C55_MISC_Justification_140D0425Q0728_FWS_ePermits_FINAL_Redacted_1.pdf

United States Department of the Interior

INTERIOR BUSINESS CENTER

Washington, DC 20240

BRAND NAME JUSTIFICATION FOR AN EXCEPTION TO FAIR OPPORTUNITY

AUTHORITY: FAR 16.505(a)(4)(i)

SOLICITATION #140D0425Q0728

1. Identification of the agency and the contracting activity, and specific identification of the document as a “Brand Name Justification for an Exception to Fair Opportunity.”

This document is a Brand Name Justification for an Exception to Fair Opportunity for the Department of the Interior (DOI), Interior Business Center (IBC), Acquisition Services Directorate (AQD), Division 1, Branch 4 on behalf of DOI U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services

(USFWS).

2. Nature and/or description of the action being approved.

This Brand Name Justification is in support of a follow-on requirement for ServiceNow and UXstorm licensing in support of the USFWS ePermits cloud platform. USFWS has a continuing need for licensing to maintain the ePermits platform to ensure continuity of services. This requirement will be solicited as a small business set-aside against the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Solution for Enterprise-Wide Procurement (SEWP) V Government Wide Acquisition Contract (GWAC), Groups B, C, and D resulting in a Firm Fixed Price task order.

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

This requirement will procure ServiceNow and UXstorm licenses required to operate and maintain the ePermits platform. ePermits is the USFWS’s permitting platform which utilizes ServiceNow Software-as-a-Service (SaaS). ServiceNow provides the infrastructure and base level modular programming that users implement and adapt as necessary to meet their use case.

The use case is USFWS’s permitting and provides permitting services to four FWS Programs:

International Affairs, Ecological Services, Migratory Birds, and Office of Law Enforcement.

These licenses include all instances, users, processors, and the front and backend user interfaces.

UXStorm PDF Application is a plugin specifically designed for ServiceNow that ePermits uses in the auto issuance of permits and future permit cloning capabilities. This effectively allows ePermits to automate and optimize permit issuance process and improve user experience.

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meet USFWS’s operational and security requirements. Maintaining system compatibility and FedRAMP Moderate compliance requires continued use of these specific brand name solutions.

In addition, the ePermits system includes numerous customizations, configurations, and workflow automations that are specifically designed to align with USFWS’s management processes. These customizations are tightly integrated into the ServiceNow and UXStorm implementations and were developed over several years to meet unique federal operational, reporting, and compliance needs. Transitioning to another platform would not only result in loss of these tailored capabilities but would also require the USFWS to re-enter the full discovery, design, testing, and implementation lifecycle. This would represent significant resource expenditure, increase the risk of implementation failure, and lead to prolonged service disruption.

The ServiceNow and UXStorm brand name licensing and support are items peculiar to these vendors. These products are essential to the Government's requirements and market research indicates other companies' similar products do not meet, or cannot be modified to meet, the agency's needs without significant interruption, delay and additional cost. It is expected that this action will be solicited under NASA SEWP Groups B, C, and as a Total Small Business Set- Aside. The justification for an exception to fair opportunity being considered is to limit the software subscriptions and maintenance on a brand name basis.

5. A determination by the contracting officer that the anticipated cost to the Government will be fair and reasonable.

Although this requirement is brand name specific to ServiceNow and UXstorm, market research found that there are numerous vendors that are ServiceNow and UXstorm authorized resellers, capable of providing the required subscriptions. This requirement will be competed amongst vendors within Group B, C, & D of NASA SEWP V GWAC and the award will be made against the successful quoter’s NASA SEWP V contract with firm-fixed prices. NASA SEWP has already determined that the prices of all items under SEWP are fair and reasonable at the contract level. Price reasonableness was determined in accordance with FAR 15.403-1(c)(1)(i)(B), which provides that a price is based on adequate price competition if two or more responsible offerors, competing independently submit priced offers that satisfy the Government’s expressed requirement and there is not any finding that the price of an otherwise successful offer is unreasonable. NASA SEWP obtained discounted item pricing for each offeror’s verifiable and/or published commercial list price.

The AQD Contracting Officer (CO) will seek further price discounts from vendors and make a separate determination as to the reasonableness of the awarded price. Adequate price competition is expected and, if achieved, the Contracting Officer will determine pricing to be fair and reasonable based on adequate price competition.

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6. Any other facts supporting the justification.

This procurement specifically requests a six-month base period with a six-month option for continuation of existing ServiceNow licenses to ensure uninterrupted operation of the ePermits platform. The previous licensing agreement was under expired Federal Cloud Hosting Services (FCHS 1) Indefinite Delivery Indefinite Quantity Contracts, which established the initial framework for our ServiceNow utilization.

7. A statement of the actions, if any, the agency may take to remove or overcome any barriers that led to the exception to fair opportunity before any subsequent acquisition for the supplies or services is made.

The Department of the Interior (DOI), in collaboration with the General Services Administration (GSA) and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), is actively undertaking a comprehensive review of government-wide platforms, technologies, and existing contracts. This initiative aims to identify and implement the most cost-effective solutions for the entire federal government. This ongoing research and potential consolidation of contracts and technologies could significantly impact how the ePermits is supported in the future. Specifically, these efforts are designed to address and potentially overcome the barriers that currently necessitate an exception to fair opportunity for our ServiceNow licenses.

There are no further practical considerations that can be taken at this time to eliminate the Brand Name only restriction on these required software products due to the proprietary nature of software subscriptions and the need for compatible components. The Government will continue to conduct market research to identify changes in the marketplace that would allow unrestricted competition.