FA714621SC001 A002 - ARI White Paper Call 20 Mar 2026 FINAL.pdf

CUI

FA714621S001 - Call A002 Commercial Solutions Opening (CSO) Call for AF/A1 Agile Refactoring and Integration (AR&I) Call for White Papers

A. INTRODUCTION: The Deputy Chief of Staff of the Air Force for Manpower, Personnel, and Services (AF/A1) executes the full scope of manpower, personnel, and services functions to integrate a ready, capable, and diverse Total Force for the DAF. This involves developing, implementing, and overseeing comprehensive policies and programs that affect the entire lifecycle of both military and civilian personnel, from accessions and recruiting to retirement and separation. In collaboration with other headquarters offices, AF/A1 is responsible for shaping the Total Force, managing resources, and ensuring all personnel activities, including family matters, resilience programs, and equal opportunity initiatives, are aligned with the strategic objectives of the Air Force to sustain a ready, capable, and diverse force.

The AF/A1's current operational landscape is defined by a diverse, yet fragmented, portfolio of HR applications. The portfolio, which supports over 700,000 personnel, is currently hindered by a complex and outdated operational landscape. The environment consists of approximately 84 legacy systems and over 118 disparate applications built on various platforms like Salesforce, ServiceNow, and Outsystems, often with obsolete hardware. Over time, this fragmented ecosystem has created significant inefficiencies, including duplicative data platforms, isolated information silos, and inconsistent user interfaces, leading to a degraded user experience. The high sustainment costs, coupled with the operational and security risks posed by these legacy processes and technological redundancies, directly impede the DAF's readiness and lethality. In response to these challenges and to align with the Secretary of Defense (SECDEF) strategic imperative to focus on core mission advantages, the A1 Digital Strategy was established as the guiding framework for modernization. This strategy mandates a decisive shift away from slow, resource-intensive methods toward an agile, secure, and innovative model that leverages cutting-edge technologies like artificial intelligence (AI) and cloud solutions to redefine human resource management and better support the warfighter.

B. PROBLEM STATEMENT: The Air Force's current Human Resources enterprise, supporting over 700,000 personnel, is critically hindered by a fragmented and outdated portfolio of over 118 disparate applications and 84 legacy systems. This disjointed technological landscape creates significant data silos, high sustainment costs, and pervasive security risks. The resulting inefficiencies and degraded user experience directly impede AF/A1's ability to effectively manage the Total Force, ultimately degrading warfighter readiness and lethality.

Government interest in major program focus areas are identified below.

Refactoring from legacy code into modernized CRM platforms, to include, but not limited to, various platforms like Salesforce, ServiceNow, and Outsystems, often with obsolete hardware.

C. MAJOR PROGRAM FOCUS AREAS. Innovative approaches, technologies, and methodologies that supports AF/A1 in the focus areas listed below. Responses to singular or several focus areas is acceptable.

1. Application Refactoring & Modernization: Re-architecting legacy systems into a modern, secure, and sustainable SaaS portfolio while reducing technical debt.

2. DevSecOps: Utilization of CI/CD pipelines to enable rapid, secure, and continuous delivery of software.

3. Human-Centered Design (HCD) & Discovery: Employing user-centric methods to define requirements and create a technical blueprint that de-risks development.

4. Enterprise Integration & API Development: Building reusable APIs to connect disparate systems, break down data silos, and create a unified data environment.

5. Data Migration & Validation: Securely migrating data from legacy sources to the modern cloud environment while ensuring data integrity and accuracy.

D. FUNDING LEVEL: Funding will be provided for white papers that are most advantageous to the government. The government contemplates funding to be made under this CSO from time-to-time to fund efforts consistent with the objectives of this CSO but no promises or guarantees are provided. Any award made under this CSO will comply with the stated objectives and instructions of this CSO.

E. DESIRED VENDOR QUALIFICATIONS & EXPERTISE

1. DoW Impact Level (IL): Secure development environments and DAF-authorized hosting must be used in accordance with IL5+ requirements and comply with DoW policy, guidance, and regulatory standards. The solution's baseline operational environment will be DoW IL5 with scalability to IL6. Vendors must demonstrate the capability to deploy and manage components requiring the higher security controls of an IL6 environment.

2. DD Form 254 Department of Defense (DoD) Security Classification Specification: This CSO contains security guidance that will be included in the DD Form 254 DoD Security Classification Specification Guidance. All parties interested in responding to this CSO, will comply with the security guidance included in this CSO at Appendix C, and/or any specific security guidance that may be included in any Call that may be issued under this CSO. As a wide variety of responses, as well as potential awards of diverse scope and value and associated classification levels under this CSO are possible, the government will provide award specific security details for individual award actions as required.

F. WHITE PAPER FORMAT AND PROCESS: Prior to submitting white papers, please refer to the original CSO posting located at https://sam.gov/workspace/contract/opp/6b63fb14c09b4170a6f1bbff29aabb8e/view

G. DUE DATE: This is a Closed-Open Two Step Call, consistent with the instructions in the original CSO posting.

1. “Closed” Due Date for White Paper Submissions: 4:00PM Washington, DC Local Time, 25 April 2026

2. “Open” period of White Paper Submissions will still be acceptable in accordance with the original CSO posting.

https://sam.gov/workspace/contract/opp/6b63fb14c09b4170a6f1bbff29aabb8e/view

H. POINT OF CONTACTS (POCs):

1. Primary POC: Contracting Officer, Kevin Adams, kevin.adams.20@us.af.mil

2. Alternate POC: A1XR Contracts Management, Melissa Mattis, melissa.mattis@us.af.mil mailto:kevin.adams.20@us.af.mil mailto:melissa.mattis@us.af.mil