Attachment_2_-_Geospatial_Shared_Services_DRAFT_SOW_1.pdf

STATEMENT OF WORK

Federal Geographic Data Committee (FGDC)

Support for Geospatial Shared Services

1. INTRODUCTION

The Geospatial Data Act of 2018 (GDA) establishes the Federal Geographic Data Committee (FGDC) as the coordinating body for Federal geospatial activities and it is in this capacity that this interagency body will lead efforts to establish the National Spatial Data Infrastructure (NSDI) and synchronize related activities across agencies and throughout the geospatial community. The FGDC is co-chaired by the Department of the Interior (DOI) and is supported in contract execution for these activities by the FGDC Office of the Secretariat, hosted within the United States Geological Survey. The FGDC serves as the lead for Federal Shared Services and cross-agency coordination for marketplace solutions.

For the purposes of this Indefinite Delivery/Indefinite Quantity (IDIQ) contract, the program management, administration, policy, standards and technical support required is outlined in the general service areas described below. This requirement is for multiple-award IDIQ contracts where the contractor will be required to not only work with agency partners, but also with other IDIQ contract holders in the delivery of the tasks/deliverables specified at the Task Order level.

Firm-Fixed Price Performance-Based task orders covering geospatial technology and related services issued under this contract will specify the nature of the work, the end products, the desired results of work performed, deliverables, milestone schedule, phases, and metrics to be used to evaluate successful performance.

It is the intention of the FGDC that this contracting vehicle will be utilized to develop tasks through coordination of the FGDC member agencies for work related to furthering Federal objectives for creation, management, and delivery of geospatial data, technology, and services available through the NSDI, GeoPlatform.gov and GDA implementation activities.

2. OBJECTIVES

Key objectives are:

● FGDC Committee Support – provide programmatic, planning, administrative and facilitation support to implement the GDA.

● National Geospatial Advisory Committee (NGAC) Support – provide facilitation and administrative support for the NGAC.

● National Geospatial Data Asset Data Themes (NGDA) – coordinate development, maintenance, and dissemination of geospatial data.

● National Spatial Data Infrastructure – provide programmatic, planning, coordination and administration support services to ensure that geospatial data from multiple governmental and non-governmental sources (including the NGDA lead covered agencies, State, local, and tribal governments, the private sector, and institutions of higher education) is available and easily integrated to enhance the understanding of the physical and cultural world as well as advance the development of National and Global spatial data infrastructures.

● Geospatial Data Standards – provide programmatic and administrative support to develop, establish and promulgate standards, develop content and specification standards for metadata and geospatial services.

● Geospatial Platform Support – operate and maintain an electronic service that provides access to geospatial data and metadata for geospatial data.

Deliverable products must comply with task order specifications, data management, metrics development and reporting, high-level communication skills, and community support.

3. SCOPE OF WORK

The scope of this effort includes a full range of support for programmatic, administrative, facilitation, communication, architecture, data standards and technical services. These efforts will focus on development of GDA governance, planning, policy, procedures, standards and enabling users to search, discover, integrate and use geospatial data products and services to meet complex mission requirements across multiple organizations. These missions include both business and scientific mission processes and requirements. All services provided and products delivered must comply with the Government security, Section 508 and FISMA requirement at the moderate level.

Specifically, the overarching scope of work includes:

● Support for program and project management

● Support for governance and strategic planning

● Support for portfolio, data, and metadata management

● Support for standards development and administration

● Support for development, integration, documentation, and maintenance

● Support for cloud-based hosting environments

● Support for architecture planning

● Support for technology operations and security

● Support for geospatial analysis and analytics

● Support for training and education

● Support for an engagement and collaboration with agencies and partners on Program capabilities, requirements and utilization.

3.1. CONTRACT REQUIREMENTS

The goal of this effort is to obtain contract support for the ongoing maintenance and implementation of the GDA as described within this Statement of Work (SOW) and task orders to be issued during the lifecycle of the IDIQ. Contractors will be required to work with the FGDC partner agencies, stakeholders and other IDIQ contract holders in the delivery of the tasks/deliverables specified at the Task Order level.

• The contractor shall perform programmatic, administrative, communication, facilitation, planning, coordination and reporting services;

• The contractor shall perform all the technical activities required for the successful and timely completion of highly complex and unique tasks involving the management of geospatial technology areas of focus described herein;

• The contractor shall demonstrate successful contract management on a contract of this size and complexity;

• The contractor shall collaborate successfully with geographically dispersed project teams and synchronize activities across multiple task orders and contractor teams;

• The contractor shall demonstrate experience designing and implementing open source interoperable semantically enabled platforms conformant with Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC), International Standards Organization (ISO) World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) standards in secure cloud environments;

• The contractor shall work with national and international voluntary standards organizations to support FGDC standards development.

• The contractor shall demonstrate participation as a member of a Liaison level A organization (e.g. ANSI, OGC, W3C, IEEE etc.) with an agreement with the International Standards Organization to support standards development.

• The contractor shall have demonstrated experience implementing a software platform that seamlessly and securely integrates COTS products with open-source technologies;

• The contractor shall manage, collaborate and adapt Agile, and similar iterative software development methodologies for best fit to project scope, scale and personnel;

• The contractor shall have experience and capability in information, application, platform, Cloud and network security architectures and implementation;

• The contractor shall have experience in successfully migrating a platform from one cloud hosting platform to another with a minimum of impact to the users;

• The contractor shall interact with end users to assist them in identifying and specifying requirements;

• The contractor shall support the data management and portfolio management processes including characterization of data maturity and quality and integrated reporting.

For task Orders issued under this contract, the Contractor shall, independently and not as an agent of the Government, furnish all the necessary qualified personnel, material, equipment, and facilities, not otherwise provided by the Government.

3.2. Contract Management

No separate task order shall be issued for the contractor’s program management and administrative functions; these costs must be included in the negotiated price of each task order.

The Contractor shall provide technical program and project management, staff supervision, and administrative support to fulfill the requirements of this contract. The contractor is responsible to manage, direct, supervise, organize and coordinate all Contractor technical support activities.

Accurate performance and financial reports and invoices regarding performance on this contract are required. The contractor shall also provide any other reports, documentation, and deliverables as required by contract task orders.

3.3. Skills Required

The following section of the SOW describes the general knowledge, skills, requirements and tasks that shall be required and accomplished to meet these requirements. Further specific details of these requirements will be established and defined at the Task Order level.

The contractor shall have demonstrated experience and provide support staff meeting the following requirements:

● Experience in coordinating and working with multiple federal agencies, governmental

(State, Local, Tribal, international) and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) including academia, not-for -profit, commercial entities and business functions that utilize geospatial capabilities;

● Knowledge of the Geospatial Data Act of 2018, Federal Advisory Committee Act, OMB Circular A-119, OMB Circular A-16 and the A-16 Supplemental Guidance, and OMB Circular A-130;

● Demonstrated experience in program management, administration, strategic planning, governance, policy, developing partnerships, business processes, including budgeting and personnel management, portfolio and project management, capital planning, data and systems architecture, audits and reports;

● Demonstrated experience developing and supporting geospatial architecture, voluntary open standards, integration and interoperability standards;

● Demonstrated experience defining and implementing geospatial architectures, business processes and supporting their execution through the development and integration of online solutions;

● Demonstrated experience in spatial data management, data quality, and data portfolio management;

● Demonstrated experience developing and managing complex geospatial systems and platforms utilizing Rapid Application Development and Agile methodologies;

● Demonstrated experience in machine-readable approaches and solutions, artificial intelligence, machine learning, large language models and related technologies;

● Demonstrated experience in designing, architecting, developing and delivering, geospatial web and cloud-oriented services, interoperable Platform as a service (PaaS) as well as managing a cloud-based infrastructure as a Service (IAAS) with a security posture at FISMA Moderate or higher;

● Demonstrated experience in conducting usability assessments, requirements gathering sessions and workshops;

● Demonstrated experience developing and utilizing geospatial metadata, data, applications, geospatial-formats, services and related technologies based upon W3C, ISO, OGC, Federal, industry, and other standards;

● Demonstrated experience providing community support including developing and providing user guides, training, marketplace capabilities, outreach, collaboration;

● Demonstrated experience with Federal information security, architecture, section 508, and privacy regulations ensuring secure implementation in commercial and government cloud services, following FISMA and FedRAMP compliance.

● Demonstrated experience in working with the technologies listed below.

GIS Apps & Platforms Programming Databases Web & Content

Delivery Open Data Sharing

Open Web Mapping

OSGEO Applications Ajax MongoDB GeoNode GeoNetwork PyGeo ESRI GIS Suite AngularJS PostgreSQL Plone and Zope, Pycsw MapServer GeoNetworks Bootstrap Neo4j Nginx, Squid XML/XSD deegree

QGIS, TerriaJS Javascript JDBC Mapbender

RDF, OWL,

SKOS OpenLayers

CKAN, Socrata, DKAN jQuery MySQL

HTML, CSS,

JSP/JSF GDAL Mapbender

Ubuntu, CentOS Node.js PostGIS Google Analytics

DCAT, JSON,

CSW PyWPS

Redhat, VMWare Perl, PHP Oracle Drupal SOAP GeoServer Mac, Windows, iOS, Androd CI/CD Pipelines SQLite Wordpress Github, GitLab OpenStreetMap Postfix, Mailman

Python SOLR Apache/Tomcat Microsoft 365 Open API's Docker, Kubernetes

Ruby on Rails CartoDB SOLR, Elastic Search

Google Apps Mapbox

3.4. Services Required

Task orders under this IDIQ will be issued to provide and define specific requirements as stated below.

3.4.1. Geospatial Programmatic, Governance, and Strategic Planning

Task orders may require the contractor to provide program management, administration, coordination, consultancy, policy and guidance development to comply with the GDA, in OMB Circular A-119, support creating the accountability, quality and effectiveness of policy, guidance, communication, coordination, studies, tools, technologies and strategies for the FGDC.

• Task orders may require the contractor to provide support for meetings, workshops, working groups, and other elements associated with managing, governing, planning, coordinating, operating and support FGDC activities;

• Task orders may require the contractor to provide subject matter expertise to guide, participate in, or facilitate groups working to complete studies, assessments and evaluations, and develop solutions that achieve common goals;

• Task orders may require the contractor to engage with FGDC stakeholders to coordinate and document including documenting benefits, studies, return on investment, economic impact, gaps and barriers from geospatial programs, the NSDI, and the GeoPlatform.gov;

• Task orders may require the contractor to engage with FGDC stakeholders to coordinate and document including documenting benefits, return on investments, economic impacts, gaps and barriers from geospatial programs, the NSDI, and the GeoPlatform.gov;

• Task orders may require the contractor to promote sustainable governance and collaboration by sharing federal and non-federal geospatial assets, products and services and engaging and supporting communities across stakeholders;

• Task orders may require the contractor to facilitate and lead meetings to include identifying locations, scheduling, inviting and tracking attendees, meeting facilitation, preparing meeting materials, taking minutes, tracking action items, and processing/publishing proceedings;

• Task orders may require the contractor to conduct analysis, provide reports and visual graphics support to create materials, participate in drafting and editing documents, formatting text and graphics, designing attractive outreach and training materials, activity status reporting presentations, and related deliverables in both print and digital formats.

3.4.2. Support Geospatial Investment and Capital Planning and Reporting

Task order may require the contractor to provide project management support for OMB Circular A-130, and A-11 Budget planning the Capital Planning and Investment Control process, including:

• Task orders may require the contractor to calculate, and report earned value metrics;

● Task orders may require the contractor to develop and maintain required investment artifacts (i.e Alternative Analysis, cost-benefit analyses, risk management plans and registers, and operational analyses). This will require the contractor to develop documentation, processes, and supporting systems to ensure geospatial services, and efforts are properly defined and fully scoped, and are executed on schedule and within budget. The contractor will be required to have expertise in project management software such as MS Project, FOLIO, or others;

● Task orders may require the contractor to evaluate cost for efficiencies and economies of scale through collaborative acquisition, development, and management of geospatial assets.

3.4.3. Support for the Geospatial Portfolio, Data and Metadata Management Task orders may require the contractor to support the development and management of a geospatial portfolio (e.g., data, applications, services) and related information from multiple sources, providing tools for data and service assessment and management, and assisting in the development of processes to ensure a high level of interoperability. As key drivers for Federal geospatial portfolio management, contractor familiarity with the Geospatial Data Act of 2018, OMB Circular A-16, related open data and open science statutory, regulatory and administrative law is required.

● Task orders may require the contractor to provide program support for geospatial stewardship to ensure accountability and transparency of geospatial and related investments through portfolio management;

● Task orders may require the contractor to support studies, assessments and evaluations, development of policy, guidance, promulgation and implementation of data and metadata standards to improve data integration capabilities; coordinate the development, and preparation of data and metadata;

● Task orders may require the contractor to update existing metadata records and add new records; update/augment metadata records with new data elements to reflect the evolution of standards;

● Task orders may require the contractor to provide training and documentation on metadata and data creation and management; coordinate data extraction, validation, and ingestion;

● Task orders may require the contractor to coordinate the loading, configuration, operation, maintenance, optimization, and upgrading of supporting software; and support and implement standards and processes that establish data quality and information assurance as criteria for data assets;

● Task orders may require the contractor to support translating metadata between standards such as the FGDC Content Standard for Digital Geospatial Metadata (CSDGM) metadata, ISO 19115 and Data Catalog Vocabulary (DCAT) and other open data formats;

● Task orders may require the contractor to support data from multiple sources and may include a variety of formats including visual (maps), tabular, textual or other geospatial content;

● Task orders may require the contractor to assist in the data assessment and management process, providing subject matter expertise for evaluating the maturity of data sets, web services, quality control, and recommendations for data re-use.

3.4.4. Support for Architecture and Standards

Task orders may require the contractor to provide geospatial architecture and standards planning, consulting and support services to assist in establishing, documenting, maintaining, and maturing an architecture planning process that complies with Federal and agency guidance. These may include architectural and technical oversight engagement activities including long and short-term participation with development teams providing full system development life cycle (SDLC) support, mentoring, and architectural design and implementation support with consideration for application performance.

• Task orders may require the contractor to provide enterprise or system level architecture thought leadership and technical implementation expertise in the design, development, and governance of Service-Oriented Architectures, Web-Oriented Architectures, and Managed Hosting and Cloud Computing Architectures for a large public institution.

● Task orders may require the contractor to identify, document, recommend, and prioritize candidate business and service segment architectures supporting, and implementing full value from enterprise architecture

● Task orders may require the contractor to provide support for standards program management, policy guidance, training, tracking, and life-cycle management.

● Task orders may require the contractor to provide subject matter expertise to ensure products meet enterprise and geospatial technology standards for conducting, sustaining, and adapting to the business mission;

● Task orders may require the contractor to draft, coordinate, maintain and support initial versions of segment architectures for core business and enterprise services, such as records management, workflow and tracking, business intelligence;

● Task orders may require the contractor to identify and recommend industry best practices, and where feasible, collect existing information on the selected enterprise services segments through documentation reviews, interviews;

● Task orders may require the contractor to assist in ensuring existing geospatial infrastructure is utilized most effectively and efficiently;

• Task orders may require the contractor to develop, maintain and integrate lexical ontologies, taxonomies and controlled vocabularies to support enhanced semantic and geospatial search approaches and the technologies that support them.

• Task orders may require the contractor to provide expertise in data organization, indexing methods and security procedures for specific user applications.

3.4.5. Website and Geospatial Web Services Development, Documentation, and Maintenance

Task orders may require the contractor to develop websites and or web services for geospatial data search, discovery, access, and retrieval from external data systems and web-based applications. Web-related task orders will require the contractor develop and/or operate and maintain:

• Task orders may require the contractor to develop websites including user interface design and customization, and collection, tracking and reporting of usage statistics;

• Task orders may require the contractor to develop, operate and or maintain various web services, APIs, workflows, crawlers or employing other harvesting mechanisms;

• Task orders may require the contractor to data interchange schemas and other documentation;

• Task orders may require the contractor to service interfaces utilizing open standards, OGC Web Services, open Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) and or Representational State Transfer (REST) used in other applications or systems.

3.4.6. Support Geospatial Applications, Services and Platforms Task orders may require the contractor to provide support for NSDI, GeoPlatform.gov and or stakeholder geospatial applications, databases, platform or system/hosting environment administration, technical applications engineering, design, administration and programming, geospatial expertise, end geospatial user support services, and development and deployment of mobile applications, expertise and require contractor staff to support the entire life cycle development process from requirements identification to design to coding, testing and implementation to maintenance and technical support. The contractor will prepare application-level documentation; write code, system, and user level test plans, develop/acquire data to test code implementation, and assist in managing changes.

• Task orders may require the contractor to virtually integrate a complex search across multiple data and image catalogs through APIs and other innovative approaches for catalogs that have high rates of data change per day;

• Task orders may require the contractor to design and develop data and application management processes and tools, applications and services and ensure functional continuity across releases;

• Task orders may require the contractor to provide maintenance, operation, security and access to the GeoPlatform.gov and other information systems at the FISMA Moderate level using a combination of Commercial-Off-The Shelf (COTS) and opensource GIS technology solutions.

• Task orders may require the contractor to enhance usability and adoption of the GeoPlatform.gov through partner engagement and outreach;

• Task orders may require the contractor to provide development, operations, maintenance and potential migration support for the GeoPlatform.gov for access to centrally accessed, remotely managed, common geospatial data, services, applications, and infrastructure and online geospatial and data collaboration tools.

• Task orders may require the contractor to develop and administer geospatial data or portfolio management applications software and associated tools;

• Task orders may require the contractor to support agile development of geospatial applications, services and or platforms for the acquisition, quality control and management of data, tracking and measurement and ensure reliable data retrieval;

• Task orders may require the contractor to advise on software technology and database or application design as it relates to projects;

• Task orders may require the contractor to support geospatial applications, databases, and services and the coordination in loading, configuring, operating, maintaining, optimizing, and upgrading supporting software/infrastructure.

• Task orders may require the contractor to support the natural language processing algorithms to populate and maintain the registries.

• Task orders may require the contractor to develop tools to assist users in visualizing data and analyzing data, as well as creating data mashups resulting in reliable, embeddable visualizations

3.4.7. Support for Operations, Maintenance, and Security in a Cloud-based Hosting Environment

Task orders may require the contractor to coordinate systems, applications, services and content that are hosted in a cloud-based environment, and/or the instantiation of a cloud-based environment (CBE) for newly developed items. Cloud hosting and related services shall be furnished by the Government through a separate acquisition vehicle.

• Task orders may require the contractor to support a FISMA Low or Moderate CBE for an entire platform, for selected applications, or for storage and retrieval of data and other content;

• Task orders may require the contractor to establish and or support the monitoring, maintenance, backup and recovery of data and services in a CBE;

• Task orders may require the contractor to support, either directly or through development of applications and services, mechanisms to assist users in storing data and other content in the CBE, as well as retrieving data, including through customized data extraction routines and search/discovery interfaces;

• Task orders may require the contractor provide for regular or continuous backups or hot sites, or mirrors, and may include contingency planning for recovery following a catastrophic system failure;

• Task orders may require the contractor to establish, configure, implement, and manage both production and public facing geospatial applications, services or systems, in CBE

• Task orders may require the contractor to maintain an existing CBE configuration or migrate from one hosting environment to another;

• Task orders may require the contractor to manage software licenses, hardware and software components, install new softwareoperating systems patches and software upgrades, manage user accounts, and monitor storage subsystems, establish and maintain system documentation including hardware and software diagrams and configurations, data dictionaries, standard operating procedures (e.g., for installation, disaster recovery, etc.), user guides, scripts, and code repositories;

• Task orders may require monitoring of critical computer systems for availability, intrusion detection, and operating system performance;

• Task orders may require researching and developing security specifications; designing, building, and implementing firewalls; participating in security audits;

• Task orders may require updating security documentation related to Assessment and Accreditation; and reviewing vulnerabilities and providing recommendations and support to close outstanding Plans of Action and Milestones (POA&Ms);

• Task orders may require participation in security training on their contingency roles and responsibilities with respect to the information system and participate in “tabletop” exercises of the contingency plan for the information system using functional exercises for moderate impact systems;

• Task orders may require the contractor to coordinate systems, networks, facility, and security requirements to test patches, upgrades and new products as they become available and ensure that systems are patched and kept to the current releases to prevent vulnerabilities.

3.4.8. Support for Users/Help Desk

Task orders may require the contractor to provide customer assistance for help requests or information. Such assistance may include end-user technical support for standards requirements, specific applications or functions; requests from agencies and stakeholders in creating interoperability between systems; or requests for assistance in reconciling data problems. The contractor may be required to support the following:

● Task orders may require the contractor to assist stakeholders in understanding methods for applying geospatial capabilities to business processes, and how they can leverage and align business processes with existing service offerings;

• Task orders may require the contractor to establish standard operating procedures, user guides, videos and tutorials, training, education and tutorials,. including those for guiding support staff in triaging requests for help to appropriate resources

• Task orders may require the contractor to troubleshoot and diagnosis of problems in, Windows, Linux, Mac-OS, mobile and Cloud environments and require support for both hardware and software for geospatial application clients and servers.

• Task orders may require the contractor to introduce new tools and methodologies directly to users and determine training needs in order to enhance development and improve business as well as system processes.

• Task orders may require the contractor to develop and introduce and evaluate processes and tools directly with users and determine training needs in order to enhance user understanding.

● Task orders may require the contractor to support a collaborative end-user environment, providing tools to support communities in uploading, retrieving, assessing, and re-using data; maintaining summary-level statistics and metrics; and other community-requested functions. These tools typically will be off-the-shelf and/or Open Source based.

• Task orders may require the contractor to conduct training through web-based, workshops, and other methods.

3.4.9. Support for Geospatial Analysis, Modeling and Mapping Analysis

Task orders may require the contractor to conduct complex geospatial analysis, modeling, and or mapping; integrating local, national, regional and international statistical, geospatial and or other data to respond to mission driven analysis requirements. These geospatial analyses must be well documented in accordance with policy and standards and be able to be reproduced by third parties.

• Task orders may require production of online maps, charts and other graphics, standards-compliant metadata, and involve a combination of both structured and unstructured data;

• Task orders may require assessment and recommendation of geoscientific technology and data management best practices for specific purposes, perform analyses, and assist in defining user-specified functional requirements as they relate to geospatial data management, applications, and services;

• Task orders may require the contractor provide metadata, synthesis, analysis, modeling, and visualization support;

• Task orders may require the contractor to virtually retrieve and integrate complex search across multiple data and image catalogs through APIs and other approaches for high-rate data exchange.

4. QUALITY ASSURANCE AND QUALITY CONTROL

Performance measures used to evaluate contractor performance and/or acceptability of deliverables may include, but may not be limited to, the following examples:

● Accuracy - Work products shall be accurate in presentation, technical content, and adherence to accepted elements of style.

● Clarity - Work products shall be clear and concise. Diagrams shall be easy to understand and be relevant to the supporting narrative.

● Compliance with requirements - All work products must satisfy the requirements of the

Statement of Work/Performance-based Work Statement (PWS).

● File editing - All text and diagrammatic files shall be editable by the Government.

● Format - Work products shall be submitted in hard copy (where applicable) and in media mutually agreed upon prior to submission. Hard copy formats shall follow any specified directives or manuals.

● Timeliness - Work products shall be submitted on or before the due date specified in the Statement of Work/PWS or as described in assigned tasks or submitted in accordance with a later scheduled date determined by or approved by the Government.

● Response time – Response time for developed or modified systems, applications or services shall be within acceptable tolerances as determined by users and Government task order managers.

● Timely closure of trouble tickets – User assistance shall be provided within timeframes specified by the task order Statement of Work/PWS.

● Metrics reporting – Contractor will manage the collection of metrics developed with the government and report these metrics on a regular basis through an online executive dashboard, and other digital and hardcopy means.

● Cooperation - Contractors shall be able to work efficiently and effectively with other teams to integrate solutions and minimize impacts to projects and schedules; and, ensure any new actions are approved by the government prior to their initiation, due to the integrated nature of task order goals.

The contractor shall establish and maintain a complete Quality Control Program/Plan to ensure that the requirements of the contract and each task order are provided as specified. The contractor shall develop and implement procedures to identify, prevent, and ensure non-recurrence of defective or non-conforming services. The contractor’s Government approved Quality Control Plan (QCP) is the means to assure that work complies with the requirements of the contract and issued Task Orders and is based on the premise that the contractor, not the government, is responsible for managing and ensuring that quality controls meet the terms of the contract and/or Task Order(s).

The contractor’s QCP shall be delivered to the COR and CO within 15 days after award. An electronic comprehensive written QCP shall be submitted to the CO and COR within 5 working days when changes are made thereafter. After acceptance of the QCP the contractor shall receive the Contracting Officer’s acceptance in writing of any proposed change to the QCP. The contractor shall revise their QCP annually. The government will review the contractor’s QCP and any necessary changes annually to ensure all requirements are being met.

The Contractor and the COR shall monitor the working relationship between the Government and Contractor personnel to ensure that services do NOT develop into a personal service relationship as defined in FAR 37.104. Questions concerning this matter shall immediately be referred to the Contracting Officer.

In addition to the contractor’s QCP, the Government, through its COR or other designated technical representative, will also monitor and document the Contractor’s performance/activities.

The Government may monitor the Contractor’s performance of routine functional requirements and outputs, as well as the milestones and deliverables of specific project requirements as deemed necessary to ensure acceptable progress and compliance with contract requirements. The Government may use a variety of methods to evaluate the Contractor’s performance.

Performance measures will be defined at the Task Order level. The Government will document surveillance activities. When performance falls below acceptable quality levels as defined in each task order, designated contractor representative or Program Manager (PM) will be notified and action taken. The Government is required to records performance annually in the Contractor Performance Assessment Reporting System (CPARS).

5. STAFFING

The contractor shall maintain a management/staffing plan that provides information regarding the overall corporate structure and implementation of the proposed effort within the contractor’s organization. Responsibilities, authorities, and accountability shall be well defined so as to provide a clear understanding of the contractor’s ability to support the Statement of Work (SOW) and the contract task orders. A staffing matrix is required which specifies the key personnel, their roles, authorities, accountability, summary of areas of expertise, and location. The contractor’s staffing plan should indicate how the work will be managed, directed, and administered/implemented. The staffing plan must include a methodology for the recruitment of highly skilled technical resources, and a corporate strategy for retaining personnel. For positions and functions not designated as key, the contractor must describe skills and capabilities and minimum qualifications that will be required for the positions.

The contractor shall provide managerial and supervisory capabilities to ensure effective performance of the contract and issued Task Orders. A contractor representative such as a Task Leader will function as a designated point of contact, and perform supervision and will be responsible for monitoring the work assignments of contractor personnel and requested deliverables. At no time shall the Government supervise contractor personnel.

The contractor shall provide fully trained personnel, be required to have an ongoing training program, and be responsible for contractor employees acquiring the knowledge and skills necessary to support new technology, the scope of the IDIQ SOW and the scope of issued Task Orders. When advantageous to the Government, training may be provided at no cost to the contractor, or may be paid for by the contractor and reimbursed by the Government if the training is unique to the organization issuing the task order. The Government will provide training exclusively for tasks that require knowledge of systems unique to the organization issuing the task order.

Professional and highly skilled technical personnel are major factors in the successful performance of this contract. The Contractor shall provide fully qualified staff capable of producing the required outcomes and results for meeting the specific performance standards of each task order. Contractor employees shall have the knowledge, skills, and certifications necessary to perform the required services in the task.

Individual task orders may contain requirements for designating selected staff positions as key, and also may require that key positions be filled within a prescribed time-frame following the departure of an incumbent. Key Personnel substitutions shall be handled in accordance with USGS Clause GS1330 - Key Personnel.

6. TRANSITION SERVICES AND PLANS

Transition-in/Phase-in will be needed for any Task Orders which require continuation of services.

The contractor shall complete all phase-in efforts in accordance with the contractor’s proposed transition approach/plan and final plan that is to be submitted and reviewed/approved by the Contracting Officer’s Representative (COR) upon Task Order award (to include the Government's validation of the Transition Plan, containing critical events, schedules and approach). Contractor shall be prepared to begin transition performance immediately following approval of the transition plan, and to have transition completed prior to the expiration of the current Task Order’s end date. Specific dates for transition will be defined at the Task Order level. The contractor shall submit a weekly status report during the phase-in period to the COR beginning within the first week the transition. The status report shall address those items identified as being key to the success of the transition as identified in the plan.

NOTE: Awardee and incumbent contractor are expected to work together during the transition phases to ensure continuity of services as applicable. The incumbent contractor recognizes that the services provided by this contract are vital to the Government's overall effort, that the continuity thereof must be maintained in a consistently high level without interruption. The successor, be it the Government or another contractor, will need phase-in assistance by the incumbent contractor, and that the incumbent contractor must give their best effort and cooperation in order to affect an orderly and efficient transition to a successor.

Transition Out-- At the end of the period of performance of any issued Task Orders that will require a follow-on Task Order and continuity of services, the incumbent contractor shall transition activities to the incoming contractor with minimal disruption of services to the government. The contractor shall maintain sufficient qualified staff to meet all requirements of this effort. The contractor shall submit a written phase--out plan to the COR no later than ninety

(90) calendar days prior to the expiration of the Task Order period, unless otherwise agreed upon.

The plan shall detail phase-out activities to assure continuity of operations and the execution of a smooth and timely transition. Phase-out activities shall be coordinated through the COR. The outgoing contractor shall submit a weekly status report of phase-out activities to the COR beginning the 7th calendar day following the award -of a successor contract and/or Task Order until otherwise notified by the COR to discontinue.

7. HSPD 12/CONTRACTOR PERSONNEL SECURITY AND SUITABILITY

REQUIREMENTS

Performance of this contract and issued Task Orders may require contractor personnel to have a Federal government-issued Personal Identity Verification (PIV) credential before being allowed unsupervised access to a DOI/USGS facility and/or information system. The COR will be the requesting official and will make arrangements through a DOI Access Card Sponsor for personal identity verification and DOI Access Card issuance. Upon completion of credentials process, Contractor will be required to log on to the Government Furnished Equipment (GFE) at least once per month in order to keep credentials activated.

At least two weeks before the start of Task Order performance, the Contractor must identify all contractor and subcontractor personnel who will require [physical and/or logical] access for performance of work under the Task Order. Physical Access means routine, unescorted or unmonitored access to nonpublic areas of a federally-controlled facility. Logical Access means routine, unsupervised access to a Level 3 or 4 federally-controlled information system. The Contractor must make their personnel available at the place and time specified by the COR or DOI Access Card Sponsor in order to initiate screening and background investigations. The following forms and inquiries, or their equivalent, will be used to initiate the credentialing process:

• OPM Standard Form 85 or 85P

• OF 306

• National Criminal History Check (NCHC) (local procedures may require the fingerprinting to be done at a police station; in this case, any charges are to be borne by the contractor)

• Release to Obtain Credit Information

• PIV card application (web-based)

Before starting work under the Task Order, a National Criminal History Check (NCHC) will be initiated to verify the identity of the individual applying for clearance and to determine the individual's suitability for the position. If the NCHC adjudication is favorable, a DOI Access Card will be issued for that individual. If the adjudication is unfavorable, the credentials will not be issued and the contractor must make other arrangements for performance of the work. In the event of a disagreement between the Contractor and the Government concerning the suitability of an individual to perform work under this contract, DOI shall have the right of final determination.

Contractor employees must give, and authorize others to give, full, frank, and truthful answers to relevant and material questions needed to reach a suitability determination. Refusal or failure to furnish or authorize provision of information may constitute grounds for denial or revocation of credentials. Government personnel may contact the contractor personnel being screened or investigated in person, by telephone or in writing, and the Contractor must ensure they are available for such contact.

Alternatively, if an individual has already been credentialed by another agency through OPM, and that credential has not yet expired, further investigation may not be necessary. In that case, the contractor must provide the COR with documentation that supports the individual's credentialed status.

Contractor employees who have been successfully adjudicated will be issued DOI Access Cards, which must be activated at a USAccess Credentialing Center. Those Contractor employees not located within a reasonable travel time of a USAccess Credentialing Center will be screened and issued alternate credentials, such as temporary access badges.

During performance of the contract and/or Task Order, the Contractor must keep the COR apprised of changes in personnel to ensure that performance is not delayed by compliance with credentialing processes. Cards that have been lost, damaged, or stolen must be reported to the COR and Issuing Office within 24 hours. If reissuance of expired credentials is needed, it must be coordinated through the COR.

At the end of contract and/or Task Order performance, or when a contractor employee is no longer working under this contract and/or Task Order, the Contractor must ensure that all identification cards are returned to the COR.

This requirement must be incorporated into any subcontracts that require subcontractor personnel to have routine unsupervised access to a federally-controlled facility for more than 180 calendar days or any unsupervised access to a federally-controlled Level 3 or 4 information system.

8. PLACE OF PERFORMANCE

Majority of work will be at the contractor’s location. However, this contract may result in task orders requiring contractors to be located anywhere in the United States or its territories.

Contractor personnel will be located remote, not within the government facilities. The contractor shall identify and have local staff available within the Washington D.C. metropolitan area for local travel to the USGS Reston, VA location within 24 hours of being requested.

9. HOURS OF SERVICE

Generally, hours of service in which contractor personnel need to be available to USGS staff will be between 8:00 AM and 5:00 PM in the time zone in which the contractor is located. Some functions, however, may require extended coverage, for example, for user support services or with government or other required persons located in different time zones. Requirements for non-standard hours of service will be specified in individual task orders, including requirements for on-call service.

10. TRAVEL

Travel may be required and may be domestic or foreign. Requirements for travel will be specified within individual task orders. When travel is required, the contractor must have approval prior to travel from the COR and Contracting Officer and shall be reimbursed for actual transportation costs and travel allowances of contractor employees in accordance with the travel cost principles in FAR 31.205 and Federal Travel Regulations. Charges exceeding the amounts established in the Government Travel Regulations for individuals engaged in comparable functions will be disallowed as unreasonable unless approved in advance by the Contracting Officer.

11. GOVERNMENT FURNISHED DOCUMENTATION

Relevant guidelines, rules of behavior, handbooks, standard operating procedures, and other documentation necessary for the performance of the contract and issued task orders will be provided by the organization driving the task order.

12. GOVERNMENT FURNISHED EQUIPMENT AND PROPERTY

The Government may provide, without cost to the contractor, access to facilities, equipment, materials, licenses, software, systems hosting, and other services as specified within individual task orders. Government furnished property (GFP) will be identified at the Task Order level and shall be used by the contractor only in the performance of this contract and any issued Task Orders. No expectation of personal privacy or ownership shall be expected. All training, system authentication, credentialing, system updates, and other conditions required of contractor staff by the government to issue, maintain, update, and operate Government Furnished Equipment (GFE) will be met and managed within designated timelines and reported to the COR. The contractor will be liable for any issued GFP and/or damages to any issued GFP.

Cloud service infrastructure, as applied under this contract, will be Government-furnished through separate contracting vehicles.

13. DELIVERABLES

Deliverables for each task order may include, but are not limited to, status reports, presentations, analyses, project plans, computer code, and other work products. Additionally, deliverables may include usable functionality resulting from the development, management, maintenance, or operation of applications, software, and content. Actual Task Order deliverables will be defined at the Task Order level.

14. PERIOD OF PERFORMANCE

The period of performance of the IDIQ contracts will be August 16, 2025 through August 15, 2030.

Upon cancellation/expiration of the IDIQ contract(s) all outstanding orders under the terms and conditions herein may continue for a period of no longer than 12 months after which time any remaining services will be canceled unless an unexpected delay such as a Government delay shall occur.

The period of performance for each Task Order will be defined at the Task Order level.