical complexity and function (LCNC sustainment, AI/ML automation, federal IL-5/IL-6 environments) rather than on matching the full 9,000-user enterprise scale? [Request: Industry- General]

(4) In a teamed submission, will the corporate experience and past performance of team members and major subcontractors be weighted equally with the prime‘s, consistent with Section 5.2’s statement that the solution is assessed as a whole? [Request: Industry-General]

(5) Will small business participation, Small Disadvantaged Business status, or an approved subcontracting plan be an evaluated factor in any phase? If so, at what relative weight, and will the Government establish a minimum small business subcontracting objective on the resulting award? [Request: Industry-General]

(6) Given the Government’s reserved right to make partial or multiple awards under Section 5.2, will the Government consider structuring any single requirement or defined set of EPICs or Universal Capabilities (Appendices B and D) as separately awardable scope? [Request: Industry-General]

(7) Section 5.2 states that holders of an Enterprise Agreement or Enterprise Contract must propose in accordance with those. Will the Government accept award or ordering through existing small-business-accessible vehicles, such as GSA MAS SIN 54151S, as part of a team’s proposed contracting approach? [Request: Industry-General]

(8) What level of AI use does the Government expect? Is the expectation that end users will directly use AI capabilities within ACWS, and if so, are there priority end-user use cases the Government wants explored? Or is AI expected to be applied primarily to development and sustainment (for example, AI-assisted Agile and CI/CD)?

[Request: Industry-General]

(9) Would the Government support a new-to-market product in obtaining ATO and IL authorization, and provide the hosting path for it? Relatedly, for Requirement 2 (IL-6) and Requirement 3 (VCE refactoring), will the Government provide existing RMF and ATO artifacts, the current IL-5 authorization boundary, and the VCE data volumes and schemas to be migrated, so ATO timelines and migration effort can be scoped accurately? [Request: Industry- Proprietary]

(10) To support a realistic ROM and Notional Schedule, will the Government provide the current sustainment contract number, incumbent name, current annual contract value, staffing by labor category and support tier, and current Tier 2 and Tier 3 ticket volumes? [Request: Industry-Proprietary]

(11) For the Appian platform, who owns the software licenses and the custom application code and IP? What are the license-transfer terms, and will the Government make the current data model, the Appendix A interface specifications, and code repositories available to non-incumbent offerors under NDA to support an accurate migration estimate? [Request: Industry-Proprietary]

(12) will the Government confirm that a company may serve as a subcontractor on more than one competing Prime team without creating an OCI?

1: Immediate focus is on the ACWS backlog and Universal Capabilities.

2: The objective of this call is to solicit concise Solution Briefs for commercial alternatives to the current platform.

3: “Relavance” refers to the Solution Briefs response to the Problem Statement and the stated objectives.

4: Past performance is not an evaluation criteria.

5: There is no specific small business set-aside for this effort.

6: Your solution must address all four Requirements. As stated in the CFS, the Government’s objective is to receive a comprehensive solution for the entire scope of work, either from a single vendor or a team. We are not seeking point solutions for individual requirements.

7: The contract vehicle is the Army Open Solicitation W9128Z-25-S-A002.

8: The offered solutions should incorporate Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning (AI/ML) to reduce the workload on Army contracting professionals.

9: The contractor must supply a timeline for any new ATO required by their solution.

10: The ACWS program currently receives system integration support through an Inter-Agency Agreement with the US Department of Agriculture (USDA). USDA contracts with Synergy (synergybis.com).

11: The Government purchases Appian software licenses under the Army’s Enterprise Licensing Agreement.

12: The Government places no restrictions on how Primes/Teams are organized.

1: Can the government confirm whether commercial SaaS solutions (hosted outside of the DLA hosting environment or cArmy) are eligible for consideration?

2: In a previous Q&A response, the Government noted that ‘limitations in the current LCNC implementation’ are a primary source of technical debt. To ensure offerors propose a ‘holistic architectural solution’ that successfully avoids these scaling constraints, could the Government describe the specific limitations of the current LCNC environment (e.g., lack of native API support, proprietary data lock-in, difficultly scaling, excessive custom code requirements, etc...)?

3: The CFS document outlines a SIPR / Impact Level 6 (IL-6) requirement for ACWS. Are all dependent systems listed in Appendix A: ACWS Technical Interfaces also operate at IL-6? If any dependent systems operate at IL-5, will the Army provide the infrastructure or cloud solutions necessary to securely bridge and transfer data between the IL-5 and IL-6 zones?

4: The CFS describes multiple data sources contributing to contracting workflows, including procurement history, vendor engagement records, FPDS reporting, and contract officer warrant data. Will the Government require the proposed solution to provide a unified, real-time view of contracting data across these sources (e.g., through a consolidated data platform or customer data profile layer), or is batch/periodic reporting sufficient for program management and oversight functions?

5: The solicitation references tracking contractor performance, procurement cycle metrics, and contracting workforce accreditations (warrants). Does the Government anticipate requiring embedded analytics and reporting natively within the contracting workflow platform, or will analytics be handled by a separate reporting tool (e.g., DCSA dashboards, Army BI tools)? If separate, what are the integration requirements?

6: The CFS requires the proposed solution to maintain an ATO in both IL-5 and IL-6 environments. Can the Government clarify what percentage of current ACWS contracting transactions require processing at the IL-6/SIPR level, and confirm whether an offeror may propose a compliant IL-5 solution for the unclassified majority of contracting workflows while providing a phased, milestone-driven roadmap to achieve IL-6 ATO within the base period of performance?

7: The Industry Day Slide 8 Roadmap calls for “AI Human-in-the-Loop” capabilities. Does the Government envision the AI as advisory or capable of autonomous action within defined parameters?

1: SaaS offerings will be considered, provided they meet the capability requirement described throughout, including ability to be implemented at IL6. Since SaaS offerings vary significantly in scope, the Government requests offerors to clearly state whether a SaaS offering meets all requested criteria today or if additional work is required to fully satisfy capability requested, and timeline and cost needed to complete this.

2: The primary sources of technical debt stem from the initial MVP architecture, which now constrains our ability to scale and rapidly integrate new capabilities. This includes limitations in the current LCNC implementation, challenges with the VCE merger, and difficulties in establishing seamless, real-time data flows with financial systems. We are seeking a holistic architectural solution to these issues.

3: The CFS document outlines all dependent systems in Appendix A: ACWS Technical Interfaces; however, the government does not expect that all of these operate at IL-6. The government expects that ACWS IL-6 will only interface with equivalent IL-6 systems (e.g. GFEBS-SA); it does not plan to transfer data between the IL-5 and IL-6 zones. For some systems (e..g. CLS, SAM, etc.) the expectation is that the solution operate in a standalone mode without requirement to interfae with a system on IL-5

4: Solutions must establish secure, automated, real-time data exchange with legacy financial repositories as well as transform raw contracting data into an active strategic asset while maintaining integrations with the Clause Logic Service within the secure Procurement Integrated Enterprise Environment (PIEE).

5: The required capabilities are outlined in Appendix B and D.

6: ACWS does not currently have an IL6 capability. It is in the prioritized backlog on Slide 15 of the Industry Day briefing.

7: Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning (AI/ML) are expected to reduce the workload on Army contracting professionals. Advisory or autonomous action will be considered.