SOW_EA133W-RQ-17-0476_6.27.17.docx

SECTION D – CONTRACT DOCUMENTS, EXHIBITS, AND ATTACHMENTS

STATEMENT OF WORK

A.1. OVERVIEW AND BACKGROUND

The National Weather Service provides Impact-based Decision Support Services (IDSS) to a variety of classes of its designated core partners. Some of the applications and technologies deployed to provide IDSS require an SMS broker to provide SMS gateway services between the NWS and cellular service providers (carriers), and to secure carrier approval, provisioning, and certification.

MDSS (iNWS):

Mobile Decision Support Services (iNWS) is a mobile alerting service designed to bring critical weather data and automatic alerts directly to cell phones and mobile devices. The target audience for this service is community decision leaders. Our goal is to provide a tool for the NWS to deliver improved decision support to community decision leaders during high-impact events, anytime, anywhere.

MDSS (iNWS) provides NWS watches, warnings, and advisories in an interactive, user driven, real-time alerting service that leverages the solid NWS warning program. Users specify interest areas for location and types of weather alerts desired. MDSS (iNWS) embeds short hyperlinks in text message alerts to generate a brief but powerful message.

NOAA is the leader in modeling and forecasting atmospheric and hydrologic behavior. iNWS provides delivery of this data to emergency managers and other key community decision makers who are in-route to a high-impact event, out of the office, or otherwise mobile. iNWS is working to take advantage of mobile information technology in order to enhance the service of our mission, and remain relevant in today’s society. The use of mobile technology is necessary for us to provide information to users more completely, in a more usable form, and in a timely manner, for the protection of life and property.

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES - Additional information on the Mobile Decision Support Services (iNWS) program may be found on the Mobile Decision Support Services (iNWS) website located at the following address: https://inws.ncep.noaa.gov/

A.2. DATA FLOW

Users register with MDSS (iNWS) using a moderated web page at https://inws.ncep.noaa.gov/. The term moderated means that once the user submits a registration request, NWS must approve the request before the user is allowed to proceed further with the registration. The approval criterion are defined by NWS policy and focuses on who constitutes a local community leader (i.e. emergency manager, media, local, state and federal agencies)

Once registered, each user can specify the weather alerts they want to receive through defining geographic areas, through the use of a zip code, city, county, state, line or user defined polygon. The user can name their alert area and select which category of weather they are interested in. Users specify how they would like alerts delivered to them; email and/or SMS.

In order to receive SMS alerts, users register their cellular phone number via the MDSS (iNWS) user registration web page. SMS alerts are not activated until users confirm their phone number by receiving a text code within a SMS sent to the provided phone number and entering that code into a web page form.

The MDSS (iNWS) system receives NWS weather alerts as they are issued. Upon receipt of a product the MDSS (iNWS) service calculates which users should receive an alert. The MDSS (iNWS) system formats and sends each alert to the SMS broker via web services. An initial status of the sent SMS is retrieved from the broker as soon as possible to identify problems and provide notification to administrators to take corrective action. The broker handles routing the SMS to the appropriate cellular provider for delivery to user's cellular phone.

To opt out of some or all SMS alerts, users may log into the MDSS (iNWS) web site and disable SMS alerts and/or delete specific alert areas they have previously defined. Users may also opt out of all SMS alerts by sending a SMS to the MDSS (iNWS) short code containing the words “stop” or “cancel”.

A.3 ESTIMATES FOR NUMBER OF USERS AND MESSAGES

The NWS Mobile Decision Support Services (iNWS) system is transitioning from a prototype to an operational system. The targeted user base is the set of core partners (community decision leaders) who work with the NWS to help communities respond to high-impact weather events. The transition will include a controlled and regulated growth of registered users. The addition of new users is anticipated to range from an existing 45,000 users, to potentially 70,000 users over the next two years.

MDSS (iNWS) will transmit SMS messages to a small subset of the total number of registered users at any one time i.e. SMS alerts are only sent to those users affected by an individual weather alert. The number of SMS alerts is further reduced by combining several user alert areas affected by a NWS product into a single SMS message. MDSS (iNWS) will send SMS weather alerts for any location across the continental United States, Alaska, Hawaii, and Puerto Rico.

Transmission of SMS alerts will vary based upon the number of weather events during any given day and the number of people located in the affected area. The timing of weather events also vary across the nation from day to day and dissemination rates for alerts on those events will vary accordingly.

The actual quantity of SMS messages per user will vary based on the user selected location(s) and coincident NWS weather alerts issued for that location(s). SMS utilization spikes will be directly relative to the appearance of severe weather events in those areas of user interest. Again, SMS alerts will only be sent to a small subset of the total number of registered users at any one time. In addition, it is important to note the nature of weather alerts and SMS dissemination for this service. MDSS (iNWS) users are distributed across the United States (versus in a single location like a city) and only small clusters of users would be impacted by specific types of weather; therefore, delivery of SMS weather alerts will also be of a distributed nature regarding carriers, cellular towers, and the timing for which alerts are disseminated.

The following statistics for a 12 month period, from December 2015 to November 2016, provides an example of the number of NWS weather alerts that have been be generated across the United States.

Number of NWS weather alerts generated by month:

Note 1: Approximately 50% of SMS messages occur on busy weather days, which typically may be only 3-6 days of the month

Note 2: Starting in 2017, iNWS will be used to disseminate test notifications to users of Impacts Catalog when their impact thresholds have been exceeded. We estimate that this could initially generate an additional 200,000-250,000 SMS messages annually on top of current usage.

Disclaimer: Due to the nature of weather events and the responsibility of the NWS to generate weather warning alerts, it is difficult to predict exactly how many alert messages may be generated for any given month or location. Because of this, having an unlimited text messaging service for MDSS (iNWS) may be needed. The definition of unlimited shall be provided in Section B (Cost portion of the RFP) when pricing unlimited messaging.

B. REQUIREMENTS

B.1. TECHNICAL REQUIREMENTS

The SMS Broker will adhere to the following requirements:

messaging.

g) SMS broker shall provide support for Long Code numbers to embed a web address or landing page link. The Long Code shall support voice, fax and SMS messaging.

h) SMS broker shall provide access to an HTTP web interface and associated APIs for connecting the NWS Mobile Decision Support Services (iNWS) application to the SMS gateway platform.

i) SMS broker shall coordinate carrier certification of the NWS Mobile Decision Support Services (iNWS).

l) SMS broker shall adhere to SMS security standards.

m) SMS broker shall record and report monthly on the delivery and receipt of mobile originated and mobile terminated SMS messages between the NWS, the carriers, and end-users of the NWS Mobile Decision Support Services (iNWS) campaign to the MDSS (iNWS) Management support.

p) SMS Broker shall provide service without requiring mobile originated “opt-in”.

Users shall only be able to “opt-in” via the website.

q) The SMS broker shall notify the NWS immediately, by telephone, upon detection or suspicion of a System Information Security compromise.

r) SMS Broker shall ensure a minimum capability to provide 20 concurrent SOAP/XML connections.

B.2. SERVICES MANAGEMENT REQUIREMENTS

The Contractor shall notify the COR of all planned outages a minimum of 48 hours prior to the scheduled event. All unplanned outages shall be reported to the COR with 1 hour of occurrence.

The Contractor shall have the responsibility to provide monthly reports for the following service related information.

a) Monthly report of the total number of messages received, and delivered.

b) Monthly report of message service outages detailing date and location of message failure.

c) Monthly report of approvals for carriers who opt-in to the NWS Mobile Decision Support Services (iNWS) SMS campaign.

e) Monthly report of expansion of small, rural carriers that are not already serviced by the SMS broker.

B.3. SERVICE INFORMATION SECURITY REQUIREMENTS

The contractor shall continuously monitor the security condition of the system during its term of contract award and take appropriate steps to maintain the system in a secure condition. Security incidents shall be reported to the government within 24 hours after detection of the event occurrence

B.4. TESTING REQUIREMENTS

Testing of the SMS broker message delivery service capability shall be conducted as needed to verify that the format, receipt, delivery and reliability of the SMS service meet all of the applicable requirements.

The Contractor shall provide all the program management, documentation, personnel, hardware, software, test equipment, and facilities necessary to conduct testing of the SMS services. The COR will approve all test plans and procedures. Test plans will be submitted 15 days after the start of performance. The Government will participate in the testing and to ensure that the requirements are met.

The test plan shall include contingency plan scenarios, including system recovery and reconstitution, to adequately demonstrate the SMS broker service meets the applicable requirement.

B.5. MESSAGE FORMAT SPECIFICATIONS REQUIREMENTS

The SMS broker shall be capable of delivering messages in the MDSS (iNWS) message format as received by the MDSS (iNWS)

Example of message format:

New event. Severe Thunderstorm Warning from 1/22/2017 12:17 AM to 1:00 AM CST for New Orleans LA. More information.

More Information link is: https://inws.ncep.noaa.gov/a/a.php?i=8976581

New event. Winter Storm Warning from 1/7/2017 8:00 PM to 1/9/2017 10:00 PM MST for Salt Lake City UT. More information.

More information link is: https://inws.ncep.noaa.gov/a/a.php?i=8408096

C. TRANSITION

C.1. TRANSITION OF SMS BROKER SERVICES

The current MDSS (iNWS) SMS service will have reached the end of contract term in October 18, 2017. The new SMS broker service contract must be in place by August 18th 2017 in order to sustain MDSS (iNWS) service operation. The contractor shall ensure the capability of providing SMS services not less than two (2) weeks prior to the existing contract termination date in October 18, 2017. The SMS service functionality can be activated prior to the current SMS broker contract reaching end of contract term.

C.2. CONTINUITY OF OPERATIONS

The transition from the current MDSS (iNWS) broker shall be made in such a way that normal operations and MDSS (iNWS) broadcasts are not interrupted.

F. DELIVERABLES

F.1. DELIVERABLES AND TIME OF DELIVERY SCHEDULE

The table below defines the major deliverables. All deliverables shall be submitted in accordance with the kinds, and dates indicated. Comment by Andy Edman - NOAA Federal: Something is wrong here -- we jump from section C to F -- then back to D

All deliverables and/or status updates will be submitted to the COR.

The Contractor shall provide deliverables and delivery schedule applicable below.

continuing through completion of the contract

Reserved NWS Common Short Code (CSC) on carrier networks No later than August 18th 2017, continuing through completion of the contract

Support for Long Code numbers to embed a web address or landing page link. Long Codes shall support voice, fax and SMS messaging

No later than August 18th 2017, continuing through completion of the contract

Minimum SMS service availability rate of 99.9% Beginning at contract award and continuing through completion of the contract

Delivery and receipt of mobile originated and mobile terminated SMS messages between the NWS, the carriers, and end-users of the NWS Mobile Decision Support Services (iNWS) Beginning at contract award and continuing through completion of the contract

continuing through completion of the contract

continuing through completion of the contract

Provide 20 concurrent SOAP/XML connections for MDSS iNWS Beginning at contract award and continuing through completion of the contract

Provide SMS service without requiring mobile originated “opt-in” Beginning at contract award and continuing through completion of the contract

continuing through completion of the contract

Attachment 1