FY21-0043_Redacted.pdf

Justification for Exception to Fair Opportunity Exceeding the SAT pursuant to FAR 16.505(b)(2)(ii)(B)

JEFO No: FY21-0043 Page 1 of 5 Rev: 10/22/2020

JEFO Number: FY21-0043 PR Number:

1. Agency and Contracting Activity.

The Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), Office of Contracting, proposes to award a task order on behalf of USCIS, Office of Information Technology (OIT), Systems Delivery Division (SDD), pursuant to Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) 16.505(b)(2), Exceptions to the fair opportunity process.

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

USCIS intends to award a task order to Perspecta Enterprise Solutions, LLC, hereinafter referred to as Perspecta, under its GSA ALLIANT II contract, contract number 47QTCK18D0030.

Perspecta is the incumbent contractor currently providing support under task order HSHQDC- 13-D- E2092/HSSCCG-15-J-00085 for Joint Engineering Teams - Sustainment (JETS) Benefits support services.

3. Description of Supplies/Services.

The proposed task order to be awarded will continue vital DevSecOps and Engineering services, to include supporting cloud migration and modernization efforts, supporting the implementation of new technologies, technology/engineering studies and analysis, application development, database support, and use of modern tools/approaches such as Continuous Integration/Continuous Delivery (CI/CD), DevSecOps, AWS, Kafka, electronic workflow, enterprise services, and open source technologies, which provide the modernization and application development necessary to achieve ecosystem stabilization and modernization onto more modern platforms/technologies, allowing USCIS to keep pace with the increased reliance on the Benefits applications within the Enterprise.

The period of performance for the proposed action would commence on 03/15/2021 and end on 08/14/2021 for a total of five (5) months. The estimated total dollar value is .

4. Statutory exception and supporting rationale.

The applicable statutory FAR citation and basis for using an exception to fair opportunity process is:

☒ FAR 16.505(b)(2)(i)(B). Only one awardee is capable of providing the supplies or services required at the level of quality required because the supplies or services ordered are unique or highly specialized.

JEFO No: FY21-0043 Page 2 of 5

Rationale:

Currently, Perspecta performs JETS Benefits services under HSSCCG-15-J-00085 task order until 03/14/2021. As described in greater detail further below, the JETS Benefits work is paramount to agency continuity of operations, and without ongoing support, several large and impactful programs will not be able to continue the development work which is key to the USCIS mission of delivering timely benefits to applicants.

A competitive recompete which will procure these important required services is currently in-process with a planned award in a third quarter of the Fiscal Year 2021, for more information see Section 6 of this document.

This justification supports the agency’s requirement to continue JETS Benefits support commencing on 03/15/2021. Market Research that was conducted for the competitive re-compete currently in-progress indicated that there are contractors capable of performing services required by JETS Benefits on multiple EAGLE NextGen contracts. However, based on the research conducted, it has been concluded that only Perspecta has the specific skills, knowledge and experience needed to provide the required specialized services at the level of quality required at this time.

The nature of the requirement is complex and requires large-scale coordination and mobilization of development teams and there is a significant learning curve associated with commencing to support these projects. The time between a potential competitive short-term award action and the need date for services (03/15/2021) would not allow sufficient time for recruiting, hiring, background checks and entry-on-duty, as well as most importantly a transition period with knowledge transfer. No other company than Perspecta is capable to provide this level of quality within this short timeline. Perspecta has been providing satisfactory services, has sufficient staffing, with all necessary teams in place as well as extensive program knowledge to continue operations to complete the projected tasks and to transition ongoing activities to the new competitive awardee.

As referenced above and for greater context, the JETS Benefits Portfolio supports the whole life cycle of immigration form requests from a benefit to delivery of the benefit in the form of a notice or card. Halting some of these projects would create an issue with the services provided to benefit applicants and create additional problems for other USCIS interconnected services, as noted below. If a task order is not awarded to continue these DevSecOps and Engineering services in the Benefits Portfolio, development efforts will halt and the immigration benefits application process for thousands of immigrants will be impacted. This would be detrimental to the USCIS mission. Specifically, the following areas will be impacted:

JEFO No: FY21-0043 Page 3 of 5

• Collection of FY2021 funds for cases ingested into Computer Linked Applicant Information Management System 3 (CLAIMS 3) and support rule changes to expand premium processing to increase money for the agency.

• Work to address USCIS policy changes on determining how to select who can submit the I-129 H1B for the 2022 season.

• Support for form changes per the Paper Reduction Act, PRA process.

• Migration of Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) to Kafka would not happen by the established deadline and would have downstream effects on ESB’s ability to migrate out of Data Center 1. Also, Benefits systems CLAIMS 3 and the Enterprise Print Management Services (EPMS) would remain on The Information Bus Company (TIBCO), an unsupported platform. Great impacts to the Government both in cost and sustainability.

• Modernization of form types from a legacy system, Interim Case Management Solution (ICMS) to a state-of-the-art architecture and improved security posture to case data in Benefits Hub (Bhub) for users in the field. Impacting the field user’s ability to process immigrant applications greater, faster, better, and further delaying the decommissioning of a legacy system (ICMS).

• Delays in robotics automation efforts to speed up research for ingestion issues and premium processing tickets; all affecting the ability for immigrants to receive benefits in a timely manner.

• Development of new form types will be delayed such as Commonwealth of Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI), which will impact the residents of CNMI’s ability to apply for advance permission to travel within the US.

• Support to the nationwide stakeholders that depend on the EPMS daily to include digital processing for major projects such as eProcessing and Case Scanning. Support of all lawsuits requiring printing, such as language updates which impact COVID changes, the new Immigration law updates and Interview and Rescheduling Notices. In addition, support of the Director Signature updates would be affected.

• Support for the Integrated Card Production System (ICPS) which includes the National Production System (NPS) and Secure Mail Initiative (SMI) business stakeholders to include:

o Employment Authorization Cards (EAD) and Permanent Resident Cards (PRC) incoming from case systems to be printed at the Corbin or Lee Summit service centers.

5. Determination by the contracting officer that the anticipated cost to the Government will be fair and reasonable.

JEFO No: FY21-0043 Page 4 of 5

The Contracting Officer anticipates the proposed price will be consistent with the Alliant 2 Unrestricted Government-Wide Acquisition Contracts (GWAC) contract held by Perspecta that includes maximum/ceiling rates. In addition, historical pricing information is available for all services to be provided, which are the basis for the independent government cost estimate.

Pricing will be evaluated for reasonableness in accordance with one or more analysis techniques identified in FAR Subpart 15.404-1. The Contracting Officer may request other than certified price data if determined to be necessary in the assessment of fair and reasonable pricing. Prior to award, the contracting officer will be able to determine that issuing the proposed task order via the Alliant 2 GWAC represents the best value and that the proposed price is fair and reasonable for award.

6. Any other facts supporting the justification.

As briefly discussed in Section 4, the succeeding competitive procurement was expected to be in place prior to the expiration of the current task order HSSCCG-15-J-00085, but this competitive procurement experienced multiple delays due to various unforeseen circumstances, chiefly revisions to the requirement imposed by the Agency’s emergent funding issues which were the result of significantly reduced revenues due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The Agency was planning to transition the work from the current JETS Benefits task order, HSSCCG-15-J-00085, contractor Perspecta, to the contractor(s) awarded the re-compete task order(s), titled Services for Product Engineering and Enterprise Delivery (SPEED), however, the current task order HSSCCG-15-J-00085 ends on 03/14/2021 and it is necessary to proceed with the short-term task order with Perspecta to continue these mission critical services while the competitive award is finalized.

7. A statement of the actions, if any, the agency may take to remove or overcome any barriers that led to the exception to fair opportunity before any subsequent acquisition for the supplies or services is made.

Any barriers to competition will be removed upon finalization of the source selection and a transition to a new awardee(s). No other competitive barriers are known at this time, which would lead to a future fair opportunity exception. This sole source task order is only intended to continue the current services until the award and transition-in of the in-process competitive procurement is completed.

8. USCIS intends to post this requirement on Beta.Sam.gov pursuant to FAR 16.505(b)(2)(ii)(D).

9. Technical/Requirements Personnel Certification.