FCHS2_Department_of_the_Interior_Q_A_from_RFI_and_Industry_Day_-_Final_0003.xlsx
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- DOIDFBO220040
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Before Industry Day Q&As
| Question | Answer | |
| Does DOI have a single task order configuration management system? Would the Government provide additional information about the task order configuration management system, to include data ingestion capabilities? | ||
| Reference Section: "Contractor shall provide configuration management information for each cloud virtual environment that will integrate with the task order configuration management system." | Yes, generally DOI has configuration management process and requirement. DOI will review the SOW to add more details and clarity | |
| Could DOI provide more context around the precise objectives and expectations around Open Standards section? For example, does this pertain more to portability of workloads or CSP Service adherence to open standards? |
Reference Section: Section C - Statement of Work
| DOI requests contractor provide their opinion on open standards as related to individual performance work statements. | This refers to the portability of workloads/data, avoidance of technology/vendor lock-in and increasing tolerance of technology/vendor change | |
| Is it possible for the government to include sample task orders to clarify what types of services they are looking for (e.g., app modernization / migration, assessment, etc.)? We believe this will result in higher quality responses. | We will provide variety of Day 1 Use cases to show the variety of requirements we have. | |
| How does the Government define a Cloud Service Offering (CSO)? What are the CSOs (75+) currently supporting the Department? Are these commercially-available, FedRAMP-authorized cloud services? | All of our cloud service offerings are either public or government communities and almost all are on FedRAMP marketplace and all are alligned to the Table 1 of the RFI. Example: Cloud Service Provider (CSP) is Amazon and Cloud Service Offering (CSO) is US East/West. | |
| Will the DCOI referenced be part of the FCHS2 scope? How will the DCOI impact the future of FCHS2? | Yes, some form of Data Center Optimization Initiative is the federal agency initiave to adapt Cloud Smart strategy where ever possible | |
| The Government notes that it prioritizes CSOs and services aligned with “the list of services below and not duplicative of other Federal sources.” Please clarify: |
1) which list of services this statement refers to and;
| 2) the Government’s intent with respect to limiting IaaS, PaaS, SaaS and “other” as a service on FCHS2 to services which are not available on other cloud contracts which are already available to Federal agencies. | Duly noted. We will clartify in RFP. The DOI has no intent to limit as a service in this contract. | |
| In Section 1.2.3, bullet 2, the Government states that there are intentional constraints placed on cloud adoption and migration. It further states that the reasons for constraining cloud adoption migration are two-fold: bandwidth and availability of federated cloud technical solutions. Will the Government please elaborate on these constraints, including how and when it anticipates lifting these constraints as well as what types of federated cloud technical solutions it needs to be able to accelerate adoption and migration? | Covered in previous slides | |
| SOW section 2.0, Business Objectives says, “All FCHS2 accepted services shall be identified ‘as-a-Service,’ typically, but not limited to Infrastructure as a Service, Platform as a Service, or Software as a Service.” a. What is DOI’s intention or plan for acquiring professional services required to build, deploy, secure, and manage the government information systems under the IDIQ and subsequent task orders? | IDIQ shall also includes profession services. We will clarify this in SOW. | |
| What is the estimated ceiling for this contract vehicle? | 1 billion for each prime contract | |
| How many contracts are anticipated? | Anticipating 3 to 5 but not constraining ourselves | |
| What is the period of performance for the new contract vehicle? | Estimated 2023 - 2033 for 10 years | |
| Who do you anticipate will use the vehicle? | Internal and external DOI federal agencies | |
| What are the plans to incorporate small businesses onto the vehicle? | Subcontracting plan | |
| Is the intent for FCHS2 to follow the same model as FCHS with an award to several services/system integrator vendors who will have the option to respond to RFQ's with a solution of their choice? | Yes, will be similar while incorporating lessons learned | |
| Will FCHS2 consider working directly with Cloud Service Providers and/or their resellers instead of as subcontractors to the Prime vendors on FCHS2? | Yes, Cloud Service Providers can be primes if they meet all the requirements | |
| Can DOI consider basing this procurement off GSA to provide the ability to use Contract Teaming Agreements (CTA)? The FCHS2 requires a broad range of services from products to cloud provisioning. CTAs allow the government to acquire services and/or products on multiple schedules. | No, we can't do IDIQ off of GSA. | |
| Please provide specifics about non-DOI entities in the Federal Government who are anticipated to issue FCHS2 task orders. | Any federal agency can obtain services through these orders | |
| Please elaborate on how the Government will determine “priority” as defined in Section 1.2.3. How will you determine priority based on “security, availability, and technical” objectives? What is the ranking system being applied? | Prioritization questions are evaluation criteria questions. We will clarify them in the RFP | |
| Please define what it means to be “prioritized” on the FCHS2 contract. How does being “prioritized” relate to bidding and winning task orders under FCHS2? Is it the Government’s intention to exclude FCHS2 contractors from certain task order competitions based on this prioritization model? | ||
| Reference Section: SOW Section 1.2.3 – Current Operational Constraints | Prioritization questions are evaluation criteria questions. We will clarify them in the RFP | |
| The Government notes that contractors will be prioritized based on security, availability, and technical objectives but does not list business objectives which are also in the SOW. Does the Government also intend to include business objectives stated in Section 2 of the SOW as part of the prioritization? | Prioritization questions are evaluation criteria questions. We will clarify them in the RFP | |
| Attachment C is identified as a statement of work, but more accurately is identified as a statement of objectives. a. Based on these broad objectives, how does DOI plan to evaluate respondents’ abilities to support this broad spectrum of objectives? | The Statement of Work is written broadly intentionally and Day 1 use case task orders will be used for implementation evaluation. | |
| Does the Government plan to share the attendee list from Industry Day so that contractors may connect and discuss teaming possibilities with qualified vendors? | Yes the government will provide the list of registrants of Industry day to all vendors unless they explicitly opt-out by sending an email to cloud@doi.gov by May 20, 2:00 PM ET. | |
| What suggestions does the government have for Industry to help drive Federal wide cloud programs to the FCHS2 vehicle? | We need help with the communications, getting the word out. Socializing through websites and conferences by collobarating with the DOI communications office and the cloud program team | |
| Would the Government consider alternate means of notification, such as the existing portal notifications? | ||
| Reference Section: "The Contractor shall notify system administrators through email of specific associated patching and version control services 48 hours in advance. " | We will consider alternative means of the notification with an idividual task orders. This information will be provided in RFP. | |
| Would the Government consider re-wording this requirement to, "Provide access to log files generated by the provisioned Cloud Services"? CSPs do not currently provide system logs for physical infrastructure. | Yes | |
| Would the government please help industry better understand this requirement? What does "MMRT" mean? | ||
| Reference Section:"Contractor shall commitment on the mean time to acknowledge within the timeframes of the Severity Level as well as complete a restore request within MMRT time." | Should be MTTR, mean-time-to Restore | |
| Will the government please clarify whether these requirements are to apply to only IaaS services? For example, one requirement is, "Ability to launch VM directly from de-duplicated compressed backup file located on backup repository." | This multi-award contract includes any "as a Service". Most commonly are IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS services. The "launch VM" was single example of interested requirements. | |
| What is the means of interface with the Network Configuration Manager? Who owns this application? | Network Configuration Manager would be one of several IT Specialists. They are identified as the federal agency point of contact the vendor/csp would coordinate with to configire/provision the integration. | |
| We respectfully recommend that the government maintain no limiting Pass/Fail criteria derived from certification or assessments, thus allowing for the diversity of potential offerors. | Not sure what this means | |
| Will the government consider a CAF under 1% to maximize participation from other federal agencies procuring Cloud Services through this vehicle? | ||
| For example, CAFs on a few other comparable GWACs are 0.75% for MAS Information Technology, 0.34% for NASA SEWP V, and 0.35% for NIH NITACC CIO-CS. | This is a "Centralized - managed services" IDIQ contract. Others are "Decentralized" meaning they bring their own contracting officer | |
| This statement is unclear. Will the government please further describe what they are requesting in this section? | ||
| 2) Availability: ...Until secured, high-speed, ample bandwidth, as well as federated cloud technical solutions are available, cloud and/or hybrid cloud adoption and migration constraints are intentionally established. | Will review and update to clarify | |
| We do not see any detail in the SOW concerning how MODs will be added. Will the government please share with industry what this may look like on FCHS II? | Will include modifications in another contract section | |
| Respectfully, we are unclear as to what this requirement means. Will the government please clarify the meaning? | ||
| 2) Availability: On-premise data center footprint(s) are sprawling throughout the continental United States and territories to meet mission, legal, and technical requirements at those geographic locations. Until secured, high-speed, ample bandwidth, as well as federated cloud technical solutions are available, cloud and/or hybrid cloud a | Reworded. Availability: Agency on-premise data centers are located throughout the continental United States, territories and other countries to meet mission, legal, and technical requirements at those geographic locations. Many have limited or no secured, high-speed, bandwidth, as well as federated cloud technical solutions available to migrate legacy applications to the cloud. | |
| Can DOI clarify the labor support services required in areas such as migration support and execution, architecture advisory, tenant onboarding, change management, operational management). Our recommendation would be to include a day one task order to illustrate a typical request for the types of services and products that are expected on this vehicle to help with scope planning. | Recommendation noted. We are also interested in this and formulating. Duplicate | |
| The original contract has eight (8) awardees currently. Is it government’s intent to award the same number of contracts under the next contract iteration? |
| If not, will the government please give details around the number of potential awardees it’s currently anticipating. | FCHS2 will be similar to FCHS1. No specific numbers are known at this time or until proposals arrive during the RFQ. | |
| “What are the Government’s expectations for the RFI response: should vendors align their response to directly address the eight (8) objectives set forth in the RFI Cover Letter or comment on the SOW’s sufficiency in relation to said objectives?” | The Government's expectation is for the vendor to provide feedback on the SOW. | |
| “What instructions, if any, are to be used by contractors to adequately demonstrate their qualifications, experiences, and past performances as elicited by the eight (8) objectives defined in the RFI Cover Letter?” | Our main objective at this point is to get feedback on SOW. The Government is not looking for qualification statements. | |
| We respectfully recommend the government define the specific requirements of "end-to-end monitoring capability". Is the government seeking inputs from industry for this specific capability? | ||
| Reference Section: "Contractor shall provide end-to-end monitoring capability and reporting for service level agreement (SLA) requirements and metrics (as identified in Attachment 1) for each cloud service provider" | Yes, the Government is looking for the input from the industry regarding this specific capability. | |
| Please confirm the primary purpose of this RFI response is to provide feedback on the SOW’s content. | Yes that is correct. | |
| We’ve reviewed the RFI announcement and we’ve not seen any instructions to offerors in terms of how the response should be formatted. Are there any response guidelines you could share with us? | Thee are no format limitations or requirements. The Government is not looking for capability statements. | |
| Does the Government require that each offeror include services under each category, or can an offeror include services from a single category? |
Reference Section: "Hosting service options shall include
• IaaS virtual server space, IP addresses, network connections, internet connection, firewalls, bandwidth, load balancers, etc.
• PaaS tools to build and deploy cloud-smart software applications in either on-premise, hybrid or public cloud combinations. PaaS shall have capacity to deploy the IaaS infrastructure automatically, operate the software, handle runbook scenarios automatically, and provide navigational dashboard to manage users, developers, testers, and tenants using production applications.
| • SaaS services bundled within IaaS/PaaS hosting environments and aligned with the business or technical objective." | Succesful offerors will have the the ability to most or all requirements |
| Is CMMI certification something DOI would be looking for in potential partners? |
Reference Section: Section C - Statement of Work
| Contractors shall meet agency technical objectives by providing status updates and milestones during installation, development, migration, technology refreshes, testing plans, and rollback capabilities and procedures. | Not required unless individual task order identified it. But this won't be a base contract requirement. | ||
| What types of services should contractors include in the FCHS2 product catalogs? With the stated intent to acquire services not found on other contracts, how will contractors be asked to choose what commercial cloud service offerings should be included in their bid? | Any products that will be included will be license only not hardware. We are looking for everything cloud "as-a-service". More details will be provided in the RFP. | ||
| What is the “cloud model” the Government references in bullet 16? How does the Government expect that licenses would transfer from one cloud model to another? | |||
| Reference Section: SOW Section 3.7 | We will revise and clarify in RFP | ||
| Does the government intend on including one or more initial task orders with the FCHS2 IDIQ solicitation? | Yes, we are working on Day 1 task orders. TBD | ||
| Will the FCHS2 contract be expected to support ALL the same services that were fulfilled by FCHS1 contract? a. If not, where will those services be contracted or provided? | To a degree possible and then some | ||
| SOW Section 3.0, Technical Objectives says, “Contractors shall provide technical advisory for pre-installation as well as ongoing post-development and management services as identified in individual task orders.” a. Will DOI be providing managed services requirements in a Statement of Work for the FCHS2 RFP, or will the respondents be asked to define them in their response based on objectives provided by DOI? | Yes, DOI will be providing minimum requirements in the RFP Statement of Work, respondants may offer higher standards and specific task orders may futher define requirements. | ||
| When DOI says, “Provide a list of suggested catalogs including cloud service providers/offerings and additional products aligned with Table 1. Department of the Interior Business Lines,” a. Is it DOI’s expectation that these catalogs exist at contract award or that they be developed through task orders? | Both | ||
| Does this content belong in the Assessment & Authorization section? Could the government please expand upon these requirements? | |||
| Reference section: "Technical objectives shall include the 1) primary hosting storage and file systems and 2) services capacity for multiple geographical locations, support for data storage tiers, backup, recovery and disaster recovery procedures and processes that support the Service Level Agreements listed below." | Yes, we will expand on these requirements | ||
| There are many mentions of security standards, FedRAMP status, etc, but attaining ATO’s (Authorization to Operate) are not mentioned, does the government expect this should this be listed in the services required by the government? | |||
| Reference Section: Section 3.5 | Yes, Authorization to Operate is required and important. However, every task order will have varying degrees of vendor's versus government's responsibility to attain it. DOI will add language that vendors shall have the capability to achieve ATO's and manage the full A&A process | ||
| What are the on-ramp plans for FCHS2? | TBD | ||
| “For the actual RFP or RFQ phase, will you be quantifying the size or number of programs desired to demonstrate experience in the PWS areas?” | TBD and will be posted along with the RFP | ||
| What type of information about current and future (anticipated) FCHS2 task orders is the Government planning to share as part of its solicitation package? | TBD | ||
| Does DOI want Inline Comments posted in the SOW document or would DOI like a separate document referencing back to SOW page and line reference? | Either is fine. | Green: Responses were shared with the registered users |
Yellow Highlight: Not a valid question
| Is there a maximum page count for the response to be sent back to DOI after industry day? | No maximum for the RFI. There will be maximum for RFP but that amount hasn’t been determined yet. |
| Since Industry Day is virtual, can companies have more than two participates to join the video teleconference call? | We are trying to limit the total number of connections, but more than one participant in a VTC connection is fine. |
| Can you please advise if DOI will be recording the event and releasing that recording to industry participants thereafter? | Yes, we plan on recording and sharing both the presentation materials and recording with registrants |
Live Industry Day Q&A
| Questions | Answers |
| Would like to know about the RFI response. What are the response agency is looking for? | We are looking for feedback on Statement of Work. We are not looking for capability statements. More so requirements geared to industry has to offer, if anything that is there we are missing you can suggest to make it better, please provide that. All responses are due May 20th. |
| will these slides be shared after the session? | Yes |
| Why so long between RFP and Award? | Roughly 8 months. We need to meet all requirements from acquisitions stand point. |
| How many FCHS II awardees will there be? | 3-5. However we are not constraining ourselves to those numbers. |
| How many $1B ceilings do you have approval for? | Covered in the before question. |
| will the slides and the attendee list be provided | Yes. If you opt to be excluded from the list, please submit a request to cloud@doi.gov by May 20, 2:00 PM ET |
| Are you still consolidating to Sioux Falls and ABQ for the DOI DCs? | Yes, consolidating data centers, servers and applications to major data centers is an ongoing intiative for DOI. |
| Is FedRAMP certification a requirement for your cloud service providers | This will be covered in the presentation. |
| Are there specific Cloud Onramps and locations that the DOI wants to use internally? | We need clarification on that as we are not sure what you are asking. Please clarify this when you submit your RFI response and we will try our best to address that question for you. |
| Who can we speak to about our FedRAMP solution around Zero Trust? SSE - CASB, ZTNA and SWG? | You can send in responses via email, but we are not looking at solutions at this point. The purpose here is to get feedback on the SOW. |
| Will FCHS II be used to managed task orders that mainly are made at the Departmental level or plan to facilitate additional Bureau, office and mission area work independently? | We are not clear on the question and unable to answer at this time. If you would please elaborate on your question, so that we try our best to answer your question during your RFI submission to us. |
| What will the contract access fee be on FCHS II? | We are a shared service provider and our fee varies for internal and external customers. It is not an access fee this is acentralized contracting office. We are providing contracting officer, contracting support, legal support, technical support and nt just the access fee to order off of the IDIQs on their own. It doesn't work like GSA Schedule or NASA SEWP. |
| What GWAC work - for other non DOI agencies - has been done through FCHS I? | This contract is not a GWAC. It can be used by other agencies, in that they must come to IBC for acquisition services to be able to have access to the contract. We have many agencies that we provide acquisition services to |
| What % of the current contract ceiling (FCHS I) has been met? | An estimate of 36%. It is accelarating and more than half of that has been used in the last couple of years. We are anticipating that the next generation will be closer to 100% of the ceiling. |
| Are you looking for Colocation services or Public cloud solution? | We are looking for both the best fit. Most commontly they are Public cloud solutions |
| Are you looking for Colocation services or Public cloud solution? | We are looking for both the best fit. Most commontly they are Public cloud solutions |
| How does the DOI and the agencies it serves view the deliniation between FISMA compliance and FedRAMP P-ATO? | They both are critical. The FISMA compliance is going to be a foundational requirement that is very broad. It streches into on-premise and cloud solution. Where the FedRAMP is the cloud component of that where multiple agencies have to do the same thing basically and we are partnering in the FedRAMP environment as a community to share the resources of meeting the FISMA compliance component. |
| What other agencies use FCHS I? | Some other agencies that use FCHS I is HHS, CFA, CFTC, EPA, DOJ, and USDA |
| how to the DOI plan to provide flexibility in the scope of the IDIQ to adapt to perhaps unforseen evolutions in technology and cloud based technology specifically? | Slide of innovation talks about this briefly. Cloud technology is evolving and we want to be able to incorporate newest technologies when applicable to our requirements and we are looking for primes they can help vendors that have developed new technologies get FedRAMP certified or work with us to implement those solutions in a secure way and that is the reason why SOW is written broadly so that we don't exclude new technologies as they arrive. |
| How does the DOI plan to market FCHS II to other agencies to bring revenue to the DOI that is derived frmo outside the department? | The contract will be listed (as it is today) on the Acquisition Gateway, as well as, awardees will be able to list their awards, as approved by DOI, on their websites--in addition to word-of mouth |
| What systems automation for procurement and modification management will be implemented in FCHS II to ameliorate challenges from FCHS I? | We need clarification on that as we are not sure what you are asking. Please clarify this when you submit your RFI response and we will try our best to address that question for you. |
| Will FCHS II have a good interactive platform like SEWP V? | Mr. Weaver, our contract is not like what you see on GSA or SEWP--it is a vehicle that is only available through DOI Acquisition Services Directorate. I can provide more a more comprehensive overview of what we do and how we operate |
| For RFI Response Due Friday May 20 are you just looking for additional questions or more content structured responses | We are looking for feedback on Statement of Work. No limitations on how you respond. We are not looking for capability statements. More so requirements geared to industry has to offer, if anything that is there we are missing you can suggest to make it better, please provide that. All responses are due May 20th, 2:00 PM ET. |
| What are your current pain points? | Challenges and barriers our covered earlier in slide 11 |
| Are you planning on using this contract vehicle for IT systems modernization? if yes, are you planning on retiring other contract vehicles in favor of this? | There is a Cloud Smart strategy that is being implemented. Our goals are to move as much as practicable to the cloud and this will be one of the vehicles used for that. As we move applications to cloud from on-premise, this will require us to close out the previous contracting vehicles that have provided those services in the past. |
| Will DOI be defining any of the FCHS II awards as Small Business Set Asides? | We are developing our acquisition strategy at this time. So more to come there. |
| Is it possible to share this deck later? | this will be shared with all participants |
| What is expected in our response by 20th May? | Feedback on the draft SOW. Not capability statements, not suggested solutions, or pricing. |
| You referring to avoiding verndor lock? | Yes, we are looking to avoid vendor lock where possible |
| Will be FCHS II be the mandated vehicle just as FCHS I is? | It will be an approved vehicle in accordance with the mandatory sources policy. |
| What is meant by Vendor lock? | Getting stuck in a situation where it becomes very costly to change solutions such that we remain in a sole-source solution. Government prefers competitive awards |
| Will there be specific awards to small businesses? | We are developing our acquisition strategy at this time. So more to come there. |
| In the same way FCHS I is? | We need clarification on that as we are not sure what you are asking. Please clarify this when you submit your RFI response and we will try our best to address that question for you. |
| I thought prime contractors on FCHS1 were able to use teaming partners only at the T.O. level. Will this be the same for FCHS2? In other words, bidders will need to fulfill all requirements in the RFP, without subcontracting partners? | Vendors will be allowed to have subcontractors. |
| Once you answer a question we cannot respond back to you. How can overcome that? If you answer my question with a question, I cannot answer you. | Chris if you have a follow on question you will need to restate or submit your question in your response to the RFI. |
| Will IoT be within scope for FCHS II? | IoT isn't "out of scope" for FCHS II but also wouldn't stand on its own. Within the broader IaaS, PaaS, SaaS cloud services sought, IoT devices, objects, etc. may be a component or characteristic requirement. |
| You mentioned device identity - please talk more on that topic! | Device identity initiative is to tag and verify need every end point (computer, gateway, printer, etc) in the cloud environment so administrators recognize and approve its inclusion. |
| What will success for FCHS I have looked like and how will it inform success metrics for FCHS II? | We are using lessons learned from FCHS 1 to guide our solicitation, especially eval criteria. Some of the challenges were addressed in the slides |
| There is not currently an SOW. We are providing feedback via the RFI and Email (8 questions/topics). How will you create an SOW for an IDIQ? | Draft SOW was posted with the RFI. There are four attachments. Please check Sam.gov again and provide feedback on SOW by May 20. |
| All of you are doing fabulous job and excellent session . We learned quite a lot | Thank you David |
| How does the contracting office plan to migrate and/or recompete work from FCHS I to FCHS II? | For each of our current customers we are going to do our diligence to make sure there is no break in service and their requirements are continued to be met. We will review their statement of work to make sure it incorporates their current view of what their requirement is because some of thes SOWs are 7 or 8 years old and may not capture the current need is so we want to update their requirements documents and we will see if FCHS2 is a proper vehicle for the recompete or whether one of our other DOI approved vehicles is a better fit. We will conduct an RFQ if FCHS2 is a better fit. We will use day 1 use cases for the RFP to help us evaluate offerors on their capabilities. |
| Will DOI agencies be compelled/required to use this contract where FCHSII scope provides the services? | It will be an approved vehicle in accordance with the mandatory sources policy. |
| has the Gov't made a determination with regard to evaluation factors? e.g. weighting for Technical vs. management vs. price? | We are developing our acquisition strategy at this time. |
| Can you provide the RFI number? | DOIDFBO220040 |
| How many total DCs does the DOI want to / plan to run on its own? | Don't know exact answer off top of head. Ken Klinner showed a slide with a map with Data locations and data centers that are out there. We have two major data centers that are very busy migrating and accepting different consolidations. We have other mission critical data centers that are operating their dams and they are not going to move. we are targetting for cloud adoption those types of services that are general computing type applications that can be enterprized and used for multiple different bureaus and offices. |
| Since this will be a GWAC - what compliance feedback have you garnered from other Federal agencies to meet their desires and needs? | FCHS is not a GWAC. Have met with vendors and contractors and implementing lessons learned to determine best venue for going forward |
| What are your KPI’s and % of savings expected? | We would like to maximize savings. We are not sure about KPI's that you are looking far. Are these related to eval criteria? Please clarify this in your response to RFI. |
| Will you conisder only firms who responds to RFI to be invited for RFP? | No. RFI is purely to get feedback on statement of work. We are still working on our acquisition strategy and we are going to post RFP on SAM.gov. |
| Will the Government require senior-level CSP-specific corporate designations for each cloud brand an offeror is representing? i.e. Premier Consulting Partner for an AWS Prime Offeror? | Not a hard requirement on DOI side. |
| Now that yu have given more information on what you want to see in the RFI response, can you extend the deadline, at least a week, so we can better match your needs? | Extended till May 24, 2:00 PM ET. |
| How will FCHS2 overlap (or not) with USGS CHS3? | DOI has internally mapped the objectives of all our contracts. There are multiple ones including CHS and FCHS and so that we can meet the objectives and requirements for all our different program needs. |
| FCHS 1 had fixed price at contract start, will FCHS 2 allow for dynamic market driven prices as CSP providers reduce prices often. | Think related to Rate Cards. That has always been the maximum amount that vendor can charge. Suspect prices will reduce over time. Will be requesting prices as requests come up. Vendors to sharpen pencils and consider each request, especially if not getting selected in multiple past awards |
| Why does the RFI refer to FCHS II as a GWAC? | If it does that’s a mistake and it needs to be corrected |
| Will there be mandated Small Business, SDB...... hard goals | We are developing our acquisition strategy at this time. So more to come there. |
| Apologies if I missed this answer, but is the gov't considering releasing a draft RFP? | A lot of steps and milestones to get prepared. May issue a draft RFP based upon timing and if schedule slips |
Received after Industry Day
| Question | Answer |
| Questions: How will DOI’s pricing table/attachment allow for alternate “as a svc” models and will it be expected for them to be FedRAMP compliant? Such examples could include “storage-as-a-service”; “procurement-as-a-service”; “desktop-as-a-service”, et al. Will such alternate models be in scope? |
Reference: Statement of Work (SOW) Section 2.2 Services DOI states that “The type of service models required are predominantly Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS) and Software as a Service (SaaS), but other similar or “... as a Service” models can be included within these requirements.”
| Will need to work out "as a service" models and looking for vendor recommendations. Any "as a service" is within scope of the FCHS2 IDIQ SOW. DOI will remain aligned with FedRAMP compliancy and federal guidelines. Currently these alternate "as a service" models are not within the FedRAMP scope, but they are in discussion but haven't matured their model or implemented it yet. | |
| Will the government allow prime contractors to procure software licenses under Other Direct Costs (ODCs)? | Yes, if understand the question accurately. ODC's are items that are not normally or previously definitized on the contract. This is acceptable, encouraged, and done all the time. |
Primes can partner with other primes can have sub-contractors/partners and also offer their same services on other federal, including DOI contracts. This is to the degree allowed within the FAR of course.
| This statement appears to be two entirely separate concepts. Zero Trust principles operate in a way such that no device or individual is inherently trusted and must routinely be authenticated and be verified. The second portion of the statement dealing with arrays of hybrid clouds does not seem to relate to the topic of Zero trust. Can the Government please clarify? | |
| Reference: • IT Systems access is limited through modelling zero trust architectures such as instituting an unlimited array of hybrid or integrated cloud solutions. | Will clarify in the follow-on Statement of Work/Objectives |
| Unclear what the second sentence is conveying. Can the government please clarify the meaning? | |
| Reference: 2) Availability: On-premise data center footprint(s) are sprawling throughout the continental United States and territories to meet mission, legal, and technical requirements at those geographic locations. Until secured, high-speed, ample bandwidth, as well as federated cloud technical solutions are available, cloud and/or hybrid cloud adoption and migration constraints are intentionally established. | Will clarify in the follow-on Statement of Work/Objectives |
| How will the DOI equitably evaluate these attributes between current awardees and potentially new awardees? | |
| Reference: DOI will prioritize contractors who can demonstrate a past performance of tightly managing deadlines, expedient invoicing/payment processing, quality task order quote preparedness, and conducting recurring customer change management or similar forums. | DOI will develop a small set of selection criteria aligned with both the availability of vendors cloud services (Table 1 of the RFI) and their ability and/or capacity to perform and provide the services. None of the criteria is based upon whether they are current or potential awardees. |
| How will the DOI equitably evaluate these attributes between current awardees and potentially new awardees? | |
| Reference: DOI will prioritize contractors who demonstrate their capacity to manage a high functioning sales and support team, including hiring, training, and retaining initiatives. | DOI will develop a small set of selection criteria aligned with both the availability of vendors cloud services (Table 1 of the RFI) and their ability and/or capacity to perform and provide the services. None of the criteria is based upon whether they are current or potential awardees. |
| The table is referred to as services in an earlier section, and as lines of business here. They appear to be business process functions that different agencies currently perform. Can DOI please clarify what this table is trying to depict? | |
| Reference: The following table lists DOI's current, but not all-inclusive lines of business that may request varying levels of support including discovery, development, onboarding, migration, operations, and decommissioning types of services. TABLE 1 – Department of the Interior Identified Lines of Business | Will clarify language to be consistent. For now, Table 1 is IT related services categorized by Lines of Business. |
| What does this mean? Alternative access methods such as AWS Direct Connect and AZURE ExpressRoute do incur additional fees. However, these are more than offset by improved latency and later out data charges. | |
| Reference: Additionally, alternate access mechanism should not require installation of any specialized tools at DOI's expense. | Reworded. This is related to federal security officers accessing the monthly "ConMon" security package. Normally when the cloud service provider is a Low or Moderate the package is on Max.gov. However, if its classified as High, which is becoming more common, then the vendor is responsible for standing up their own site and providing clients access. When a security officer is managing 8-15 different cloud service providers they have to go to 8-15 different sites each month and get a copy of the package for review. Each site has its own different software and process to get the package alone is laborious. Only the vendor can provide a seamless, quick, and free venue for obtaining documents and this should be standard, but that's not been the case. |
DOI requires contractors to provide free and easily obtainable access through a “job aid” to high classified FedRAMP packages that are not stored on Max.Gov. (e.g. federal clients should not have to purchase an additional software application to login and collect the monthly security “ConMon” documentation from vendor’s site.)
Not all systems and tools are built on open standard principles. Sometimes there is a possible solution that is built on open standards but the BEST tool for the job/program is proprietary. How will the DOI determine the best solution? For example Microsoft Office 365 is proprietary but it is the most popular application of its type on the market.
Reference: 3.2 Open Standards
| To drive interoperability, scalability, and affordability DOI requires contractors to offer open-standards technologies whenever possible. The technical objective is for portfolios to model solutions based on OpenStand Principles including cooperation, adherence to principles, collective empowerment, availability, and voluntary adoption. Specific standards will be identified in individual task orders, but all should/must be utilized include: | Understood and correct. Preference is open standards to the degree of best practices and when possible and practical, which isn't always the case. |
| It seems the DOI is looking to have a managed cloud service from which it can deploy Infrastructure as Code to create environments for multiple use cases. Can the DOI explain this more deeply? |
References: 3.3 Hosting Resources
• PaaS tools to build and deploy cloud-smart software applications in either on-premise, hybrid or public cloud combinations. PaaS shall have capacity to deploy the IaaS infrastructure
| automatically, operate the software, handle runbook scenarios automatically, and provide navigational dashboard to manage users, developers, testers, and tenants using production applications. | Infrastructure as Code isn't excluded from this contract and could potentially be applied to this bullet. However, the statement is intended to be broader and seeking optimal opportunity for automated tools and artificial intelligence within the PaaS and IaaS environment. |
| Can the agency please further refine this requirement? |
Reference: 3.7 Licensing
| 9. Provide the ability to allow bureaus and offices to add, subtract, transfer and/or renew existing licenses to support existing or new modules, products, services, and/or subscriptions. | This relates to the flexibility of on-demand. For example, customers may need the ability to add or substract total storage space, bandwidth to access storage or instantly change active storage to data-at-rest , all which can change the price tag up or down. The Federal Acquisition Regulations requires funding up front for the total estimate of usage, type of usage, and during the period of performance. The statement is to maximize the greatest flexibility of the "Cloud Provisioning" license. Having licenses accommodate combinations and variations to last a year to streamline the administrative contracting overhead. Can the vendor offer variations and combinations of licenses in lieu of single and narrow usage. |
| Can the agency please further refine this requirement? |
Reference: 3.7 Licensing
| 10. Provide co-termination of existing and future licenses. | Will refine. This statement requests the ability to suspend both the active current license and non-activated future licenses within a single request instead of requiring two separate requests. Some vendors require two separate processes with two separate branches of their organization. |
| Can the agency please further refine this requirement? |
Reference: 3.7 Licensing
| 14. Provide the ability to dynamically assign licenses during the standing-up of new sandboxes and/or development environments within 24 hours or less. | This relates to the flexibility of on-demand. For example, customers may need the ability to add or substract total storage space, bandwidth to access storage or instantly change active storage to data-at-rest , all which can change the price tag up or down. The Federal Acquisition Regulations requires funding up front for the total estimate of usage, type of usage, and during the period of performance. The statement is to maximize the greatest flexibility of the "Cloud Provisioning" license. Having licenses accommodate combinations and variations to last a year to streamline the administrative contracting overhead. Can the vendor offer variations and combinations of licenses in lieu of single and narrow usage. |
| Can the agency please further refine this requirement? |
Reference: 3.7 Licensing
| 15. Provide the option for bureaus and offices to participate in initial BETA testing of new features, subscription, services, or products, to include roadmap technologies in advance of releasing for global use. | Will consider refining |
| Can the agency please further refine this requirement? |
Reference: 3.7 Licensing
| 16. Provide bureaus the flexibility to switch licenses from one cloud model or service to another, and back again, without disruption to business operations. | This relates to the flexibility of on-demand. For example, customers may need the ability to add or substract total storage space, bandwidth to access storage or instantly change active storage to data-at-rest , all which can change the price tag up or down. The Federal Acquisition Regulations requires funding up front for the total estimate of usage, type of usage, and during the period of performance. The statement is to maximize the greatest flexibility of the "Cloud Provisioning" license. Having licenses accommodate combinations and variations to last a year to streamline the administrative contracting overhead. Can the vendor offer variations and combinations of licenses in lieu of single and narrow usage. |
| Can the agency please further refine this requirement? |
Reference: 3.7 Licensing
| 20. Provide training via a “Training Credit” model to allow licensed users to conduct on-demand, user initiated, and/or group training on current and future CRM modules, services, products, and/or subscription-based services | Will consider refining |
| Please elaborate the statutory compliance measures. |
Reference: Section C - Security Objectives Adhere to all statutory compliance measures (audit trails, rules-based policy enforcement, etc.).
| Will elaborate in SOW |
| At the Task Order level. for each application, please provide the band level associated with the service level tables. |
Reference: Section C - Security Objectives
| Several Availability SLAs have set minimums for Acceptable Performance of Cloud Services. These shall be available and usable on demand by authorized entities. Individual task orders will identify different elevated or minimized bands of services as required. In the absence of individual task order specifics, Contractor shall meet the minimums identified in the description or tables below. | Reworded. Unless otherwise noted in an individual task order, Service Levels shall comply with the set minimums described in sections 3.2.2 and 3.23 for Acceptable Performance of Cloud Services. Individual task orders may identify different elevated or minimized bands of services as required. |
| These are SharePoint links to which access must be granted. Would it be possible for the government to post these at cloud.cio.gov or other link that does not require bidders to issue access requests? |
Reference: Department of the Interior Policies and Directives DOI Mandatory Use of Cloud Contracts Policy Aug 2018
OCIO Pre-approved Enterprise and Mandatory Use Cloud Contracts Sept 2020 (addendum)
| OCIO Cloud Definition and Registration Policy Apr 2021 | DOI is redoing these policies with a single updated one. These three policies direct that all DOI Bureaus and Offices use mandatory use contracts and register and coordinate their cloud IT systems in the DOI cloud inventory. Will post updated policy at public sites when ready. |
| Are there more specific network requirements such as latency, bandwidth, diversity, and availability" | |
| Reference: Broad network access through the Continental United States, including Alaska, Hawaii, and US territories. | Those cover it for CONUS |
| Please clarify if DOI has agreements already in place with the cloud service providers or if the Contractor will be a cloud service provider reseller. | |
| Reference: DOI is seeking industry partners that have relationships with multiple cloud service providers and optionally offer a catalog suite of available SaaS. | There are no agreements with cloud service providers. The prime contractors can be a cloud service provider or a reseller or have sub-partners/contractors or combination. Looking for quantity and flexibility of services. |
| Is third-party designated by DOI, contractor, or CSP? |
Reference: TABLE 2 – Mandatory Statements on all New Task Orders
| 10. How will Cloud Service Provider perform incident detection and third-party reviews | Third-party is designated by the CSP. Maybe sometimes by contractor if they have partnership. The intent of the table is for both the CSP and the customer to know up front who needs to be informed and how the information is disseminated at the beginning of a project. |
| Which ones are "should", which ones are "must"? |
Reference:
Specific standards will be identified in individual task orders, but all should/must be utilized include:
Open Virtualization Format (OVF) – applicable only to IaaS virtual machines
Cloud Data Management Interface (CDMI)
Open Cloud Computing Interface (OCCI)
| Research (OpenStack.org, Apache CloudStack, and OpenNebula) | Reworded to should |
| At the IDIQ Level. Confirm the government desires the contractor to be fully responsible for all CSP support cases on behalf of DOI, instead of pass-thru support? (background for my question – ECAM vs SPAM: https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/mt/aws-partners-determine-aws-support-plans-in-organization/) | |
| Reference: 3.6 Hosting Major Applications | Will revisit 3.6 and reword. Each task order may vary. Some task orders need full support and others just pass-thru. |
| Specify the lead time allowed for the switch and Please Clarify statement with an example. |
Reference:
| Provide bureaus the flexibility to switch licenses from one cloud model or service to another, and back again, without disruption to business operations. | This "switch" would be instant/on-demand. However would also be within a pre-defined catalog or suite of tools, services, provisions within the IaaS, PaaS, SaaS cloud service provider or tenant. For example, within the AWS Management Console could select additional database or networking services, change security compliance settings, or add/remove data stores all from within the AWS. | |
| What contract vehicle does DOI anticipate using for FCHS2 as its scope includes multiple cloud deployment models and services? | ||
| Reference: General Solicitation document DOIDFB0220040 | multi-award IDIQ through task order definitions | |
| What specific cloud service providers (e.g. AWS, Azure, GCP, etc.) and data security classifications (Moderate, High, etc.) will contractors be required to offer on FCHS2? | Same and more from the current FCHS1 contract. DOI currently has about eight different IaaS CSPs. Most DOI systems are classified at the Moderate level with some Low or Li-SaaS. DOI may have one High. Hybridizing and multi-tenant requirements are anticpated to grow, but currently most are stand alone tenants. |
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