BETASAM PRE SOL NOTICE JOFOC.docx

Justification for Other than Full and Open Competition Cogito Software Maintenance, Support, Professional Technical Services

1. Contracting Office – USDA, ARS, APD, Acquisition Branch 5601 Sunnyside Avenue, MS 5152 Beltsville, MD 20705

2. Nature/Description of Action – The primary purpose of this acquisition is to ensure continued operation of the automated indexing system to deliver high quality indexing for the AGRICOLA and PubAg databases, and in support of NALT Annotator and NAL Thesaurus curation and workflows. NAL requires professional services to support NAL's use of the Cogito software and custom skill cartridges and annotation plans for automated indexing.

3. Description of Supplies/Services –

NAL needs procurement of maintenance and technical support, and professional technical services to support use of NAL’s automated indexing software, Cogito Studio Express, Cogito Discover, and NALT Annotator software. “Cogito” was formerly called “Luxid”, and “Temis”. Our former contract was with Temis, Inc., which is now known as “Expert ai” (formerly called “Expert Systems” and still known legally as Expert Systems Enterprise). This software and NAL’s ongoing support requirements have remained the same even though the software name and company name has changed over time due to company changes in ownership or corporate structure.

NAL has established workflows, custom knowledge tools and custom programs that integrate this software with our unified repository and supports the production of AGRICOLA, PubAg and other USDA databases. The text analysis functionality of the NAL implementation of Cogito software is utilized by groups outside of NAL in the USDA community, including but not limited to the Office of the Chief Information Office at USDA and the U.S. Forest Service. NAL has continual need for professional services to maintain the integrity and quality of the results so that NAL and other USDA customers do not lose functionality. Specialized knowledge of the Cogito computational linguistics, natural language processing, machine-learning and semantic analysis is necessary to go forward with improvement and refinement of this integrated system.

Requirements include software licenses, maintenance and support, and professional technical services and training. Technical services include developing and supporting NAL custom Cogito skill cartridges and annotation plans, programming with Cogito REST APIs, troubleshooting problems with skill cartridges and annotation plan components, etc. As the software evolves and new capabilities or modules are available, there is continual need for training of staff on the system.

4. Statutory Authority This action is pursuant to FAR 6.302-1 and 41 USC 253(c) (1) Only One Responsible Source.

5. Demonstration of Contractor’s Unique Qualifications or Nature of the Acquisition that Requires use of the Authority Cited

Expert System is the sole owner of this proprietary product, Cogito software, and is the only source of the software, maintenance, support, and technical and training services.

NAL had a previous consulting contract with Expert System Enterprise (formerly, Temis, Inc), with a complementary maintenance contract with Immix who sub-contracted with Expert System for NAL’s Cogito software maintenance and technical support. The Cogito software system is fully integrated into NAL’s IT infrastructure. The upcoming contract will increase efficiency and clarity of purpose for these integrated services by putting them into one set of requirements. This will ease NAL’s management burden with a more cohesive contract outlining requirements and specifications for tasks to integrate functions and oversight of maintenance, technical support, and the adaptation or development of custom tools to integrate Cogito more cleanly into NAL hardware and software systems. Expert System developers, technical support staff, project managers, customer support and management are highly familiar with the custom skill cartridges, custom scripts and their integration with NAL’s Unified Repository. It is a natural follow on to our previous Cogito related contracts.

6. FedBizOpps Announcement/Potential Sources A Sources Sought Notice was posted on BETASAM which resulted in four responses all which none of the four had rights or authorization to the customized software Cogito.

7. Determination of Fair and Reasonable Cost A fair and reasonable price will be determined based on published catalog prices and previous purchases of similar items such as Discovery Garden. Previous consulting contract with Expert System (formerly Temis, Inc.) used rate of $1750/day (8 hours), or $218.75/hour. This is similar to Discovery Garden rate of $215.00 per hour for professional IT services.

8. Market Research In June 2020 NAL released an RFI to evaluate if Cogito software was still the best solution to meet NAL requirements. Over the course of several months, nine companies responded in writing and/or with written responses, including the Cogito developer, Expert Systems Enterprise. Most offered completely new and different systems that did not meet requirements and were out of budget. Expert Systems Enterprise the only vendor that can provide maintenance, support, and professional technical services, as well as training on the Cogito 14.x software.

9. Additional Support Expert System has provided this type maintenance, support, professional technical services and training since 2012 at NAL.

10. Other Interested Sources No other interested sources have been identified that come close to meeting NAL requirements. The level-of-effort to re-engineer / integrate another technical solution would be prohibitive in cost, schedule, performance and manning as Cogito applications are embedded into the NAL operation and performing so that NAL is able to meet its annual indexing production goals.

11. Actions Taken to Remove Barriers to Competition

Should other providers be identified that could met the criteria above, open competition will be considered.