ETFO - Redacted.pdf

Defense Threat Reduction Agency

8725 John J. Kingman Road, Stop 6201 Fort Belvoir, VA 22060-6201

EXCEPTION TO FAIR OPPORTUNITY JUSTIFICATION

Amendment 01

1. Nature and/or Description of the Action

The Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) contracting activity intends to award a new follow-on task order, without providing for fair opportunity, to Leidos, Inc. (hereinafter “Leidos”), 700 N Frederick Ave, Suite 10, Gaithersburg, MD 20879, for IT Engineering Support Services under the IT Multiple Award Contract (MAC) IDIQ of HDTRA1-19-D-0004.

The new task order is expected to have a period of performance (PoP) of 12 months running from 22 August 2024 through 21 August 2025. Currently, Leidos is performing these services for DTRA under Task Order HDTRA1-19-F-0032, which ends on August 21, 2024. DTRA needs continued support because it is working through multiple transitions with unknown timelines, including the Defense Information System Agency’s 4th Estate Network Optimization (4ENO) program and compliance with various DoD policy guidance. This new follow-on Task Order will allow for the staging of all our IT systems, as they are getting prepared to move to DISA. Under the 4ENO program, the services and assets defined as common IT will migrate to DISA. The DTRA requirements from post-2025 on will be vastly different as DTRA moves towards a transition to DISA, as DISA assumes responsibility for DTRA’s core infrastructure.

However, DTRA will still require engineering planning and support until the migration to DISA is executed. Because the migration schedule is actively being coordinated, a sole source award is an optimal “stop gap” solution versus awarding a multiple year contract, because current requirements in the outyears are currently largely unknown.

On 27 June 2024, an SRRB was held in which the IT Directorate received approval from AL- AQ to compete a new requirement, for Integrated IT Support Services, which realigns all of DTRA’s IT services by removing duplicative IT systems, modernizing the infrastructure (e.g. servers have not been updated since 2012) and staging the services in preparation for the migration to DISA. The timeline for the new competitive action includes releasing the RFP in October 2024, receiving proposals in November/December 2024, and awarding the new task order in January/February 2025. This new follow-on task order is needed because DTRA still needs the IT Engineering Support Services before they are realigned under the new aforementioned competitive task order. This new task order will overlap with the Integrated IT Support Services requirement for approximately six months because it will take time for the new contractor to ramp up (hiring, badging, learning) under the new contract and because we still need DTRA available to perform services on site for various outages that occur and assist in the transition of services between DTRA and DISA. Under the Integrated IT Support contract, it is anticipated that DTRA will save because of the consolidation of IT operations. This new 12-month sole source follow-on task order to Leidos is no longer than necessary yet sufficient to avoid unnecessary delays because it is not anticipated that more or less time is needed to migrate. Upon the completion of this 12-month period, the services under the current task order will have been migrated to DISA and any requirements that do not migrate over to DISA will be subsumed under the Integrated IT Support contract.

The planned 12-month sole source task order requirement is estimated at a cost of This rough order estimate is based on the previous 12 months’ costs of HDTRA1-19-F-0032, an annual inflation escalation of 4% for wage increases, and an increased level of effort that is needed to take into consideration the new DoD IT policies and a DoD network architecture, so that the contractor can provide DTRA with service design support and IT engineering. This will give support to assist with the upgrading and modernization efforts across DTRA IT systems consistent with the original Performance Work Statement.

Amendment 01 of this ETFO increases the ETFO value from to . The original ETFO that was approved by the Competition Advocate on 24 July 2024 incorporated a value that was premised upon the Independent Government Cost Estimate. However, on 8 August 2024, the Government received a proposal of record valued in excess of the original ETFO value of . The Amendment 01 value of reflects the Government’s planned negotiation objective value.

2. Description of the Supplies/Services Required

The Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) Information Management & Technology Directorate has a requirement for engineering services in support of the design, development, and testing of information technology (IT) systems and capabilities. The Independent Government Cost Estimate was developed using previous pricing from the award HDTRA1- 19-D-0004; Task Order, HDTRA1-19-F-0032. A previous sole source action was approved which extended the PoP on the aforementioned task order for six months via a bridge modification from 22 February 2024 to 21 August 2024 which was awarded for and then reduced by due to revised pricing for an actual total of for the six-month period.

In preparing for the recompete of this follow-on task order, an Industry Day was held on 20 March 2024 with all of the MAC IDIQ holders in which they were educated on the new requirements for the new competition. Conversations between DTRA and DISA in terms of what IT services would transition to DISA began happening in March of 2024. By May 2024, DISA’s contracting office said they could not take on all the services under this current task order because it was not within the scope of their Defense Enclave Services (DES) IDIQ, therefore they could not assume the work at that time. There was a lot of back and forth between DTRA and DISA and DISA refused to look at all of DTRA’s systems for the migration to the 4ENO program. Some parts of DTRA systems were going to migrate to DISA, but when DISA said no, it impacted all of our schedules and the magnitude of the scope on DTRA’s requirement. Given that DISA would not look at all of DTRA’s roughly 36 systems, DTRA had to find its own solution to get ready for the migration. By June 2024, this issue was escalated to senior leaders at the DoD and DTRA made the decision to go forward with the old requirement (current task order), but the requirement now has a bigger scope in the short term but a smaller scope in the long term because this has been slated to go away because DISA is supposed to take over. If the migration to DISA happens by the end of FY26, then we do not have a need for this requirement at all then. If DISA takes away DTRA’s infrastructure, there is nothing for DTRA to engineer and architect. DTRA would have other systems to manage instead. Accordingly, while all of this was going on, the recompete got put on hold, and now the task order is needed so there is not a lapse in services as it is still being determined what services are going to DISA and when.

Background

A significant number of DTRA mission-critical capabilities rely on Information Management & Technology Directorate engineering contract staff for design, development, testing, and Tier

3 Helpdesk support. Historical efforts by engineering staff have included modernization on all Unclassified and Classified networks, and the consolidation of and transition to cloud services.

Current major efforts are exhibiting a significant risk to DTRA IT mission steady state operations that could be impacted by a break in service include: the consolidation of systems and networks within DTRA for the Joint Worldwide Intelligence Communication System (JWICS), and the containerization of DTRA’s software development environment for systems that support missions owned by the Nuclear Enterprise Support Directorate. Currently, the Agency is working through a consolidation of its JWICS enclaves and steady support required to ensure the consolidation of the networks is performed smoothly and without interruption.

Task Order HDTRA1-19-F-0032 was competitively awarded under the DTRA IT Support Services (ITSS) multiple award, indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity (IDIQ) contract, HDTRA1-19-D-0004 in 2019. The ordering period for the IDIQ was from 21 February 2019 to 20 February 2024 with an additional five-year option period. Since the option period was exercised, the ordering period extends through 20 February 2029. The remaining ceiling shared across the IDIQs is , which is sufficient to accommodate this Task Order.

3. Exception to Fair Opportunity

Pursuant to FAR 16.505(b)(2)(i)(C), the order must be issued on a sole-source basis in the interest of economy and efficiency because it is a logical follow-on to an order already issued under the contract, provided all awardees were given a fair opportunity to be considered for the original order.

4. Justification Rationale

This requirement is a logical follow-on order to the prior bridge extension of the original requirement. The current task order is under the IT Multiple Award Contract (MAC) IDIQ which is set to expire on 21 August 2024. This request is for a follow-on 12-month sole-source task order award. The current vendor has been performing on the current task order for five+ years and has been satisfactory in their CPARS and Monthly Status Reports. All awardees under the MAC were given a fair opportunity to be considered for the original order. In fact, this requirement was competed as a sample task order under full and open competition when the ITSS MAC was competed. The Performance Work Statement (PWS) will remain the same and thus, the nature of the work is the same. This requirement satisfies the Agency’s continued need to provide the full range of expertise required to continually monitor the Information Technology (IT) market space, analyze the evolving DTRA mission requirements, and identify/recommend IT solutions to challenges associated with day-to-day service delivery/mission performance.

It will be a more efficient use of resources to award a new follow-on task order for this requirement to allow DTRA to align the timelines of various upgrades and transitions with the 4ENO transition. Part of the 4ENO transition is to separate out common IT from mission IT; the scope of the future requirements is dependent on DISA’s determination of where the boundaries are between common IT and mission IT. Without this insight, DTRA IT cannot determine if it will have a requirement for engineering support post 4ENO transition. Currently, the engineering efforts are mostly centered around the operation of DTRA’s infrastructure and systems configuration. Once the migration to DISA occurs, DISA will maintain DTRA’s infrastructure. The current extent and systems DISA will manage is unclear.

Competing the bridge while recompeting the task order would result in a duplication of efforts.

It does not make sense to do two competitions at the same time for the same effort. By sole sourcing the requirement to the incumbent, the government does not need to ramp up a new contractor nor wait for them to learn the current operations. It would take 30-60 days to onboard new contractor staff. The incumbent will be able to continue working for the transitional six months without the loss of time. It would take six months for new contractor staff to learn how things currently operate. When multiplying the six months by the current monthly burn rate, the value of the loss of time is Should the sole source award not move forward, then during the six-month ramp up/transition time a greatly reduced amount of technical productivity would occur, therefore wasting time and resources.

Additionally, the incumbent contractor will accomplish 90% amount of work in the next six months while a new contractor would only be expected to accomplish 40% amount of work.

This is in relation to all of the tasks in the PWS. Based on the foregoing, in the interest of economy and efficiency, the sole source award is the only solution to ensure these services do not lapse.

The current vendor has been performing under the task order at a satisfactory level throughout the life of the task order. It is most advantageous to the Government to make an award for 12-months while it is determined which IT services will go to DISA and which will remain with DTRA to be recompeted. If a sole-source award is not executed and the task order were to be completed in the current PoP, it would result in a break in service costing the Government additional funding while not having the expertise needed by the vendor to perform mission critical requirements. Executing a new task order to bridge to work will provide ample transition time if the incumbent is not awarded the follow-on contract. Historically, 30-60 days of transition period allows for onboarding and knowledge transfer from incumbents to the new staff, so no gap in continuous engineering efforts are experienced.

This requirement satisfies the Agency’s continued need to provide the full range of expertise required to continually monitor the Information Technology (IT) market space, analyze the evolving DTRA mission requirements, and identify/recommend IT solutions to challenges associated with day-to-day service delivery/mission performance. Without a bridge for this task order, there is high probability of a break in service for engineering services in the Information Management & Technology Directorate. The sole-source task order award must move forward based on the interest of economy and efficiency.

5. Market Research

Market research has concluded that other companies would be able to perform the type of work being performed on this contract. But, due to the immediate need to maintain Tier 3 IT support services, any other company would require a ramp up time to learn DTRA’s current architecture. Estimated time to execute ramp up could take anywhere between 3-12 months.

6. Other Supporting Facts

With this new information presented in recent days, DTRA IT will review its current operations and endeavor to see operations from a DISA perspective in efforts to align its procurements and activities appropriately to ease into the 4ENO transition. It is imperative DTRA IT can maintain a status quo in its ops tempo while it prepares for a large amount of modernization,