18-09 amend 4.doc

AMENDMENT 4 to BAA FA8750-18-S-7009

The purpose of this amendment is to update the Technical Point of Contact (TPOC).

No other changes have been made.

NAICS CODE: 541715

FEDERAL AGENCY NAME: Department of the Air Force, Air Force Materiel Command, AFRL - Rome Research Site, AFRL/Information Directorate, 26 Electronic Parkway, Rome, NY, 13441-4514

BAA ANNOUNCEMENT TYPE: Modification/Amendment BROAD AGENCY ANNOUNCEMENT (BAA) TITLE: Adaptive Multi Source Exploitation of Documents (AMUSED)

BAA NUMBER: FA8750-18-S-7009

PART I – OVERVIEW INFORMATION

This announcement is for an Open, Two (2) Step BAA which is open and effective until 30 Sep 2022. Only white papers are due at this time. While white papers will be considered if received prior to 3:00 PM on 30 Sep 2022, the following submission dates are suggested to best align with projected funding:

FY18 – The initial white paper submissions for each Focus Area is due as follows:

16 Jan 18 – Focus Area C/Text Analytics for Cyber Domain 12 Mar 18 – Focus Area A/Global Treat Discovery and Identification

16 Apr 18 – Focus Area B/Emerging Threat Analytics

Thereafter suggested submissions dates for all the focus areas are:

FY19 by 30 Mar 2018 FY20 by 29 Mar 2019 FY21 by 27 Mar 2020 FY22 by 26 Mar 2021 Offerors should monitor the Contract Opportuities on the Beta SAM website at https://beta.SAM.gov in the event this announcement is amended.

CONCISE SUMMARY OF FUNDING OPPORTUNITY: The Air Force Research Laboratory, Information Directorate is seeking innovative analytics, analytical tools, algorithm developments, projects, and experiments focused on achieving Adaptive Multi-Source Exploitation of Documents (AMUSED). This BAA is a follow-on to BAA AFRL-RIK-2015-0019 Multi-Source Information Extraction and Network Analysis (MUSIENA).

BAA ESTIMATED FUNDING: Total funding for this BAA is approximately $24.9M. Individual awards will not normally exceed 36 months with dollar amounts normally ranging from $100K to $900K each. There is also the potential to make awards up to any dollar value as long as the value does not exceed the available BAA ceiling amount.

ANTICIPATED INDIVIDUAL AWARDS: Multiple Awards are anticipated

TYPE OF INSTRUMENTS THAT MAY BE AWARDED: Procurement contracts, grants, cooperative agreements or other transactions (OT) depending upon the nature of the work proposed. In the event that an Other Transaction for Prototype agreement is awarded as a result of this competitive BAA, and the prototype project is successfully completed, there is the potential for a prototype project to transition to award of a follow-on production contract or transaction. The Other Transaction for Prototype agreement itself will also contain a similar notice of a potential follow-on production contract or agreement.

AGENCY CONTACT INFORMATION: All white paper and proposal submissions and any questions of a technical nature shall be directed to the cognizant Technical Point of Contact (TPOC) as specified below (unless otherwise specified in the technical area):

BAA MANAGER:

TPOC: Stephen P. Reichhart Mailing Address: AFRL/RITGB, 525 Brooks Road, Rome NY 13441-4505 Telephone: (315)330-3918

Email: stephen.reichhart@us.af.mil Questions of a contractual/business nature shall be directed to the cognizant Contracting Officer, as specified below (email requests are preferred):

Amber Buckley Telephone (315) 330-3605 Email: Amber.Buckley@us.af.mil Emails must reference the solicitation (BAA) number and title of the acquisition.

Communication between Prospective Offerors and Government Representatives: Dialogue between prospective offerors and Government representatives is encouraged. Technical and contracting questions can be resolved in writing or through open discussions. Discussions with any of the points of contact shall not constitute a commitment by the Government to subsequently fund or award any proposed effort. Only Contracting Officers are legally authorized to commit the Government.

Offerors are cautioned that evaluation ratings may be lowered and/or proposal rejected if proposal preparation (Proposal format, content, etc.) and/or submittal instructions are not followed.

PART II – FULL TEXT ANNOUNCEMENT

BROAD AGENCY ANNOUNCEMENT (BAA) TITLE: Adaptive Multi Source Exploitation of Documents (AMUSED)

BAA NUMBER: BAA FA8750-18-S-7009

CATALOG OF FEDERAL DOMESTIC ASSISTANCE (CFDA) Number: 12.800 & 12.910

I. FUNDING OPPORTUNITY DESCRIPTION:

The Information Directorate, Information Fusion Branch, is soliciting white papers under this announcement for unique and innovative technologies to explore and develop Adaptive Multi Source Exploitation of Documents (AMUSED) capabilities including but not limited to, analytics, analytical tools, algorithm developments, projects, and experiments that will provide the Air Force the means to better conduct analytical operations in support of their Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance mission including Cyber. This announcement is comprised of three research areas: (1) Global Threat Discovery and Identification (GTD-ID); (2) Emerging Threat Analytics (ETA); and (3) Text Analytics for Cyber Domain (TA4CD), where each has research areas that taken together comprise the focus of AMUSED research and development.

BACKGROUND: Past research in text analysis has led to the automated capabilities that are now in use to extract relevant information from large volumes of textual data. The development of this technology has reduced textual data overload, increased the accuracy of analysis, and decreased the cycle time and manpower requirements needed to assess threats and vulnerabilities. However, this is a situation that has not remained static from either the perspective of the anticipated number of data sources or projected analytical needs. Further development is required to not just keep pace but to move beyond current performance levels, to overcome limitations in moving to new data types and domains, and to achieve new, more sophisticated capabilities.

Fundamentally the analysis of textual content must produce higher levels of comprehension and understanding than presently exists. As textual information has increased in both quantity and complexity the demands for greater analytical capabilities have also grown dramatically. While basic documents still comprise a large portion of textual information, valuable content can now be extracted from a range of other sources including a variety of social media material (chat, email, blogs, etc.), many open source materials and the metadata descriptors that relate back to additional media forms (video, imagery, speech, etc.). The value of textual analysis going forward will now be gauged by the ability to work effectively in and across these and other components of a complex data environment while advancing the capabilities in exploiting traditional sources.

Current network discovery and analysis science has focused on static relationship or event based networks of interest. This occurs primarily on one or two particular data sources. These capabilities are adept at enabling an analyst to effectively analyze network data within a single data source, but the analyst is then left to make mental correlations of observations and conclusions drawn from one data source to other data sources. Furthermore, current input methods do not account for semantic equivalences during the ingestion of the data, making the analyst’s job even more difficult.

One of the greatest technical challenges facing all decision support systems is the heterogeneous aspect of the data that is collected by millions of sensors and the different stovepipe architectures used to store this data. In order to perform useful analytics, a composite picture of the key entities, events, and locations need to be pieced together from the original disparate data sources. The ingesting and integrating of information from disparate data sources remains a difficult and unresolved problem.

In the Cyber Domain, multiple analyst groups, with diverse Mission Areas, need rapid, effective means to identify Essential Element of Interest (EEIs), in support of both Cyber Operations and Defensive Cyber Analysis. EEIs are pieces of information that answer questions deemed critical to mission accomplishment (see formal definition in Joint Publication 2-0, Joint Intelligence, dated 22 Oct 2013).

OBJECTIVES: The three research areas within this AMUSED BAA are (1) Global Threat Discovery and Identification (GTD-ID), (2) Emerging Threat Analytics (ETA) and (3) Text Analytics for Cyber Domain (TA4CD) with each containing the key technical Focus Areas for development. Submissions/White Papers should clearly identify the AMUSED research area or specify the individual Focus Area being addressed.

A. Global Threat Discovery and Identification (GTD-ID): The GTD-ID research area must deliver advanced text exploitation to provide deeper understanding of the information that can be pulled from multi-source unstructured text. The individual focus areas of this research area are User Driven Domain Customization, Complex Event Extraction and Text Exploitation Platform for Multi-Source Analysis (MSA). These technologies are key enablers that will more widely deliver affordable, easy to use, accurate text exploitation technology to AF users and each may be the emphasis of a white paper submission under GTD-ID.

Focus Area A1 - User Driven Domain Customization

As text exploitation tools gain acceptance in the DOD and Intelligence communities, they are exposed to a wider variety of domains of interest. Even within the Air Force, different user groups are interested in different types of documents, on different topics, with different entities, relations and events of interest. In order to achieve maximum results for each individual user, GTD-ID products must support customization for their specific use-case. This will enable ready transition and adoption of this technology through the development of effective user-driven domain customization allowing subject matter experts (SME) to tailor GTD-ID capabilities to their environment rather than require specialized technical expertise to perform this customization. An analyst should not be required to understand the underlying technology; they should be able to concentrate on what they do best, which is the task of analyzing data. This focus area will develop robust techniques allowing domain experts to quickly, affordably and effectively customize text extraction capabilities to work on their new text types and domains.

While AFRL/RI has sponsored prior R&D in domain porting which has made progress towards this goal, there is still considerable work to be done to reach the higher level of domain customization performance that will leverage advanced learning techniques to provide a user-driven capability.

Focus Area A2 - Complex Event Extraction

Complex event extraction means moving beyond individual events that do not provide a sufficient level of situational awareness and toward a broader and more comprehensive understanding of collective events and their importance. Achieving success in complex event extraction should include extracting/associating event arguments with events, extracting relations between events (e.g., before, prerequisite-of, causal); within-document event co-reference; cross-document event co-reference; and developing algorithms that are capable of understanding how events fit together in a logical way. To truly understand what is going on there must be this understanding of how the individual events fit together conceptually and into some higher-level logical structure (e.g., based on causality, temporal ordering, etc.). Research into event structures, event scenarios, event schemas, and event scripts would be of particular benefit in addressing this need. As the amount of event information to be assessed accumulates, there will be a need to measure the confidence level in the understanding of the larger event (scenario) in total. The overall intent of this research thrust is to provide the technological foundation to enable more powerful event-centric analysis (from information from text).

Focus Area A3 - Text Exploitation Platform for Multi-Source Analysis (TE Platform for MSA)

The TE Platform for MSA will achieve a comprehensive, robust, flexible, scalable, web-based text exploitation framework for multi-source text analysis. The framework will support “end-to-end” functionality, including (but not limited to) data preparation and ingestion, including document zoning to enable separate processing of structured (header, footer, tables, lists, etc.) and unstructured portions of text; textual data analysis and visualization; multi-source analysis; search/filtering of document collections; Information Extraction (IE) and content management. Additionally there are key design requirements which include scalability, flexibility and robustness that will promote application for new/different use-cases along with adaptability and vendor-independence which will promote openness of the solution. Adhering to best practices and standards that help the framework attain these design requirements is encouraged, such as the Apache Unstructured Information Management Architecture (UIMA). The end result will be a strong and viable technology platform for rapidly transitioning new/maturing text exploitation capabilities to our users in support of Multi-Source Analysis.

B. Emerging Threat Analytics (ETA): ETA will address key challenges in multi-source fusion and social media exploitation empowering the analyst with high performance, high accuracy and easily adaptable tools for threat assessment, explanation, and anticipation surrounding individuals of interest, groups and events. This research area will support the design and implementation of state-of-the-art technologies to achieve data alignment for large-scale, disparate data sources and create analytical models for estimating “tactical” phenomena in society at large based on phenomena that occur in social media. The individual focus areas of this research area are Multi-Source Data Fusion and Social Media Analytics.

Focus Area B1 - Multi-Source Data Fusion

The objective of ETA is to employ a flexible and adaptive framework through which layered multi-modal network analysis (LMMNA) can be achieved, to provide the analyst the ability to understand and interrogate the inter and intra source relationships that have and continue to evolve spatially and temporally within and across the spectrum of intelligence data. The framework will incorporate technologies that amalgamate and align disparate data layers (sources and domains); apply entity resolutions to associate and cluster like-entities within and across layers to derive a single graph; and provide access to batch and real-time graph analytic algorithms and heuristics to derive and maintain graph measures, graph matching and graph querying, leveraged to identify valuable semantic and structural elements, and discover new patterns of interest. Simply put, the framework will ultimately facilitate the alignment, association, and analysis of disparate layers of intelligence data to yield a cohesive and comprehensive picture of the evolving cross layer situational awareness. Adhering to best practices and standards that help the framework attain these design requirements is encouraged, such as the Apache TinkerPop Open Source Graph Computing Framework.

When analyzing multi-source information, several issues can arise that inhibit the ability to produce an effectual analysis. Errors in the processing pipeline, data entry, and reporting as well as redundant information and deliberate attempts at misinformation will persist throughout the data. Identifying these knowledge conflicts is an important yet unresolved task. Current methods rely on linguistic cues with little regard to semantics. These constructs measure various features of the text, including parts of speech, tense, and voice. However, it turns out that these measures and constructs are not significant predictors of deceptive behavior and explain only a fraction of the variance. This necessitates a new approach that not only understands the syntactic features of text, but also the semantic features.

Focus Area B2 - Social Media Analytics

Analytical capabilities that can be applied to social media communications have been limited in scope, scale and reach. Identifying mission relevant information from billions of posts generated by millions of users is currently a labor-intensive and subjective process. Central concerns in the analysis of social media data are in the vast amount of data that is constantly being produced and the actual analytics that need to be performed. ETA must develop an improved method for noise reduction and analysis in order to extensively and effectively search the massive social media datasets.

While noise reduction can be used to refine the search space, analysts will still be confronted with content that requires an automated capability that will be able to readily investigate individuals, uncover relationships, and follow connections to reveal networks of people and organizations. Analysts need to understand who the protagonists are, what they have done, and what they are planning. Automated analysis methods are needed that will help analysts rapidly decipher unfolding events and even attempt to predict future events. Where current social media analytics have been focused on analyzing the explicit relationships additional research under ETA is needed to uncover the implicit relationships within social media that are not directly evident. Areas of interest for this research of Social Media content and structure would develop the automated methods to identify embedded motivations and attitudes, expose non-explicit relationships between individuals and groups along with their dynamics in how they interact.

C. Text Analytics for Cyber Domain (TA4CD): This research area will develop adaptive technology enabling multiple analyst groups to more effectively find and exploit Essential Elements of Information (EEIs) relevant to their Mission Area with particular emphasis on the Cyber Domain. As previously stated, EEIs are pieces of information that answer questions deemed critical to mission accomplishment (see formal definition in Joint Publication 2-0, Joint Intelligence, dated 22 Oct 2013). The individual focus areas of this research area are Enhanced Search for EEI Information, Adaptive Multi-Source Processing and Cyber Entity Co-Reference.

Focus Area C1 - Enhanced Search for EEI Information

The goal of this Focus Area is to research and develop technology that significantly improves analysts’ ability to find information relevant to their EEIs. Areas of interest include, but are not limited to, Web-Scale Multi-Lingual Document Search and EEI Modeling and Search.

Web-Scale Multi-Lingual Document Search: Analysts need to be able to perform fast, effective web-scale search (100M documents+) of multi-lingual data sources, to find documents containing information potentially relevant to their EEIs. Achieving state-of-the-art performance in terms of the relevancy and completeness of results is key. The technology must be portable to new languages and genres, for both high and low-resource languages, preferably by a user vs technology expert.

EEI Modeling & Search: There is a need for innovative technology to effectively search large volumes of potentially relevant documents for information pertinent to answering an EEI. EEIs can range from very specific queries, to very high level questions, such as “How stable is Country X?” Developing search technology that can provide answers to such high-level questions is a challenge, because it really requires answering a number of sub-questions whose answers all contribute to answering the EEI. So, for example, in order to answer the EEI “How stable is Country X?”, one might need to answer a number of sub-questions whose answers all contribute to addressing the EEI, such as “How stable is the current Government in Country X?”, “Are banks open for normal business in Country X?”, “Is food readily available in Country X?”, and “Have the number of violent crimes increased in Country X?” In other words, answering high-level EEIs requires the ability to perform “meta-searches” to define/manage/refine the sub-questions (sub-queries) that must be answered to determine the answer to the high-level EEI. Technology is needed to model EEIs and their sub-queries as sets of Structured Natural Language Queries; manage and refine the EEI query model over time; use the query models to search for relevant information, as well as expand/refine search results based on feedback from the user. The technology must achieve high relevancy of search results, and provide a means to improve system results over timebased on user feedback. Alternate approaches will be considered. Technical approaches must also be user-adaptable to different Mission Areas. The primary language of interest is English; being adaptable to other languages is a plus but not a requirement.

Focus Area C2 - Adaptive Multi-Source Processing

Adaptive Multi-Source Processing will research and develop user-adaptive text exploitation technology that will make it possible to customize text exploitation capabilities to support multiple groups of analysts with different mission areas, different document types, and different information requirements. Areas of interest include, but are not limited to, User-Driven Domain Customization (described above under the GTD-ID Focus Area); TE Platform for MSA (described above under the GTD-ID Focus Area); Adaptive Text Zoning; and Document Structure Analysis.

Adaptive Text Zoning. Currently, text zoning is a manual process that requires a technology expert to analyze new and diverse document types, determine their structure, and then manually create text zoning rules to identify and process the various structured and unstructured portions of the document. The intent of this area is to research and develop an automated capability for Text Zoning that can be adapted to new document types/structures with either no intervention, or very minimal intervention by a user who is not a technology expert.

Document Structure Analysis. Very large documents may consist of multiple coherent discourse units that are more effectively processed as individual sub-documents by a text exploitation platform. The goal of this area is to research discourse parsing, or alternative methods for document structure analysis, in order to identify coherent discourse units within large documents for text processing.

Focus Area C3 - Cyber Entity Co-Reference Cyber Entity Co-Reference will provide the analyst with capabilities to automate the consolidation of Entities extracted from text that are relevant to the Cyber Domain, both within a document and across multiple documents. This includes, but is not limited to, Equipment Entity Co-Reference.

Equipment Entity Co-Reference (within-document and cross-document). Within and cross-document entity co-reference capabilities already exist for named entities like People and Organizations, enabling automated consolidation, analysis and visualization of this information. Analysts in the Cyber Domain need a comparable capability: within and cross-document Equipment Entity Co-Reference algorithms that will enable automated consolidation of equipment information extracted from text, both within and across many documents. However, the way in which Equipment Entities are discussed in text introduce a number of unique challenges that would make equipment entity co-reference more of challenge than the co-reference for named entities like People, Organizations and Geo-Political Entities. For example, Equipment Entities are typically referred to by a class name (e.g., “the XYZ Router) vs by a uniquely identifiable name (e.g., “the XYZ router with serial #123”), which increases ambiguity. Research in this area will result in a proof-of-concept for within and cross-document Equipment Entity Co-Reference, enabling consolidation of equipment information within and across documents.

IMPORTANT NOTES REGARDING:

FUNDAMENTAL RESEARCH. It is DoD policy that the publication of products of fundamental research will remain unrestricted to the maximum extent possible. National Security Decision Directive (NSDD) 189 defines fundamental research as follows:

‘Fundamental research’ means basic and applied research in science and engineering, the results of which ordinarily are published and shared broadly within the scientific community, as distinguished from proprietary research and from industrial development, design, production, and product utilization, the results of which ordinarily are restricted for proprietary or national security reasons.

As of the date of publication of this BAA, the Government cannot identify whether work proposed under this BAA may be considered fundamental research and may award both fundamental and non-fundamental research. Proposers should indicate in their proposal whether they believe the scope of the research included in their proposal is fundamental or not. While proposers should clearly explain the intended results of their research, the Government shall have sole discretion to select award instrument type and to negotiate all instrument terms and conditions with selectees. Appropriate clauses will be included in resultant awards for non-fundamental research to prescribe publication requirements and other restrictions, as appropriate.

For certain research projects, it may be possible that although the research being performed by the awardee is restricted research, a sub-awardee may be conducting fundamental research. In those cases, it is the awardee’s responsibility to explain in their proposal why its sub-awardee’s effort is fundamental research.

CLOUD COMPUTING. In accordance with DFARS Clause 252.239-7010, if the development proposed requires storage of Government, or Government-related data on the cloud, offerors need to ensure that the cloud service provider proposed has been granted Provisional Authorization by the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) at the level appropriate to the requirement.

II. AWARD INFORMATION:

1. FUNDING: Total funding for this BAA is approximately $24.9M. The anticipated funding to be obligated under this BAA is broken out by fiscal year as follows:

FY18 - $2.70M

FY19 - $5.05M

FY20 - $5.25M

FY21 - $5.75M

FY22 - $6.15M

The breakout of funding by fiscal year is a projection. The total awards values in any given year will vary.

a. Individual awards will not normally exceed 36 months with dollar values ranging from $100K to $900K. There is also the potential to make awards up to any dollar value as long as the value does not exceed the available BAA ceiling amount.

b. The Government reserves the right to select all, part, or none of the proposals received, subject to the availability of funds. All potential Offerors should be aware that due to unanticipated budget fluctuations, funding in any or all areas may change with little or no notice.

2. FORM. Awards of efforts as a result of this announcement will be in the form of contracts, grants, cooperative agreements or other transactions depending upon the nature of the work proposed.

3. BAA TYPE: This is a two-step open broad agency announcement. This announcement constitutes the only solicitation.

As STEP ONE – The Government is only soliciting white papers at this time. DO NOT SUBMIT A FORMAL PROPOSAL. Those white papers found to be consistent with the intent of this BAA may be invited to submit a technical and cost proposal. See Section VI of this announcement for further details regarding the proposal.

III. ELIGIBILITY INFORMATION:

1. ELIGIBILITY: All qualified offerors who meet the requirements of this BAA may apply.

2. FOREIGN PARTICIPATION/ACCESS:

This BAA is closed to foreign participation.

a. Exceptions.

1. Fundamental Research. If the work to be performed is unclassified, fundamental research, this must be clearly identified in the white paper and/or proposal. See Part II, Section I for more details regarding Fundamental Research. Offerors should still identify any performance by foreign nationals at any level (prime contractor or subcontractor) in their proposals. Please specify the nationals’ country of origin, the type of visa or work permit under which they are performing and an explanation of their anticipated level of involvement. You may be asked to provide additional information during negotiations in order to verify the foreign citizen’s eligibility to participate on any contract or assistance agreement issued as a result of this announcement

2. Foreign Ownership, Control or Influence (FOCI) companies who have mitigation plans/paperwork in place. Proof of approved mitigation documentation must be provided to the contracting office focal point, Amber Buckley, Contracting Officer, telephone (315) 330-3605, or e-mail Amber.Buckley@us.af.mil prior to submitting a white paper and/or a proposal. For information on FOCI mitigation, contact the contact the Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency (DCSA). Additional details can be found at: https://www.dcsa.mil/mc/ctp/foci/

3. Foreign Nationals as Employees or Subcontractors. Applicable to any effort not considered Fundamental Research. Offerors are responsible for ensuring that all employees and/or subcontractors who will work on a resulting contract are eligible to do so. Any employee who is not a U.S. citizen or a permanent resident will be restricted from working on any resultant contract unless prior approval of the Department of State or the Department of Commerce is obtained via a technical assistance agreement or an export license. Violations of these regulations can result in criminal or civil penalties.

b. Information Regarding Non-US Citizens Assigned to this Project

a. Contractor employees requiring access to USAF bases, AFRL facilities, and/or access to U.S. Government Information Technology (IT) networks in connection with the work on contracts, assistance instruments or other transactions awarded under this BAA must be U.S. citizens. For the purpose of base and network access, possession of a permanent resident card ("Green Card") does not equate to U.S. citizenship. This requirement does not apply to foreign nationals approved by the U.S. Department of Defense or U.S. State Department under international personnel exchange agreements with foreign governments. It also does not apply to dual citizens who possess US citizenship, to include Naturalized citizens. Any waivers to this requirement must be granted in writing by the Contracting Officer prior to providing access. Specific format for waiver request will be provided upon request to the Contracting Officer. The above requirements are in addition to any other contract requirements related to obtaining a Common Access Card (CAC).

b. For the purposes of Paragraph 1, it an IT network/system does not require AFRL to endorse a contractor's application to said network/system in order to gain access, the organization operating the IT network/system is responsible for controlling access to its system. If an IT network/system requires a U.S. Government sponsor to endorse the application in order for access to the IT network/system, AFRL will only endorse the following types of applications, consistent with the requirements above:

a) Contractor employees who are U.S. citizens performing work under contracts, assistance instruments or other transactions awarded under this BAA.

b) Contractor employees who are non-U.S. citizens and who have been granted a waiver.

Any additional access restrictions established by the IT network/system owner apply.

3. FEDERALLY FUNDED RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT CENTERS AND GOVERNMENT ENTITIES: Federally Funded Research and Development Centers (FFRDCs) and Government entities (e.g., Government/National laboratories, military educational institutions, etc.) are subject to applicable direct competition limitations and cannot propose to this BAA in any capacity unless they meet the following conditions:

a. FFRDCs: FFRDCs must clearly demonstrate that the proposed work is not otherwise available from the private sector; and FFRDCs must provide a letter on official letterhead from their sponsoring organization citing the specific authority establishing their eligibility to propose to Government solicitations and compete with industry, and their compliance with the associated FFRDC sponsor agreement’s terms and conditions. This information is required for FFRDCs proposing to be prime contractors or sub-awardees.

b. Government Entities: Government entities must clearly demonstrate that the work is not otherwise available from the private sector and provide written documentation citing the specific statutory authority and contractual authority, if relevant, establishing their ability to propose to Government solicitations. While 10 U.S.C.§ 2539b may be the appropriate statutory starting point for some entities, specific supporting regulatory guidance, together with evidence of agency approval, will still be required to fully establish eligibility.

FFRDC and Government entity eligibility will be determined on a case-by-case basis; however, the burden to prove eligibility for all team members rests solely with the proposer.

IV. APPLICATION AND SUBMISSION INFORMATION:

All responses to this announcement must be addressed to the Technical Point of Contact (TPOC) listed in SECTION VII. DO NOT send white papers to the Contracting Officer.

1. SUBMISSION DATES AND TIMES: It is recommended that white papers be received by 3:00 PM Eastern Standard Time (EST) on the following dates to maximize the possibility of award:

FY18 – The initial white paper submissions for each Focus Area is due as follows:

16 Jan 18 – Focus Area C/Text Analytics for Cyber Domain

12 Mar 18 – Focus Area A/Global Treat Discovery and Identification

16 Apr 18 – Focus Area B/Emerging Threat Analytics

Thereafter suggested submissions dates for all the focus areas are:

FY19 by 30 Mar 2018

FY20 by 29 Mar 2019

FY21 by 27 Mar 2020

FY22 by 26 Mar 2021

White papers will be accepted until 3:00 PM EST on 30 Sep 2022, but it is less likely that funding will be available in each respective fiscal year after the dates cited. This BAA will close on 30 Sep 2022.

All offerors submitting white papers will receive notification of their evaluation results within 45 days of submission. Offerors should email the TPOC and the Contracting Officer listed in Section VII, for status of their white paper(s) after 45 days, if no such correspondence has been received.

2. CONTENT AND FORMAT: Offerors are required to submit 2 copies of a 3 to 5 page white paper summarizing their proposed approach/solution. Include both an Adobe pdf and MSWord version of the white paper on a disc with your hardcopies submission.

The purpose of this white paper is to preclude unwarranted effort on the part of an offeror whose proposed work is not of interest to the Government.

The white paper will be formatted as follows:

a. Section A: Title, Period of Performance, Estimated Cost, Name/Address of Company, Technical and Contracting Points of Contact (phone and email)(this section is NOT included in the page count);

b. Section B: Task Objective; and

c. Section C: Technical Summary and Proposed Deliverables.

All white papers shall be double spaced with a font no smaller than 12 point. In addition, respondents are requested to provide their Commercial and Government Entity (CAGE) Code, their unique entity identifier and electronic funds transfer (EFT) indicator (if applicable), an e-mail address and reference BAA FA8750-18-S-7009 with their submission.

Multiple white papers within the purview of this announcement may be submitted by each offeror. If the offeror wishes to restrict its white papers, they must be marked with the restrictive language stated in FAR 15.609(a) and (b).

3. HANDLING AND MAILING INSTRUCTIONS:

a. CLASSIFICATION GUIDANCE. All Proposers should review the NATIONAL INDUSTRIAL SECURITY PROGRAM OPERATING MANUAL, (NISPOM), dated February 28, 2006 and incorporating Change 2, dated May 18, 2016, as it provides baseline standards for the protection of classified information and prescribes the requirements concerning Contractor Developed Information under paragraph 4-105. Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency (DCSA) Site for the NISPOM is: http://www.dcsa.mil/.

In the event of a possible or actual compromise of classified information in the submission of your white paper or proposal, immediately but no later than 24 hours, bring this to the attention of your cognizant security authority and AFRL Rome Research Site Information Protection Office (IPO):

Information Protection Office (contact only if a security compromise has occurred) Monday-Friday (0730-1630):

Call 315-330-4048 or Email: vincent.guza@us.af.mil Evenings and Weekends:

Call 315-330-2961

b. CLASSIFIED SUBMISSIONS. AFRL/RIEA will accept classified responses to this BAA when the classification is mandated by classification guidance provided by an Original Classification Authority of the U.S. Government, or when the offeror believes the work, if successful, would merit classification.

Security classification guidance in the form of a DD Form 254 (DoD Contract Security Classification Specification) will not be provided at this time since AFRL is soliciting ideas only.

Offerors that intend to include classified information or data in their white paper submission or who are unsure about the appropriate classification of their white papers should contact the technical point of contact listed in Section VII for guidance and direction in advance of preparation.

d. MAILING INSTRUCTIONS.

Email Unclassified electronic submission to the TPOC identified in Section VII. Encrypt or password-protect all proprietary information prior to sending. Offerors are responsible to confirm receipt with the TPOC. AFRL is not responsible for undelivered documents. If electronic submission is used, only one copy of the documentation is required.

In addition to the electronic submission, please also mail a response. Any mailed responses, unclassified/classified, to this announcement must be sent U.S. Postal Service, registered mail or similar service and addressed to AFRL/RIEA, 525 Brooks Road, Rome NY 13441-4505, and reference BAA FA8750-18-S-7009.

Questions can be directed to the TPOC listed in Section VII.

4. OTHER SUBMISSION REQUIREMENTS/CONSIDERATIONS:

a. COST SHARING OR MATCHING: Cost sharing is not a requirement. Cost sharing may be proposed and will be considered on a case-by-case basis. Cost share will not be a factor in selection for award.

b. SYSTEM FOR AWARD MANAGEMENT (SAM). Offerors must be registered in the SAM database to receive a contract award, and remain registered during performance and through final payment of any contract or agreement. Processing time for registration in SAM, which normally takes forty-eight hours, should be taken into consideration when registering. Offerors who are not already registered should consider applying for registration before submitting a proposal. The provision at FAR 52.204-7, System for Award Management (Oct 2016) applies.

c. EXECUTIVE COMPENSATION AND FIRST-TIER SUBCONTRACT/ SUBRECIPIENT AWARDS: Any contract award resulting from this announcement may contain the clause at FAR 52.204-10 - Reporting Executive Compensation and First-Tier Subcontract Awards (Oct 2016). Any grant or agreement award resulting from this announcement may contain the award term set forth in 2 CFR, Appendix A to Part 25 which can be viewed at: https://www.govinfo.gov/app/details/CFR-2012-title2-vol1/CFR-2012-title2-vol1-part25-appA.

d. ALLOWABLE CHARGES: The cost of preparing white papers/proposals in response to this announcement is not considered an allowable direct charge to any resulting contract or any other contract, but may be an allowable expense to the normal bid and proposal indirect cost specified in FAR 31.205-18. Incurring pre-award costs for ASSISTANCE INSTRUMENTS ONLY are regulated by the DoD Grant and Agreements Regulations (DODGARS).

e. GOVERNMENT APPROVED ACCOUNTING SYSTEM: An offeror must have a government approved accounting system prior to award of a cost-reimbursement contract per limitations set forth in FAR 16.301-3(a) to ensure the system is adequate for determining costs applicable to the contract. The acceptability of an accounting system is determined based upon an audit performed by the Defense Contract Audit Agency (DCAA). IMPORTANT: If you do not have a DCAA approved accounting system access the following link for instructions: https://beta.sam.gov/opp/e628c811fafe041accdddf55fb8539bf/view?keywords=AFRL-BAA-Guide&sort=-relevance&index=&is_active=true&page=1

f. HUMAN USE: All research involving human subjects, to include the use of human biological specimens and human data, selected for funding must comply with Federal regulations for human subject protection. Further, research involving human subjects that is conducted or supported by the DoD must comply with 32 CFR 219, “Protection of Human Subjects” found at: http://www.access.gpo.gov/nara/cfr/waisidx_07/32cfr219_07.html, and DoD Directive 3216.02, “Protection of Human Subjects and Adherence to Ethical Standards in DoD-Supported Research” found at: http://www.dtic.mil/whs/directives/corres/pdf/321602p.pdf.

1. Institutions awarded funding for research involving human subjects must provide documentation of a current Assurance of Compliance with Federal regulations for human subject protection, for example a Department of Health and Human Services, Office of Human Research Protection Federal Wide Assurance found at: http://www.hhs.gov/ohrp.

2. All institutions engaged in human subject research, to include subcontractors, must have a valid assurance. In addition, personnel involved in human subject research must document the completion of appropriate training for the protection of human subjects.

3. For all research that will involve human subjects in the first year or phase of the project, the institution must submit evidence of a plan for review by an institutional review board (IRB) as part of the proposal. The IRB conducting the review must be the IRB identified on the institution’s Assurance of Compliance. The protocol, separate from the proposal, must include a detailed description of the research plan, study population, risks and benefits of study participation, recruitment and consent process, data collection, and data analysis. The designated IRB should be consulted for guidance on writing the protocol. The informed consent document must comply with 32 CFR 219.116. A valid Assurance of Compliance and evidence of appropriate training by all investigators should accompany the protocol for review by the IRB.

4. In addition to a local IRB approval, An AFRL-level human subject regulatory review and approval is required for all research conducted or supported by the DoD. The Air Force office responsible for managing the award can provide guidance and information about the AFRL-level review process. Confirmation of a current Assurance of Compliance and appropriate human subjects protection training is required before AFRL-level approval can be issued.

5. The time required to complete the IRB review/approval process will vary depending on the complexity of the research and/or the level of risk to study participants; ample time should be allotted to complete the approval process. The IRB approval process can last between 1 to 3 months, followed by a DoD review that could last 3 to 6 months. No funding may be used toward human subject research until all approvals are granted. Therefore, in their cost proposals offerors should separate human use into a separate option.

V. APPLICATION REVIEW INFORMATION:

1. CRITERIA: The following criteria, which are listed in descending order of importance and will be used to determine whether white papers and proposals submitted are consistent with the research areas of interest and expected results within the broad topic areas as described in the Funding Opportunity section of this BAA and of interest to the Government:

a) Overall Scientific and Technical Merit - The extent to which the proposed technical approach to the development and/or enhancement of the proposed technology demonstrates scientific and technical merit, clearly defined and developed technical concepts and sufficient detail to support the proposed concepts and technical claims.

b) Related Experience - The extent to which the offeror demonstrates relevant technology and domain knowledge to establish that the offeror has credible capability and experience to complete the proposed work.

c) Openness, Maturity and Assurance of Solution -The extent to which existing capabilities and standards are leveraged and the relative maturity of the proposed technology, in terms of reliability and robustness.

d) Reasonableness and Realism of Proposed Costs and Fees (if any) No further evaluation criteria will be used in selecting white papers/proposals. White papers and proposals submitted will be evaluated as they are received.

2. REVIEW AND SELECTION PROCESS:

1) Only Government employees will evaluate the white papers/proposals for selection. The Air Force Research Laboratory's Information Directorate has contracted for various business and staff support services, some of which require contractors to obtain administrative access to proprietary information submitted by other contractors. Administrative access is defined as "handling or having physical control over information for the sole purpose of accomplishing the administrative functions specified in the administrative support contract, which do not require the review, reading, and comprehension of the content of the information on the part of non-technical professionals assigned to accomplish the specified administrative tasks." These contractors have signed general non-disclosure agreements and organizational conflict of interest statements. The required administrative access will be granted to non-technical professionals. Examples of the administrative tasks performed include: a. Assembling and organizing information for R&D case files; b. Accessing library files for use by government personnel; and c. Handling and administration of proposals, contracts, contract funding and queries. Any objection to administrative access must be in writing to the Contracting Officer and shall include a detailed statement of the basis for the objection.

a. WHITE PAPER/PROPOSAL REVIEW PROCESS:

1. FIRST STEP – White Paper Reviews: The Government will review White Papers to identify those with the greatest potential to meet the Air Force’s needs based on the criteria above. If funding is available for an identified white paper, AFRL/RI will request a formal technical and cost proposal from the Offeror. For white papers not of interest to the Government, or for which funding is not available, those Offerors will receive letters from the Government indicating the basis for non-selection.

2. SECOND STEP – Proposal Review and Selection Process

a) Categories: Based on the evaluation, proposals will be categorized as Selectable or Not Selectable (see definitions below). The selection of one or more offerors for award will be based on the evaluation, as well as importance to agency programs and funding availability.

1. Selectable: Proposals are recommended for acceptance, if sufficient funding* is available.

2. Not Selectable: Even if sufficient funding existed, the proposal should not be funded.

* Selectable proposals will be designated as funded or unfunded. Letters will be sent to the unfunded offerors. These proposals may be funded at a later date without reevaluation, if funding becomes available.

b. The Government reserves the right to award some, all, or none of the proposals. When the Government elects to award only a part of a proposal, the selected part may be categorized as Highly Recommended or Selectable, though the proposal as a whole may not merit such a categorization.

c. No other evaluation criteria will be used.

d. Proposal Risk Assessment: Proposal risk for technical, cost, and schedule will be assessed for formal proposals, should they be requested, as part of the evaluation of the above evaluation criteria. Proposal risk relates to the identification and assessment of the risks associated with an offeror's proposed approach as it relates to accomplishing the proposed effort. Tradeoffs of the assessed risk will be weighed against the potential scientific benefit. Proposal risk for schedule relates to an assessment of the risks associated with the offeror's proposed number of hours, labor categories, materials, or other cost elements as it relates to meeting the proposed period of performance.

e. Prior to award of a potentially successful offer, the Contracting Officer will make a determination regarding price reasonableness and realism.

3. FEDERAL AWARDEE PERFORMANCE AND INTEGRITY INFORMATION SYSTEM (FAPIIS) PUBLIC ACCESS: The Government is required to review and consider any information about the applicant that is in the FAPIIS before making any award in excess of the simplified acquisition threshold (currently $250,000) over the period of performance. An applicant may review and comment on any information about itself that a federal awarding agency previously entered. The Government will consider any comments by the applicant, in addition to other information in FAPIIS in making a judgment about the applicant's integrity, business ethics, and record of performance under federal awards when completing the review of risk posed by applicants as described in 2 CFR § 200.205 Federal Awarding Agency Review of Risk Posed by Applicants and per FAR 9.104-6.

VI. STEP TWO INFORMATION – REQUEST FOR…