Attachment 9 VISP QASP.docx

DISA VISP QASP

Appendix G

QUALITY ASSURANCE SURVEILLANCE PLAN (QASP)

Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) Voice Internet Service Provider (VISP) Regions 1-4

1. Contract Title: DISA VISP Regions 1-4

2. Purpose:

This QASP provides a systematic method to evaluate performance for the stated contract. This QASP explains the following:

· What will be monitored?

· How monitoring will take place.

· Who will conduct the monitoring?

· How monitoring efforts and results will be documented.

This QASP does not detail how the contractor accomplishes the work. Rather, the QASP is created with the premise that the contractor is responsible for management and quality control actions to meet the terms of the contract. It is the Government’s responsibility to be objective, fair, and consistent in evaluating performance. In addition, the QASP should recognize that unforeseen and uncontrollable situations may occur.

This QASP is a “living document” and the Government may review and revise it on a regular basis. Updates shall ensure that the QASP remains a valid, useful, and enforceable document. Copies of the original QASP and revisions shall be provided to the contractor and Government officials implementing surveillance activities.

3. Roles and Responsibilities:

The following personnel shall oversee and coordinate surveillance activities.

Program/Project Manager (PM) – The PM provides program oversight and supports the COR’s performance assessment activities.

Contracting Officer (KO) – The KO shall ensure performance of all necessary actions for effective contracting, ensure compliance with the contract terms, and shall safeguard the interests of the United States in the contractual relationship. The KO shall also ensure that the contractor receives impartial, fair, and equitable treatment under this contract. Determine the final assessment of the contractor’s performance.

Contracting Officer’s Representative (COR) – The COR is responsible for providing continuous technical oversight of the contractor’s performance. The COR uses the QASP to conduct the oversight/surveillance process. The COR shall keep a Quality Assurance file that accurately documents the contractor’s actual performance. The purpose is to ensure that the contractor meets the performance standards contained in the contract. The COR is responsible for reporting early identification of performance problems to the KO. The COR is required to provide an annual performance assessment to the KO which will be used in documenting past performance. The QASP is the primary tool for documenting contractor performance. The COR is not empowered to make any contractual commitments or to authorize any contractual change on the Government’s behalf.

4. Primary Method of Surveillance:

Random Sampling and Periodic Inspection are the two primary methods of surveillance that will be used on this contract.

· Random Sampling. This is usually the most appropriate method for recurring tasks. With random sampling, services are sampled to determine if the level of performance is acceptable. Random sampling works best when the number of instances of the services being performed is very large and a statistically valid sample can be obtained. Computer programs may be available to assist in establishing sampling procedures.

· Periodic Inspection. These services are monitored weekly, monthly, quarterly, semiannually, annually, etc. Periodic types of activities are perfect for periodic inspection because not only are they infrequent, but there is normally a predetermined, specified time frame within which the tasks must be accomplished. Therefore, you know exactly when to conduct the evaluations. Periodic inspections automatically become 100 percent evaluations or "100 percent checks." Inspections should be divided and scheduled by frequency: annual, semiannual, quarterly, monthly, weekly and as required. Sometimes services are required for which the time or frequency cannot be predicted, such as accident investigations, one-time special tasking by higher headquarters, etc. These would be labeled "as required inspections." Others are known and predictable such as the quarterly status report or the monthly travel report currently included in some DISA service contracts.

5. Performance Standards:

Layer 3 VPN (L3VPN) Transport Performance Metrics Transport Network Performance Threshold, AQL, and of Key Performance Indicator (KPI) for the contractor’s services listed in Table 7.1 are mandatory unless marked optional.

Table 7.1 Transport Network Performance

(Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) + Bidirectional Forwarding Detection (BFD) Protocols)

Notes:

Note 1: Latency is the average round trip time for a packet to travel from source SDP to destination SDP. This applies to CONUS.

Note 2: GOS (Packet Loss) is defined as the percentages of packets that are sent by the source SDP but never arrive at the destination SDP (the percentage of packets that are dropped). The packet loss can be measured with an ICMP test. This applies to CONUS.

Note 3: Availability is measured end-to-end and calculated as a percentage of the total reporting interval time that the SIP Trunk or network path is operationally available to the agency. Availability is computed by the standard formula:

Note 4: Jitter is the average variation or difference in the delay between received packets of an IP packet data stream from SDP to SDP. Relevant standard: IETF RFC 1889. This applies to CONUS.

Note 5: When a network circuit fails, traffic must take an alternative route to another geo-diverse site location within less than 5 seconds when an alternate path is order and provisioned by DISA in order to minimize loss of any active phone calls. This is measured based on the BGP routing protocol network re-convergence time following an outage event.

Note 6: The TTR SLA measures contractor performance on a per-incident basis. The contractor shall calculate the TTR using the following method:

1. Find the elapsed time between the time a service outage is recorded in the trouble ticketing system and the time the service is restored.

2. Subtract time for any scheduled network configuration change or planned maintenance.

3. Subtract time, as agreed to by the government, that the service restoration of the service cannot be worked on due to government-caused delays. Examples of government-caused delays include:

a) The customer was not available to allow the contractor to access the Service Delivery Point or other customer-controlled space or interface

b) The customer failed to inform the contractor that a security clearance was required to access the SDP or customer-controlled space

c) The Government required service at a remote site and agreed that a longer transit time was required

Note 7: Grade of Service (Call Blockage) is the proportion of calls that cannot be completed during the busy hour because of limits in the call handling capacity of one or more network elements. For example, 0.01 indicates that 1 percent of the calls are not being completed (1 out of 100 calls).

Service Provisioning Intervals Table Table 7.2 Service Provisioning Intervals

6. Documenting Performance:

Acceptable Performance.

The Government shall document positive performance. A Performance Assessment Report (PAR) template is attached (Appendix 1). Any report may become part of the supporting documentation for fixed price payments, award/incentive fee payments, Contractor Performance Assessment Reporting System (CPARS) entries, or other actions. Government acceptance of services permits the contractor to invoice for the service fee.

Unacceptable performance.

Unacceptable contractor performance can be identified by customer complaints (Appendix 2) or upon schedule surveillance evaluations. When unacceptable performance occurs, the COR shall inform the contractor. This will normally be in writing unless circumstances necessitate verbal communication. The COR shall document the discussion and place it in the COR file and provide a copy to the KO.

When the COR determines formal written communication is required, the COR shall prepare a Corrective Action Report (CAR). The CAR is forwarded to the KO for dissemination to the contractor. A CAR template is attached to this QASP (Appendix 3).

The contractor shall acknowledge receipt of the CAR in writing. The CAR will specify if the contractor is required to prepare a corrective action plan to document how the contractor shall correct the unacceptable performance and avoid a recurrence. The CAR will also state how long after receipt the contractor has to present this corrective action plan to the KO and COR. The Government may withhold payment for services until corrective action is taken. The Government shall review the contractor's corrective action plan to determine acceptability. Upon Government acceptance of the corrected services the contractor will be permitted to invoice for the service fee.

Any CAR may become a part of the supporting documentation for contract payment deductions, fixed fee deductions, award fee nonpayment, CPARS or other actions deemed necessary by the KO.

7. Mandatory or regulatory compliance items:

The contractor will provide initial proof of compliance with regulatory and compliance items contained in the contract. The COR and the KO will evaluate the initial submission and will conduct ad hoc reviews of the contractor's compliance throughout the remainder of the contract. The contractor will monitor compliance as required by Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) 52.222-50, Combating Trafficking in Persons, and report any issues to the KO.

8. AQL:

All performance standards for this project shall be fully compliant with the stated performance level in section 5 above. The AQL for this contract is up to 99.99% due to the critical support of mission essential services and applications.

9. Evaluation Method:

The Government COR and Project Leads will review designated reports to ensure deliverables / targets fall within AQLs. The respective reports and the Monthly Status Report will serve as the primary reports for monitoring AQLs. The COR will document the time of verbal notification to the contractor as well as the official time and date of notification on the Maintenance Call Record. The COR will review self-diagnostic systems logs, conduct a comparison with actual maintenance performance and otherwise verify and validate contractor performance. The contractor shall enter in the record the official time the system is restored to full operational status. The COR will confirm the date and time of problem resolution in the record.

10. Performance Rating

In evaluating the quality of contractor’s performance, the following performance ratings may be used (same as CPAR ratings).

Performance Rating Criteria

Appendix 1 – Performance Assessment Report

PERFORMANCE ASSESSMENT REPORT (PAR)

(If more space is needed, use reverse and identify by number)

4. QUALITY ASSURANCE PERSONNEL (COR) SIGNATURE AND DATE

I. PERFORMANCE

7. |_| DEFICIENCY (CHECK ALL BOXES THAT APPLY)

|_| NEW

|_| REPEAT

|_| NO DEFICIENCY NOTED

8. SERVICES SUMMARY or PWS PARAGRAPH ITEM REVIEWED

II. CONTRACTOR VALIDATION

11. CONTRACTOR REPRESENTATIVE |_| CONCUR |_| NON-CONCUR

12. CORRECTIVE ACTION ESTIMATED COMPLETION DATE

13. CONTRACTOR REPRESENTATIVE CORRECTIVE ACTION AND PREVENTION OF RECURRENCE OR REASON FOR NON-CONCURRENCE OF COR CITED DEFICIENCY

III. ACTION CORRECTED

14. |_| CONCUR |_| NON-CONCUR COR SIGNATURE AND DATE

15. COR REMARKS (REQUIRED)

6. CONTRACTOR REPRESENTATIVE REMARKS

Appendix 2 – Customer Complaint Record

CUSTOMER COMPLAINT RECORD

DATE/TIME OF COMPLAINT

SOURCE OF COMPLAINT

ORGANIZATION

BUILDING NUMBER

INDIVIDUAL

PHONE NUMBER

NATURE OF COMPLAINT

CONTRACT REFERENCE

VALIDATION

DATE/TIME CONTRACTOR INFORMED OF COMPLAINT

ACTION TAKEN BY CONTRACTOR

RECEIVED/VALIDATED BY

Appendix 3 – Corrective Action Report

CORRECTIVE ACTION REPORT (CAR)

(If more space is needed, use reverse and identify by number)

1. CONTRACTOR

2. CONTRACT NUMBER

3. TYPE OF SERVICES

4. FUNCTIONAL AREA

5. SUSPENSE DATE

6. CONTROL NUMBER

7. DEFICIENCY |_| MAJOR |_| MINOR

FINDING:

FINDING IMPACT:

Please respond with a written corrective action plan that details the corrective action of the cited deficiency, the cause of the deficiency, and actions taken to prevent recurrence by Suspense Date in Block 5. If date was not entered in Block 5, the contractor is not required to provide a response.

8. QUALITY ASSURANCE PERSONNEL (COR)

TYPED NAME AND GRADE

SIGNATURE AND DATE

9. ISSUING AUTHORITY

TYPED NAME AND GRADE

SIGNATURE AND DATE

10. COR RESPONSE TO CONTRACTOR CORRECTIVE ACTION AND ACTION TAKEN TO PREVENT RECURRENCE

11. COR DETERMINATION

|_| ACCEPTED |_| REJECTED

12. CLOSE DATE

Enclosure 6, Page 1 of 13 Pages 17Jul2013/Version 2

QASP

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