Attachment 8 - Questions and Answers - Complete.xlsx
XLSX spreadsheet 71 KB Posted
- Solicitation number
- HC101325R0008
- Issued by
-
Defense Information Systems Agency
About this file
This file is a Questions and Answers document for the Integrated Defense Enterprise Acquisition System (IDEAS) Tier 2/Tier 3 Support solicitation issued by the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA). The document contains 28 questions and answers addressing technical, acquisition, and administrative aspects of the contract opportunity, with key insights including clarifications about the technology stack (Java, Oracle Service Bus, WebLogic, Apache Tomcat), current system environments, and support requirements for the IDEAS Government Acquisition System built on the Appian Platform.
The solicitation seeks a contractor to provide software development, testing, integration, and production support for the IDEAS system, with the previous contract (HC1047-20-C-0004) held by Appian Corporation. The RFP has undergone multiple amendments, with the current proposal close date set for December 1, 2025, due to potential government shutdown delays. Significant changes include updates to task descriptions, environment configurations, and clarifications around system support for both the existing O&M system and future NG solution, with an emphasis on software development lifecycle support and managing the system's code baseline across various operational requirements.
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Sheet1
| # | Category | Question | RFP Reference | Response | Notes | |
| 1 | Acquisition | Example Only: | ||||
| Question: May ABC Contracting propose on this acquisition? | Example Only: |
Answer: Yes
| 2 | Technical | What is the full list in the technology stack for the DI server layer (i.e. Oracle Service us, WebLogic, Java, Tomcat, Apache - anything else)? | PWS Section 6.7 | The technology stack for the DI Server includes Java Development Kit (JDK), Oracle Service Bus (OSB) & WebLogic (as-is), Apache Tomcat (to-be), Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) |
| 3 | Technical | The RFP states, "The DI will be sunset when all legacy contracts are transitioned out of IDEAS-O&M and into IDEAS NG." When does DISA anticipate the all legacy contracts to be transitioned to IDEAS NG? | PWS Section 3 | The government does not expect to be able to provide a date for legacy data migration until after the bidding process closes. At this time the Government does not have a date for the migration. |
| 4 | Technical | Is there a TYPO for Task 2 - should this be "Software support for IDEAS O&M"? | PWS Section 6.2 | PWS task areas have been updated as IDEAS O&M is currently fielded. |
| 5 | Technical | Can the government provide the number of contractor FTE currently engaged in supporting DISA IDEAS for Tier 2 and Tier 3 support? | PWS Section 6.2.1.1 |
The Government will not provide history FTEs.
6 Technical The government states that the Backlog "has been growing considerably". But no size or quantity (in story points) is provided for the backlog. Can the government provide statistics on the backlog? And can the government provide the number of contractor developer FTEs and the number of government developer FTEs that are working the backlog? PWS Section 6.2.1.1 Current Backlog numbers are listed below.
| 7 | Acquisition | The CLINS on pages 53-80 duplicate the information in the Required Excel Spreadsheet. Are contractors to fill in pages 53-80 of the RFP with their proposal? And if so, where and how should they be provided? | Pages 53-80 | No. Complete the CLIN Pricing Worksheet. |
| 8 | Acquisition | Can the government please provide the name of the current incumbent contractor, their contract number, and the amount of the last year's funding? | PWS Section 13.g.1 | The previous contract number is HC1047-20-C-0004 and it was awarded to Appian Corporation. No funding information will be provided. |
| 9 | Technical | The Trend Analysis Report and After Action Report in Section 6.3, Deliverables, do not have descriptions. Could the government provide descriptions for those reports? | PWS Section 6.3 | Trend analysis reports inform the program on trouble areas that generate frequent similar tickets; After Action Reports (AAR)s are required as the result of impactful unplanned degradations and outages. |
| 10 | Technical | The IDEAS ISSO is currently a government position, though the RFP lists the role as the responsibility of the contractor. Is this shift in responsibilities intended? | PWS Section 6.4 | Yes this shift in responsibiltiy was intended. The position of IDEAS ISSO was purposefully added to the IDEA Tier 2/Tier 3 Support Follow-on contract. |
| 11 | Acquisition | Should the executive summary be included in the technical volume or submitted as a separate volume or file? Will the executive summary be evaluated as part of the offeror's overall response? | Instructions to Offerors Section 1.2, "Submission Instructions" | The executive summary description has has been added as Volume VI in Section L. The proposal will be evaluated in accordance with Section M. Evaluation Factors for Award. |
| 12 | Technical | In PWS Section 6.6, the deliverables are identified as Task 6.7 deliverables. Should this say Task 6.6? Are we permitted to change that identifying number to align with the tasks in the table of deliverables that follows? | PWS Section 6.6, "Task 6.7 Deliverables" | PWS has been revised accordingly. |
| 13 | Technical | Should the place of performance in Block 8 on the proposed contractors and subcontractors' Forms DD254 be listed as "Mission Location: DISA Headquarters located at Fort Meade, MD" given that the primary place of performance is at the contractor's facility? | PWS Section 9, "Place of Performance" | The mission location should remain as DISA HQs on the DD254. While the majority of the contractors work will be done at their facilities, the majority of government project management occurs at DISA HQ. |
| 14 | Technical | Within Section 6.2.1.1, Subtask 2, the government states that "There is stakeholder interest in reducing the IDEAS Product Backlog, which has been growing considerably due to the need to address higher priority artifacts." |
| Can the government share more information on the level of effort, complexity, and duration for the reduction of the IDEAS O&M backlog effort to ensure accurate vendor responses? | PWS Section 6.2.1.1 | See answer to question 6 above. | |||
| 15 | Acquisition | Will the Government provide at least 10 to 14 business days after Q&A responses before proposals are due and extend the deadline accordingly to allow the vendor community adequate time to respond to updates? | N/A | Adequate time will be allotted following the posting of Q&A responses. | |
| 16 | Technical | Within PWS Section 6.7.1.5, the government states "In support of the FaaS Program, the contractor shall ..." Can the government provide a definition for "FaaS" or update the PWS if this was a typo? | PWS Section - 6.8.1.5 | Due to renumbering of the revised PWS Section 6.7.1.5 is now Section 6.8.1.5 and the section has been revised. | |
| 17 | Acquisition | Within Section 13.g.1, the government states "Transition-In (Phase In)] states "All key personnel/key positions must be onboard at start of the period of performance." |
| Outside of this section, the government does not define minimum key personnel requirements or how key personnel will be evaluated, including requesting that vendors provide resumes for the keys to allow the government to select the most qualified delivery partner. Will the government specify the key personnel requirements and the evaluation approach? | PWS Section 13.g.1 | There are no identified key personnel for this contract. It is the offeror's responsibility to determine the positons and personnel that are necessary to successfully perform in accordance with the terms and conditions of contract. The government has removed the verbiage "All key personnel/key positions". | |
| 18 | Technical | Within Section 13.g.1, the government states "Transition-In (Phase In) states "All key personnel/key positions must be onboard at start of the period of performance". |
While Section 13 identifies the "Transition In" task, it is not defined within the PWS, and therefore it is unclear if the vendor is obligated to price and support a transition-in phase. Without directly requesting this support, it is unclear if the incoming vendor will be obligated to support transition in activities, creating potential project risks and not allowing the government to select the vendor with the best capability to seamlessly transition in the program. The government should considering adding a "Transition In" task to the PWS (as new task area) that is priced and evaluated separately, and the government should request a transition-in approach as part of the technical volume.
| The government should request that the vendor provides evidence that the vendor can meet the staffing requirements (where keys are available on day 1, 50% of the staff are available by week 2, and 100% are available within 30 days). Evidence should include named and committed resources for at least 75% of the staff. Additionally, the vendor should offer a clear and low-risk approach within the technical volume for how it will execute transition-in activities for all workstreams and ensure continuity of production operations and seamless continuation of all ongoing workstreams. | PWS Section 13.g.1 | The government has removed the verbiage "All key personnel/key positions". | |
| 19 | Acquisition | Within the both the Instructions to the Bidders and the Evaluation Factors (referenced), the government is requiring "Demonstration that the Offeror is an active partner of the Appian Acquisition Accreditation Partner Program." |
Within the "Justification for Other than Full and Open Competition," the government allows "Appian Corporation" to participate in the solicitation. Please update the RFP to align with the "Justification for Other than Full and Open Competition." Instructions to the Offerors - Section 1.3 Part C Section M (Evaluation Factor For Award) - Section 2.1 Factor 1 Subfactor 1
| Section 1.3 Part C and the Section M subfactor have been updated to align with the Posted Justification and Approval | ||
| 20 | Acquisition | Within Task 6 - DI Server Support, the government should add a subtask to complete the planned migration from the Oracle WebLogic servers to Apache Tomcat, inclusive of DI layer workflow redevelopment, technology migration, testing and redeployment, with a goal of implementation within 2026. |
| The government should evaluate this subtask based on the completeness and viability of the plan, and the vendors should incorporate support as part of their pricing approach. By requiring the vendors to plan and price this migration activity, the government will avoid a future change requests and ensure that this critical workstream remains on track and that vendors can provide accurate vendor responses. | PWS Section 6.7 | Requirement and evaluations criteria will not be changed. | |
| 21 | Technical | Within Section 6.2, the current title for Task 2 is "Software Support for IDEAS NG." It is believed that this should read "Software Support for IDEAS O&M and NG," as the NG solution has not yet been deployed. Once the NG system is deployed, the vendor will need to operate both the O&M and NG solutions concurrently, significantly increasing the Task 2, 3 and 4 support requirements, in order to operate two production-level solutions concurrently across the user base, inclusive of the additional environmental and DI layer support. |
| In order to allow the vendor community to properly and accurately respond changing support requirement, the government should adjust the Task 2 title, as above, and update Task 3 and 4 as required. And in order to allow vendor community to provide accurate pricing and reduce the likelihood of change requests, the vendor suggests providing the estimated date for the NG go-live so that vendors can incorporate the operational change into their approach. The government should evaluate the vendor's approach to deploy the NG solution and transition it to production operations while ensuring continuity of operations for the O&M solution and smoothly delivering the NG capability to user community without service disruptions. | PWS Section 6.2 | See Q4, revised task areas to better reflect that IDEAS O&M is the only system in production now; with an optional sub-task for IDEAS NG production support once it reaches Initial Operational Capability. | |
| 22 | Acquisition | Within Section 4 - Objectives, the government states "It is imperative to minimize or even eliminate all specialty code that may negatively impact regular upgrades to the Appian BPM version." |
Support for de-customization is not clearly evident elsewhere in the PWS, including Task 2. The government should consider adding a subtask under Task 2 called "O&M De-customization" and request that as part of the technical approach and price proposal.
As part of this subtask and due to the Appian platform and application level-changes that are required, the government should evaluate the offeror's approach and ability to integrate the OEM's engineering team to support the effort. Instructions to the Offerors Section M (Evaluation Factor For Award)
| The government has selected the evaluation factors they have determined to be the most significant to ensure successful performance. | ||||
| 23 | Acquisition | As part of the evaluation for "Subfactor 4: Management/Staffing Approach," the government should evaluate the offeror's staffing approach for the degree to which the offeror staffs Appian-certified personnel at the time of award for Appian development- and architecture-related roles. Additionally, the government should evaluate the offeror's ability to access a staffing pool of Appian certified personnel in order to add new team members or fill project vacancies. Minimally, all developers should have an Appian Associate Developer certification, and all architects should have a Senior Developer certification. Details on the certification program can be found at: https://community.appian.com/learn/certifications. | Section M (Evaluation Factor For Award), Section 2, Subfactor 4 | This RFP and subsequent contract will be a firm fixed priced performance based contract. It is the awardee's responsibility to staff the contract to ensure succesful performance. |
| 24 | Technical | Within Section 6.5, the government optionally requests migration support. While it is possible to move the IDEAS solution to a new hosting provider, IDEAS has been somewhat recently moved to the Appian Government Cloud (AGC). |
Is the government potentially interested in a new hosting solution that is not the AGC? If, not would government remove this task area?
If so, the government should clearly specify that this migration should include the migration of a customized Appian environment that supports IDEAS O&M that requires detailed support to re-integrate complex platform-level customizations and includes the migration of the NG solution. For this task area, the government should evaluate the offerors detailed approach to manage the customizations without introducing platform risk and evaluate the vendor's experience deploying and troubleshooting a customized Appian platform. Additionally, the government should request suggestions on alternative hosting solutions and their impacts on the cybersecurity taskings. PWS Section 6.6 Requirement and evaluations criteria will not be changed. While the government does not have any current drivers to migrate hosting solutions the government reserve the option to the possibility of the need for support in the future.
25 Technical Within Section 6.5, the government states "Cloud solution hosting will be hosted in an environment Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP) certified Impact Level (IL) 4 or higher to store controlled unclassified information...."
| While Appian does provide both FedRAMP certified cloud solutions and DoD IL-4 approved hosting environments, the security requirements and certifications are separate. The government should consider updating the language to specify DoD IL-4 and remove references to FedRAMP in this context. | PWS Section 6.6 | The government has added DoD to the Impact Level (IL-4) and the government will not be removing the FedRAMP requirement. | |
| 26 | Technical | Within Section 3, the government lists four (4) instances in AGC to manage the development and support effort: Development, Staging, Performance, Production. |
However, the current instances, hosted in the Appian Government Cloud (AGC) are NG-Staging, NG-Production, O&M Performance, and O&M Production, where the O&M and NG systems are separated. Additionally, the PWS does not provide requirements for the hosting and managing development environments to support IDEAS-O&M and IDEAS-NG (hosted in the Appian GovCloud).
| It should be noted that O&M and NG are on different Appian versions, with different maintenance needs, efforts and schedules, and that O&M is currently operated on a customized version of Appian requiring experience with Appian's source code for upgrades, patching, and maintenance. The government should consider updating the PWS to reflect the current environment strategy and complexities and require that vendors account for supporting development environments that are not hosted in the AGC. | PWS Section 3 | The PWS has been revised to depict the environments required. | |
| 27 | Technical | In both Task 2 and Task 3, the government is requesting software support and production support respectfully. However, the government has not provided an estimable baseline of the anticipated volume (based on the current significant number) of service requests, enhancement requests, backlog items, etc., that can allow the vendor to estimate and price the anticipated level of effort for these tasks. |
| In order to allow the vendor community to provide an accurate estimate the level of effort and price and, in turn, reduce the likelihood of change requests, the vendor suggests providing a clear scope baseline that can be used for pricing purposes. | PWS Sections 6.2 and 6.3 | See answer to question 5 above. | |||
| 28 | Technical | Does DISA intend to issue an updated CLIN Pricing Worksheet to reflect the changes in task names and numbers and other recent modifications in the solicitation instructions? | Attachment 2 - CLIN Pricing Worksheet | Attachment 2 - CLIN Pricing Worksheet has been revised accordingly. | |
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https://community.appian.com/learn/certifications.
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