E52_MISC_-_LSJ_-_OPRE_Head_Start_-_REDACTED_1.pdf

LIMITED-SOURCES JUSTIFICATION

AUTHORITY: FAR 8.405-6 and 40 U.S.C 501

SOLICITATION NUMBER: 140D0425Q0504

This acquisition is conducted under the authority of the Multiple Award Schedule (MAS) Program.

1. Identification of the agency and contracting activity, and specific identification of the document as a “Limited-Sources Justification.”

This document serves as a Limited-Sources Justification for the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), Administration for Children and Families (ACF), Office of Planning, Research, and Evaluation (OPRE’s) Designing and Operating Head Start Programs to Support the Needs of Children, Families, and Communities requirement. The contracting activity procuring this requirement is the Department of the Interior (DOI), Interior Business Center (IBC), Acquisition Services Directorate (AQD), Division 1, Branch 3 on behalf of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), Administration of Children and Families (ACF), Office of Planning, Research, and Evaluation (OPRE).

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

The purpose of this document is to outline the rationale for procuring support services for Designing and Operating Head Start Programs to Support the Needs of Children, Families, and Communities from The Urban Institute on a limited-sources basis. This is a new requirement for AQD that will generate and disseminate evidence pertaining to the design and operation of Head Start programs that meet child, family, and community needs. The requirement is necessary to continue the provision of timely information to the Administration for Children and Families’ (ACF) Office of Head Start that can inform policies, training and technical assistance, and operations decision-making that is responsive to administration priorities. This requirement will utilize data and findings collected on an existing ACF, OPRE task order, Conversion of Enrollment Slots from Head Start to Early Head Start (HHSP233201500064I/75P00120F37027) which was competitively awarded under HHS’s Program Support Center (PSC) Indefinite-Delivery/Indefinite-Quantity (IDIQ) contract to The Urban Institute. This requirement is anticipated to be awarded as a single, severable, time-and-materials task order placed under General Services Administration (GSA) MAS Special Item Number (SIN) 541611 – Management and Financial Consulting, Acquisition and Grants Management Support, and Business Program and Project Management Services.

SOLICITATION NUMBER: 140D0425Q0504

effectively and efficiently providing highly specialized services required to successfully provide the services for this task order at the level of quality required and within the timeline necessary to meet the Government’s needs. Specifically, The Urban Institute has specific expertise and data access regarding Head Start program design that has been garnered over the course of the Conversion of Enrollment Slots from Head Start to Early Head Start task order (HHSP233201500064I/ 75P00120F37027). This expertise and data access is not yet accessible by/from other vendors at this time but is essential to the production of high-quality research with timely and accurate findings that will ensure this requirement can inform the work of the Office of Head Start and meet the Administration’s and ACF’s priorities.

Awarding to a new vendor would have considerable implications for the quality of deliverables given the complexity of the data sources to be analyzed under this requirement. In addition, awarding to a new vendor would substantially delay the project timeline because other highly specialized services which would dramatically inhibit findings from informing the ongoing training and technical assistance, policy development, management and other mission critical activities of the Office of Head Start. The result: an inability to provide timely assistance to millions of Americans who rely on these programs. Below is an outline of the specific reasons The Urban Institute is the only vendor that can successfully perform the required services without substantial inefficiency in terms of quality, time, and resources.

1. The Urban Institute has existing access to and/or expertise with key data sources that are not publicly available. This includes:

a. Head Start Enterprise System. The Urban Institute has existing access to this system obtained under the current task order and has extensive expertise garnered under the existing task order using information/data contained in the system for research and evaluation of critical relevance to this requirement such as the analysis of Head Start budgets, community assessments, and grant Change in Scope requests. The data and findings under the task order are not available outside of the creator, The Urban Institute, and the Government; as they have not yet been archived for external access, nor are they formatted and available in a manner that would be easy for other vendors to digest to easily perform the activities required by this new contract. This system is not available to the public as it is designed specifically to allow the Office of Head Start to access internal data about grant recipients and program operations. The Urban Institute spent extensive time communicating with the Office of Head Start to ensure the proper use and interpretation of the complex data in the system that would be duplicated and labor intensive if award was made to a different vendor.

b. Survey of Staff Recruitment, Training, and Professional Development in Early Head Start. The Urban Institute is the only vendor with existing access to this proprietary data and has extensive expertise in interpreting and using the data.

The Urban Institute designed and conducted the survey and developed the associated data documentation. No other vendor has current data access as this data has not yet been archived for secondary use and the specific archiving timeline is still unknown. In addition, no other vendor has expertise analyzing this data which is critical to successfully performing this requirement as this requirement directly builds upon data analysis performed as part of the existing order. Once the data is archived, accessing the data will require a lengthy application process to the data archive as the data will only be available for restricted-use. Accessing the data via the application process is anticipated to take at least four to six months; this data archiving process can be skipped entirely based on ACF’s existing access.

c. Additional time will be needed to develop necessary expertise to successfully use the data to address the needs of this requirement. Therefore, awarding to a different vendor would substantially delay the project timeline and subsequently impede the ability of this task order to provide timely information to ACF that can support the execution of Administration priorities. The unique and specialized expertise of The Urban Institute using this data is also essential to the proper analysis of the data and the production of high-quality products with accurate findings.

d. National Survey of Early Care and Education 2019. The Urban Institute has extensive expertise accessing and using this restricted access data source to specifically conduct research and evaluation about Head Start. Accessing and analyzing this data source to produce Head Start specific findings requires specialized expertise with the methodological capabilities and limitations of this complex data source as it pertains to producing Head Start-specific estimates.

This specialized expertise was garnered by The Urban Institute through their work on the Conversion of Enrollment Slots from Head Start to Early Head Start task order (HHSP233201500064I/75P00120F37027) for which findings have not been shared publicly. Further, accessing this data requires an application process anticipated to take at least four to six months and The Urban Institute has existing access obtained under the existing task order.

Existing data access would save the Government from duplicating resources and time associated with that application process. The highly specialized expertise of The Urban Institute pertaining to using this particular data source to conduct Head Start research is essential to this requirement and the efficient production of accurate, high-quality products that address the Government’s questions.

2. The Urban Institute has unique subject matter and technical expertise of critical relevance to this requirement. Specifically, this requirement requires expertise conducting research related to the design and operation of Head Start programs that meet the needs of children, families, and communities, including research and/or evaluation related to all of the following:

a. Assessing, planning for, and responding to changing needs using the Head

Start community assessment and other strategic planning efforts;

b. Tailoring Head Start programs through programmatic changes such as grant

Change in Scope requests to meet the needs of children, families, and communities;

c. Identifying facilitators and barriers to the implementation and delivery of Head Start services that meet community needs;

d. Ensuring Head Start staff are qualified and supported to effectively provide services that meet the needs of their children, families, and communities; and

e. Using data and ongoing program improvement processes to ensure high-quality services that meet the needs of children, families, and communities.

This honed methodological and technical expertise is necessary and essential to achieving the overall goals of this task order and to the production of high-quality end products of value. This subject matter and technical expertise are highly specific and unique and is a direct result of The Urban Institute’s work on the Conversion of Enrollment Slots from Head Start to Early Head Start task order (HHSP233201500064I/ 75P00120F37027). For example, The Urban Institute has developed extensive expertise conducting research related to Change in Scope requests submitted by Head Start grant recipients to ACF’s Office of Head Start. They accessed Change in Scope requests available via the Head Start Enterprise System, developed protocols to review, code, and analyze these requests, and developed high-quality dissemination products to share findings from these analyses. Additionally, they conducted two multi-case studies of Head Start grant recipients focused on how they assess and respond to changing community needs. The Urban Institute will need to rely on substantial knowledge that is not available in any of the public-facing information that has resulted from the current task order. Publicly available products from the current task order share findings from select research analyses conducted under the current task order but additional deliverables and knowledge garnered will not be made public and contain essential information necessary to this requirement (e.g., critical knowledge about accessing and using the aforementioned data sources to produce accurate findings).

Essential to this requirement is the continued analysis of data currently collected and maintained by The Urban Institute that is not yet available to the public or to other vendors. The data and analysis from the existing order is not available to external parties; however, archiving of the data and analysis will be completed under this new requirement. Therefore, external parties will be able to access the data once the archiving is complete. The need for this requirement evolved as a result of the work performed on the existing requirement to address the Administration’s and ACF’s priorities and is anticipated to be procured on a limited-sources basis in accordance with FAR 8.405-6(a)(1)(i)(B) with only one source having the capability to provide the services at the level of quality required because the services are unique and highly specialized.

In summary, The Urban Institute will rely heavily on their technical and methodological knowledge as well as insights and data access from the existing task order to successfully meet the Government’s needs at the level of quality and on the timeline required. This technical and methodological knowledge and data access has been cultivated over the entire period of performance of the existing task order. Hence, The Urban Institute be positioned to execute the required tasks on day one, by leveraging nearly five years of institutional knowledge critical to successful high-quality performance, ultimately resulting in the best value to the Government. Therefore, this task order must be issued on a sole-source basis to The Urban Institute in order to obtain the required high-quality services in an economical and efficient manner due to the vendor’s unique and highly specialized experience as a result of their work on the existing task order.

5. A determination by the ordering activity contracting officer that the order represents the best value consistent with FAR 8.404(d).

The Contracting Officer (CO) will determine whether the anticipated price will be fair and reasonable through the use of the GSA MAS program and through the program’s schedule pricing. The rates used by GSA MAS program schedule contract holders have been determined at the time of schedule contract award to be fair and reasonable. To further ensure the price is reasonable, price evaluation will be conducted in accordance with FAR 8.405-2(d), including an analysis of the level of effort and mix of labor proposed. Additional price reductions will be requested in accordance with FAR 8.405-4 prior to placing the order.

6. A description of the market research conducted among schedule holders and the results or a statement of the reason market research was not conducted.

The Government’s market research shows there is no other vendor that currently has the highly specialized and unique expertise and data access identified above to provide services at the level of quality required. As part of the work on the existing task order, a review of existing relevant research and consultation with a wide array of experts was conducted. These activities found a lack of research studies for the specific topics of relevance to this requirement and identified a great deal of need for additional research and evaluation to meet the Government’s very specific information needs for Designing and Operating Head Start Programs to Support the Needs of Children, Families, and Communities.

In addition, publicly available capability statements from GSA Multiple Award Schedule holders were reviewed along with the original proposals for the existing task order.

Because highly specialized and unique expertise and data access cultivated from performance on the existing task order is critical to successful performance for this requirement, this review did not identify other vendors with the necessary expertise and data access described above to successfully carryout this work at the level of quality required in a cost and schedule efficient manner to ensure the Government receives the best value.

A Request for Information was not issued specific to this requirement because it was determined that other vendors could not possibly have the highly specialized data access and expertise necessary for this requirement due to the specialized expertise and access resulting only from their work on the existing task order. Thus, the Government must procure this requirement as a sole source to The Urban Institute because they are the only vendor with the expertise and data access integral to successfully completing the activities for this requirement without causing substantial implications to quality which would be a detriment to the required timeline and resources.

7. Any other facts supporting the justification.

A Request for Quotation (RFQ) will not be released on GSA eBuy as it has been determined that there is only one source capable of providing the services for Designing and Operating Head Start Programs to Support the Needs of Children, Families, and Communities required at the level of quality required because the services are unique and highly specialized. After the placement of the task order, a notice will be posted on SAM.gov along with a redacted copy of the approved Limited-Sources Justification in accordance with the requirements at FAR 8.405-6(a)(2).

8. A statement of the actions, if any, the agency may take to remove or overcome any barriers that led to the restricted consideration before any subsequent acquisition for supplies and services is made.

As mentioned in Section 4 above, The Urban Institute is the only source capable of providing the unique and highly specialized services that are necessary to complete the service component tasks in the PWS. There are no known future requirements that would be dependent on the expertise to be gained from this requirement and there no known plans to subsequently acquire the same type of services. One of the key activities in this task order is to publicly archive collected data. Therefore, any future requirements for the analysis and dissemination of data collected under this task order could be competitively awarded. Making the data available to the public or other vendors under the same task order as the original data collection will facilitate competition on future acquisitions that rely on data.

9. The ordering activity contracting officer’s certification that the justification is accurate and complete to the best of the contracting officer’s knowledge and belief.

I certify this justification is accurate and complete to the best of my knowledge and belief.

Contracting Officer

10. Evidence that any supporting data that is the responsibility of technical or requirements personnel (e.g., verifying the Government’s minimum needs or requirements or other rationale for limited sources) and which form a basis for the justification have been certified as complete and accurate by the technical or requirements personnel.

I certify the technical data which forms a basis for this justification is complete and accurate and meet the Government’s minimum needs.

Program Office

11. For justifications under 8.405-6(a)(1), a written determination by the approving official identifying the circumstance that applies.

Under the authority of FAR 8.405-6(a)(1)(i)(B), the undersigned hereby determines that, due to the circumstances of this task order action, The Urban Institute is deemed the only responsible source capable of providing the unique and highly specialized services that meets the Government’s requirement supported herein.

12. Reviews and Approvals

Concur

Branch Chief

Concur

Division Chief

Approve

Bureau Competition Advocate