Q-A Responses 241104.pdf

Question: clarify if SOCOM is seeking a platform that improves upon or replaces Defense Ready?

Answer: Yes, we are looking for a system to replace DefenseReady.

Question: How are the 85000 users distributed across the organization?

Answer: The 85,000 represents the number of all SOF personnel. Currently the system in place has a user base of approximately 2,500 users, where the 2,500 users account for the approximately 20% of the 85,000. We would like for 100% of SOF personnel to be accounted for and that process might require every user to have an account. If not, the user accounts should be the minimum required to validate all SOF personnel within the system.

Highlight relevant functionality and past performance in delivering a readiness and personnel solution in support of a worldwide organization supporting 85000+ internal and external users.

Question: Can the government provide more context on the type of classified DoD networks that a messaging application would need to connect?

Answer: SIPR net for on Prem software and IL6 for cloud-based software. More than half of the authoritative data originates on NIPR and there is a great desire to have a NIPR version of future system(s) that would either batch or replicate data from NIPR to SIPR.

Data originally starting on NIPR is transferred via a DISA guard (gateway) to SIPR

SFTP.

Supports the ability to transfer or replicate system data from an unclassified network to classified network via gateway technology.

Question: Is SOCOM considering the use of a data management system such as a CRM for this data to be stored and managed as a part of the messaging solution?

Answer: SOCOM is considering multiple ways of data management to include CRM solutions.

Question: Can you elaborate on the “ratios of frequency assets”?

Answer: If a person is deployed for 6 months, and then back at home station for 12 months we would need to be able to calculate their deployment ratio of 1:2.

Supports the ability to display force management data and aggregate data within the platform. Ex. Adding start and end dates to create new data set of duration, or ratios of frequency assets are used.

Question: Can you share which systems that need to integrate within the messaging solution? Question: How do you define a two-way alert, recall, and messaging communication?

Answer: We are looking for a system that can alert a user when an action needs to be completed or an action has failed to complete. Example would be an email is sent to a user or a warning message is displayed when incorrect data is entered.

Question: For the two-way alert on a temporary burner, will they only have access to SMS for response options?

Answer: We are looking for a system that can be used on any type of tablet or cell phone device. Example, a web interface can be pulled up on device to acknowledge accountability for the day, or potentially a text message can be replied to, in order to account for personnel or team. Transmission would need to be encrypted for security of data transmission.

Support two-way alert, recall, and messaging communications securely over public, commercial, select government, and military unclassified networks using personal, temporary commercial “burner”, and government issued phones, tablets, and personal computers.

Question: Discuss how your solution supports readiness of personnel within an unclassified and classified?

Answer: We are looking for a way to account for personnel on NIPR when allowed and ultimately end up on SIPR where operational data can be added to the process linking a human to a mission.

Question: Is the requirement that the solution be IL2-IL4 Compliant?

Answer: This requirement will ultimately need to be IL5 and SIPR or IL6 compliant.

Support the ability to display force management data from multiple source systems.

Question: Our Apps engine could help here. We'll need more clarification on what it means exactly. Where does the data live, are we talking about documents, a database..Etc.

Answer: combination of data warehouses, csv files, and API connections to other systems.

Support import and export data, data mapping, and API connection capability.

Question: Need clarification of what data is being imported and where, what data is being exported and to where. Where is the data going to be mapped. We have at rest API's what would they like to do with our API's

Answer: SOCOM has data in a combination of data warehouses, csv files, and API connections to other systems that are on both NIPR and SIPR networks. There is a substantial amount of ETL that happens at multiple phases of data transferring. In addition to the authoritative data sources, users will need to export data into excels or calendars as well as import data not available in the service systems into a single location. In addition to using API’s to map data to the system, we would need API’s to pull data into analytical dashboarding tools like Power BI or Tableau as an example.

Supports the ability to display force management data and aggregate data within the platform. Ex. Adding start and end dates to create a new data set of duration, or ratios of frequency assets are used.

Question: What is the use case for this and

Answer: Ability to calculate deployment to dwell ratios for personnel or force generation modeling.

Supports open architecture with specifications that are public as opposed to proprietary; low lode/ no code simple modifications.

Question: We support integrations to things like Zapier, but we don't have integrations out of the box.

Answer: SOCOM would need to integrate data from outside Authoritative Data Sources into a single location in order to analyze data and create visualizations of data.

As long as that process is documented and can be done it doesn’t need not out of the box.

Supports decision logic where policy rules can be programmatically executed to avoid erroneous data or blank data. Ex. Fields can be mandatory to fill in and standardized values set.

Question: Please elaborate more based on the context that was provided.

Answer: Certain items when filling in data on forms make users enter data prior to continuing for mandatory requirements. For some fields like locations would need to be a look up table to standardized the data or there would need to be some sort of data ontology process to correct user input mistakes. The goal is to ensure that required data is provided and the data input is standardized.

Supports the ability to flag discrepancies or provide error reporting when data is not imported, entered incorrectly or conflicts with other data imports. Ex. Records from two systems come in and have different start and end dates, and/or when import comes in, records failed to import.

Question: Where is the data being imported and to where?

Answer: Users would import data from excel/csv to fill in gaps where data does not exist in authoritative systems.

Supports the ability to transfer or replicate system data from an unclassified network to classified network via gateway technology.

Question: Could be the ability to take snapshots of the database and bring that up into another environment. Otherwise this could be something we discuss with our professional services team?

Answer: As long as the transfer of data can happen between NIPR to SIPR, on the SOCOM networks, the customer does not have a preference on how it is done.

Supports a development environment to implement agile processes.

Question: How many environments are you looking to deploy?

Answer: One on NIPR and one on SIPR

Supports the manual entry of data for business processes. Ex. In and out processing of personnel from an organization.

Question: Does this example mean you are looking to add and remove users from the platform? What data are you looking to pull.

Answer: We are looking to track personnel who arrive at units and then depart from units. This data is not always available in the authoritative data systems.

Supports the ability to track personnel as they travel to different locations.

Question: Are you expecting this integration out of the box? We have customers that have done this before and built the integration into Rocket.Chat.

Answer: As long as the process can be accomplished on SOCOM NIPR and SIPR networks and is documented for engineers to replicate on SOCOM system, I believe that would meet the intent.

Supports organizational hierarchy, and ability to identify billet and internal alternate work assignments of personnel for an organization. Ex. Billeted in Org A, Working in Org B.

Supports data security at a user level where users can only see data within an organization they have permissions to.

Question: Explain more where you state users can only see data within the organization.

Answer: If I am a user at 5th Special Forces Command, I would only be able to see people in 5th Special Forces group and not USASOC or SOCOM, but if I am a USASOC person I can see 5SFG, but not up to SOCOM.

Multi-factor Authentication (MFA) support

Requested Information

1. Highlight relevant functionality and past performance in delivering a readiness and personnel solution in support of a worldwide organization supporting 85000+ internal and external users.

Question: How many users would be concurrent?

Answer: Unknown, Currently we have 2500 users validating 20% of the data. We would like to get to 100%, but not all users would be hitting he system concurrently.

2. Discuss how your solution supports readiness of personnel within unclassified and classified DoD networks across multiple types of end-user devices.

3. Discuss your support for E2EE.

4. Describe your solutions ability to support multiple file format ingestion and file transfer secure communications. What file formats are supported?

5. Describe how your solution supports accountability of personnel and status of personnel in different cycles, through their career such as training and deployments.

6. Describe any direct integration with M365 if applicable.

Question: Is this an absolute must have? Please provide some examples of using M365 today.

Answer: Not a must have.

7. How does your solution prevent transmission of malicious URLs or files?

Question: What solution do you want to use to inspect your files now, what platform are you currently using to inspect URLS, explain how you'd like for this inspection to take place. For example: where would you like the alert/ notification to be sent to when something is triggered.

Answer: This inspection will be completed during the Authority to Operate process. If you have a current ATO with DoD please provide details if allowed.

8. Describe your licensing model.

9. Describe your deployment model (On-premises, IaaS, PaaS)

Question: You can deploy any method with RC, what will be your preferred method of deployment?

Answer: Request details on all processes.