SSJ_Aspen_SIS_20180725_Redacted.pdf

SOLE SOURCE JUSTIFICATION

ASPEN STUDENT INFORMATION SYSTEM (SIS)

1. Contracting Agency:

a. Department of Defense Education Activity (DoDEA), 4800 Mark Center Drive, Alexandria, Virginia 22350

2. Description of Supplies and Services:

a. DoDEA requires software licenses and maintenance to sustain the Aspen SIS currently installed and maintained on-premises at the DoDEA data center in Peachtree City, Georgia. The Aspen SIS retains preschool through 12th grade student data including: demographic; enrollment; scheduling;

attendance; special education; health; conduct; grading and transcript; and maintains historical records for graduated and withdrawn students.

The Aspen SIS provides core capabilities including: 5-levels of school system organizational administration; student registration, enrollment and demographic data management; attendance management; conduct management; course catalog management; master scheduling; grade book management; health information management; academic program management; special education management; student academic profile management; analytics and reporting; report card and transcript management; virtual school management; student and parent portals; and provides native two-factor authentication capability for organizational staff using Common Access Cards (CACs), which is unique to the Department of Defense (DoD).

3. Description of Action:

a. DoDEA intends to award a firm-fixed-price contract for student licenses and maintenance, on a sole source basis to the incumbent contractor, for continued use of their Aspen Student Information System (“Aspen SIS”). The contract will cover a 12-month base period, effective , and two 12-month option periods at an annual cost of . Option periods will be exercised as required to maintain continuity of Student Information System (SIS) services. Total period of performance is from through .

b. If all options are exercised, the total estimated cost of this contract is . Licenses and maintenance are paid at the start of the performance period once invoice is received from contractor.

c. Award of this contract is expected to occur in September of 2018.

4. Authority Cited:

a. FAR 6.302-1- Only one responsible source and no other supplies or services will satisfy agency requirements, (10 U.S.C.§ 2304(c)(1)).

5. Reason for Authority Cited:

a. Covered Defense Business System (DBS): The Aspen SIS is currently identified by DoD as a covered DBS. As part of the compliance requirement for covered DBSs, DoDEA’s on-premises Aspen SIS hosting infrastructure and software have been tailored by and DoDEA IT staff to support end-user Public Key authentication (“PK-enablement”) using DoD issued CACs. This capability complies with DoD’s Business Enterprise Architecture (BEA) system requirements, helps to support continued certification of the system as a covered DBS by the DoD Chief Management Officer (CMO), and is critical to its annual funding authorization.

PK-enablement via CAC is not currently offered by any other K-12 SIS vendor as a commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) feature. While it may be possible for an interested vendor to develop customizations into their system to support CAC authentication, Department of Defense Instruction (DoDI) 5000.75 requires DoD components seeking future business system investments to reduce their reliance on customizations within COTS products. Instead, the Instruction states “the acquisition of business systems will be aligned to commercial best practices and will minimize the need for customization of commercial products to the maximum extent possible”. The instruction also requires any requested changes, modifications, or new requirements to covered DBSs be submitted for CMO review and approval.

In developing requirements for a new SIS, DoDEA will take into consideration, DoD’s “Cloud First” initiative. As such, DoDEA is developing new support and service level agreement (SLA) requirements for hosting and maintenance and new business process rules for engagement with the vendor.

Additionally, the move to the cloud will require re-definition of the user authentication business process and include consideration for the identity provider (IdP) of staff users still being maintained within the agency’s centralized data-center in Peachtree City, Georgia. All of these changes effectively establish that DoDEA must submit a request to the CMO so that an analysis of capabilities and business processes can occur, and for the organization to obtain an ATP for the acquisition of a new vendor solution that meets these requirements, prior to soliciting for proposals. DoDEA acknowledges these requirements and has begun identifying current SIS business processes to include in the out-of-cycle (OOC) review and portfolio certification request (PCR) through the Human Resources Management (HRM) business area portfolio management team representing the DoD fourth estate. DoDEA will work jointly with the HRM portfolio management team to obtain the three pre-acquisition ATPs from the CMO as identified in the Business Capabilities Acquisition Cycle (BCAC) guidance in order to solicit for proposals and competitively award a new contract for a K-12 SIS, along with the three post-acquisition ATPs required to fully deploy the new system into production status.

Recent discussions with the HRM portfolio manager, along with instructions in the BCAC guidance, indicate a timeline of approximately 270 days from the definition of the capabilities needs identification in phase 1 of the BCAC until the third ATP is obtained to move forward with a new SIS acquisition. Additionally, DoDEA was informed by the HRM portfolio manager to expect delays due to the compounding effects of current DoD IT reform and consolidation efforts.

b. Scope, Customizations and Integrations: The Aspen SIS is a critical component of DoDEA’s educational infrastructure and serves all DoDEA schools as the primary authoritative system of record for management of student information, including student: demographic; health; grade; enrollment;

schedule; attendance; conduct; assessment; education plan; accommodation; transcript; and report card data. Information stored, processed and reported through the Aspen SIS is vital to ensuring continuity of each school’s operations, directly impacting the availability and quality of educational services provided to each student.

DoDEA has spent approximately since the inception of the first Aspen SIS contract in 2009.

More significantly, the organization has invested nearly working with the incumbent contractor to develop progressive enhancements to the core of the Aspen SIS product and to customize system modules to support tracking and reporting of educational services offered by DoDEA schools, including Special Education services. These enhancements and customizations have been heavily tailored to DoDEA’s 5-tier organizational structure, along with data collection and approval workflows which are critical to determining student enrollment eligibility and feed the registration process at each school. Additionally, DoDEA staff have created a large number of system and user-defined internal reports and reporting structures, along with accompanying permission sets inside of the Aspen SIS that provide access to student data for appropriate staff roles across DoDEA’s 5-tier hierarchy.

As the primary system of record, many of DoDEA’s third-party educational systems are dependent on complex system integrations that have been designed and developed to function explicitly with the Aspen SIS. These systems are connected through a combination of custom standard query language (SQL) scripts and internal custom jobs maintained in the core of the Aspen platform. These scripts and jobs are responsible for maintaining the extract, transact, and load (ETL) processes that synchronize student grade data, student and staff accounts, and courses in systems including the and several other educational systems that provide student and staff access to curricular resources.

Development efforts to re-design, test, debug, stage and transition these integrations between existing third-party systems and a new SIS requires significant resources including, but not limited to, enterprise systems architects; data management specialists; server and database administrators;

application developers; network engineers; information assurance specialists; and subject matter experts. The DoDEA SIS team estimate that with a fully staffed project team, an approximate duration of 3-months is required for the development, testing and readiness of these third-party systems integrations within a new SIS. Due to recent Restructuring for Student Achievement (RSA) efforts and resulting vacant positions within the IT division, DoDEA is operating at an efficiency level that is currently inadequate to support this duration and as a result, an additional element of risk is introduced that may delay anticipated schedules.

c. Staff Training: DoDEA teachers, administrators, nurses, and other staff members have been extensively trained on, and are familiar with the use of the Aspen SIS. Each year DoDEA allocates a specific number of professional development (PD) days for teachers to learn about new instructional curriculum, pedagogy, and technology. During these scheduled training sessions, schools are either closed or substitute teachers are hired to backfill classroom teachers. There is limited availability for PD days to train staff that has been forecasted between now and the beginning of the 2020/21 school year. This is in large part due to one of the organization’s most prevalent initiatives, the implementation of new College and Career Ready standards in Mathematics, English/Language Arts, Science, Social Studies, and specialized content areas.

If DoDEA were to transition to a new SIS between now and start of school year , teachers would need to be pulled from their classrooms during the school year, resulting in a loss of instructional time, and require the hiring of substitute teachers to backfill during teacher SIS training sessions. A loss of instructional time would be injurious to DoDEA’s mission of educating the dependents of military families. The additional expense to train approximately teachers (without having time already built into the schedule) could range from for hiring substitute teachers to for paying teachers a stipend for early return from their summer break.

Additional DoDEA staff, such as registrars, nurses, administrators, and counselors, would also require training. Assuming training has not been scheduled in advance for those staff members, this could cause significant disruptions to normal school operations as they would be unavailable to students and families. DoDEA approximates a range of 6-months to train all organizational staff globally on the use of a new SIS using a combination of vendor led and train-the-trainer in-person and online formats.

All training for a new SIS must be completed prior to the scheduled go-live date.

d. Projected Timeline for new SIS Implementation: DoDEA is currently conducting preliminary market research for a new SIS with the intent to competitively award a new contract in October 2020.

Projections estimate DoDEA will implement the new SIS during the summer of 2021, assuming all dependent authorizations have been obtained. DoDEA has established a timeline for the transition to a new SIS, which reflects the typical timeline for large K-12 school districts, along with the activities required to obtain the necessary ATPs from the CMO. The timeline below captures activities and milestones along the critical path, which reflect the duration of approximately 33 months until a new SIS solution can be placed into production status.

Because of the year-round schedule of DoDEA schools, the milestone date for transition to a new SIS is limited to a narrow two-week window during summer break, after the year-end-rollover (YER) process has been completed by the SIS team and prior to the date on which teachers return to school.

Scheduling the transition to a new SIS at any other time during the calendar year will cause significant disruption in classroom instruction and increases risk to the loss of student and staff data. If the two-week window is missed, or critical issues occur during the transition resulting in a rollback, DoDEA must wait one full calendar year for the next opportunity to transition to a new SIS.

e. Summary: DoDEA’s Aspen SIS is certified and authorized by the CMO to operate as a covered DBS within the parameters of the DoD BEA. DoDEA is interested in adopting industry best practices and adjusting business processes as the organization looks forward to developing requirements for a new SIS; however, timelines suggest that it is prudent for DoDEA to renew Aspen SIS licensing and leverage existing investments made in the current system while parallel efforts are undertaken to realign business processes with commercial best practices for a COTS solution, obtain the necessary ATPs, competitively award a new contract and transition to a new SIS.

ACTIVITY / PROCESS RESPONSIBLE START

DATE

END

DATE

DURATION

(Days)

Business process identification SIS Team 6/1/18 8/30/18 90

Conduct preliminary market research for new SIS SIS Team 8/30/18 11/28/18 90

Industry week SIS Team 11/28/18 12/12/18 14

Develop and document required system capabilities SIS Team 12/12/18 1/11/19 30

Union pre-decisional input (PDI) Education

LMER 12/12/18 2/10/19 60

Investment review/authority-to-proceed (ATP) from CMO IT Education 12/12/18 9/8/19 270

Capability need identification - Business Capabilities Acquisition Cycle (BCAC: 3.1)

IT

Education 12/12/18 1/11/19 30

Business Solution Analysis (BCAC: 3.2)

Education

CMO/CAE

1/11/19

5/11/19

Business Systems Functional Requirements & Acquisition Planning (BCAC: 3.3)

Education 5/11/19 8/9/19 90

Obtain ATP from CMO

CMO/CAE

8/9/19

9/8/19

Develop initial requirements package (Performance Work Statement, Initial Government Cost Estimate, update market research and compile Market Research Report)

5/11/19

8/9/19

Review and finalize requirements package Education

IT 9/8/19 10/8/19 30

END

DATE

DURATION

(Days)

Submit requirements package (PALT initiated)

Procurement

Legal Education General Counsel

10/8/19

3/9/20

Complete procurement package received in PD2 inbox Procurement 10/8/19 10/11/19 3

Develop solicitation Procurement 10/11/19 10/25/19 14

Review solicitation Procurement

Legal

10/25/19

11/8/19

Revise solicitation Procurement 11/8/19 11/10/19 2

Approve final solicitation Procurement Legal 11/10/19 11/13/19 3

Issue solicitation / FedBizOpps Procurement 11/13/19 11/20/19 7

Receive IT software submission Procurement

IT 11/20/19 12/20/19 30

Receive proposals Procurement 11/20/19 1/19/20 60

Conduct technical evaluation Education

IT 1/19/20 2/2/20 14

Perform price analysis, past performance check, review of subcontracting plan Procurement 2/2/20 2/9/20 7

Perform negotiations and final evaluation if required Procurement Education 2/9/20 2/16/20 7

Recommend award / SSA approval / develop award document Procurement 2/16/20 2/23/20 7

Secure board review of rationale / contract award Procurement Legal 2/23/20 3/1/20 7

Revise award rationale if required Procurement 3/1/20 3/4/20 3

Secure final review

General Counsel

3/4/20

3/7/20

Sign contract award Procurement 3/7/20 3/9/20 2

Union discussions Education

LMER 3/9/20 5/8/20 60

Post Award Conference

3/14/20

Technical conference IT Vendor - 3/19/20 5

SIS environment installation and configuration (environments:

production, testing, staging, review, training, YER)

Vendor

3/19/20

3/25/20

System administrator training (delivered to SIS Team) Vendor 3/25/20 4/15/20 21

System administration, general overview, basic navigation Vendor 3/25/20 3/27/20 2

User Management Vendor 3/27/20 3/28/20 1

Student Registration and Enrollment (multi-school enrollment, enrollment status, contact info, eligibility) Vendor 3/28/20 3/30/20 2

Student Data Management Vendor 3/30/20 3/31/20 1

Course Catalog Vendor 3/31/20 4/1/20 1

END

DATE

DURATION

(Days)

Manual Scheduling Vendor 4/1/20 4/2/20 1

Staff Management Vendor 4/2/20 4/3/20 1

Transcript Management Vendor 4/3/20 4/4/20 1

Gradebook (Teacher and Administrative functions) Vendor 4/4/20 4/5/20 1

Special Education Vendor 4/5/20 4/7/20 2

Health Vendor 4/7/20 4/8/20 1

Attendance Vendor 4/8/20 4/9/20 1

Education Plans and Services Vendor 4/9/20 4/10/20 1

Parent and Student Access Vendor 4/10/20 4/11/20 1

Reports and Data Queries Vendor 4/11/20 4/12/20 1

Conduct Vendor 4/12/20 4/13/20 1

Bulk Scheduling Vendor 4/13/20 4/14/20 1

Assessments Vendor 4/14/20 4/15/20 1

SIS core system and module configuration SIS Team 3/25/20 5/9/20 45

Workflow configuration SIS Team 3/25/20 5/9/20 45

SIS data migration, conversion & validation Vendor SIS Team 5/9/20 7/8/20 60

Third-party data integration IT 7/8/20 10/2/20 86

Google GSuite IT 7/8/20 7/13/20 5

Schoology IT 7/13/20 8/3/20 21 eLearning Portal IT 8/3/20 8/8/20 5

FitnessGram IT 8/8/20 8/13/20 5

Clever IT 8/13/20 8/18/20 5

McGraw Hill IT 8/18/20 8/19/20 1

Pearson IT 8/19/20 8/20/20 1

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt IT 8/20/20 9/3/20 14

AtHoc IT 9/3/20 9/17/20 14

XAP IT 9/17/20 9/27/20 10

Meals Programs IT 9/27/20 10/2/20 5

Beta testing with District SIS SIS Team 7/8/20 8/7/20 30

Configuration adjustment based on results of beta testing (iterative with beta testing cycles) SIS Team 7/23/20 8/22/20 30

Develop user acceptance testing (UAT) plan SIS Team 8/22/20 9/6/20 15

Train volunteer users for UAT SIS Team 9/6/20 9/8/20 2

Execute UAT SIS Team 9/8/20 10/8/20 30

Configuration adjustments based on results from UAT SIS Team 10/8/20 10/23/20 15

Adjust workflow configurations SIS Team 10/8/20 11/7/20 30

END

DATE

DURATION

(Days)

Compile and tailor staff user training materials SIS Team 10/8/20 11/7/20 30

Staff Training (dates display approximate ranges of dates to deliver training to 8,000+ staff members) SIS Team 11/7/20 4/19/21 163

General overview, basic navigation (all staff) SIS Team 11/7/20 11/21/20 14

Student Registration and Enrollment (registrars) SIS Team 11/21/20 12/5/20 14

Student Data Management (registrars) SIS Team 11/21/20 12/5/20 14

Course Catalog (HQ student services, HQ curriculum leads) SIS Team 12/5/20 12/12/20 7

Manual Scheduling (administrators, counselors, registrars) SIS Team 12/12/20 12/26/20 14

Transcript Management (administrators, counselors, registrars) SIS Team 12/26/20 1/9/21 14

Gradebook (teachers, ETs) SIS Team 1/9/21 1/23/21 14

Special Education (SPED team) SIS Team 1/23/21 3/24/21 60

Education Plans and Services (ESL, Gifted, 504) SIS Team 1/23/21 2/6/21 14

Health (nurses) SIS Team 1/23/21 2/6/21 14

Attendance (office automation assistants, teachers) SIS Team 1/23/21 2/6/21 14

Reports and Data Queries (all staff) SIS Team 2/6/21 3/8/21 30

Conduct (administrators, teachers, counselors) SIS Team 3/8/21 3/22/21 14

Bulk Scheduling (administrators, counselors, registrars) SIS Team 3/22/21 4/5/21 14

Assessments SIS Team 4/5/21 4/19/21 14

Pilot SIS during semester 2 of SY 20/21 SIS Team 2/6/21 6/12/21 126

Collect feedback from pilot schools SIS Team 2/6/21 6/12/21 126

Final configuration adjustments based on feedback from pilot schools SIS Team 2/6/21 6/12/21 126

Go-Live (can only occur during summer break) SIS Team 7/11/21 7/16/21 5

6. Efforts Made to Remove Barriers to/Increase Competition:

a. DoDEA has reached out to to identify if there are any authorized resellers of their Aspen SIS. has informed the government that after their acquisition of X2 Corporation, they no longer partner with third-party vendors for resale of their software. They are the only source for licensing of the Aspen SIS.

b. DoDEA is currently undertaking efforts to re-engineer SIS business processes which is a critical step in obtaining authorization from the CMO to solicit for a new SIS. DoDEA intends to compete the SIS requirement within the next 12-months after requirements have been more clearly defined and authorization has been obtained to seek investment into a new DBS. The government will continue to monitor industry and actively communicate with vendors during market research activities to promote increased competition for this requirement.

7. Determination of Fair and Reasonable Price

a. DoDEA has received pricing from the incumbent for licenses and maintenance which reflects similar pricing paid for previous contract years to the same vendor. The vendor has stated they will continue to honor licensing at the same rate as paid by DoDEA in previous years.

b. COTS SIS licenses are typically priced on a per student basis, ranging on average between per student. Some SIS vendors provide price breakdowns for individual modules included within the system, still based on a per student model. Market research estimates indicate annual licensing, support and maintenance to range from approximately annually.

8. Market Research:

a. DoDEA SIS staff have conducted ongoing market research since 2015, and as recently as Q4 of fiscal year (FY) 2018. Methods include review of the Federal Procurement Data System (FPDS) to identify SIS vendors that have been awarded contracts for K-12 SIS solutions and services to Federal Government agencies, reviewing Gartner Magic Quadrant reports, and scrutinizing vendor marketing, whitepaper and system administration guide materials to determine functional capabilities. DoDEA has found that vendors identified in the FPDS search results were included in previous SIS market research activities conducted by DoDEA in the Spring of 2015, and no new vendors have provided the requested services to any other federal government agencies since.

DoDEA has also directly engaged with a number of SIS vendors including

These engagements focused on obtaining current pricing for product licensing and maintenance, identifying potential resellers of their systems, along with a “sanity check” of pass/fail requirements including: the capability of the system to maintain 5 or more levels of organizational management hierarchy; Ed-Fi data standard certification; and native two-factor authentication capability using DoD CAC against Microsoft Active Directory (AD) as the IdP. Of the vendors identified, only one, could currently provide all three capabilities within their K-12 SIS COTS product.

DoDEA believes that when a new request for proposal (RFP) is released, other vendors may propose to customize their product to provide these capabilities. DoDEA intends to move forward with full and open competition and is currently undertaking the steps required for business process re-engineering to re-align system capability requirements with best practices to the extent possible and obtain the necessary ATPs from the CMO. The agency expects that a new solicitation will be posted within 12 months and encourages interested K-12 SIS vendors participate in market research activities and respond to the upcoming request for information (RFI) in preparation for the release of the subsequent RFP.

b. does not authorize any resellers for their products. is the sole source for licensing of the Aspen SIS product.

c. After obtaining CMO authorization, DoDEA intends to release a new RFP (within the next 12 months) for a potential successor to the Aspen SIS. Based on earlier market research efforts, DoDEA has identified the following vendors as interested sources for the follow-on requirement, and recommends those vendors participate in upcoming market research activities and RFI:

Facts:

a. The current Aspen contract will expire on 29 September 2018. Because of DoDEA’s heavy customization of the Aspen SIS, the integration of several third-party systems, availability of PD training days, existing project dependencies, and the projected timeline to implement a new SIS, the only source that can meet DoDEA’s requirement within time constraints is .

b. DoDEA recommends that vendors interested in responding to the organization’s future requirement for a potential successor to the Aspen SIS should prepare to participate in upcoming market research efforts and RFI. DoDEA anticipates releasing the subsequent RFP after business processes and SIS feature requirements have been realigned and published in the future Performance Work Statement

(PWS).

c. DoDEA SIS and IT Enterprise Data Management staff are currently undertaking business processes mapping for the covered DBS to satisfy DoDI 5000.75 requirements in order to obtain authority-to-proceed (ATP) from the CMO for the acquisition of a new SIS. Once authorization has been obtained, DoDEA intends to solicit proposals to competitively award a follow-on contract for a future SIS solution/licenses, and suggests interested vendors participate in DoDEA’s upcoming market research activities and RFI along with responding to the subsequent RFP.

Date: 2018.07.25 11:57:30 -04'00'

SIGNATURES

11. Technical Certification: I certify that the supporting data under my cognizance that are included in this justification and approval are accurate and complete to the best of my knowledge and belief.

25-JUL-2018

Signature: Date: 2018.07.25 08:48:08 -05'00' _ Date:

Typed Name/Title: Division: IT

12. Requirements Certification: I certify that the supporting data under my cognizance that are included in this justification and approval are accurate and complete to the best of my knowledge and belief.

Signature: Date:

Typed Name/Title: Division: IT

13. Legal Review: (If over $150K) Based on the foregoing justification, I hereby determine this sole source justification is legally sufficient.

Signature: Date:

Typed Name/Title: /Legal Counsel Division: General Counsel

14. Contracting Officer Certification: I certify that the facts and representations included in this Justification and Approval are accurate and complete to the best of my knowledge and belief. I further certify that the anticipated cost of this procurement will be fair and reasonable based upon price analysis.

Signature: _ Date:

Typed Name/Title: /Contracting Officer Division: Procurement

15. Approval: Based on the foregoing justification, I hereby approve the procurement on an other than full and open competition basis, subject to the availability of funds, and provided that the services and/or supplies described above have otherwise been authorized for acquisition.

Typed Name/Title: /DoDEA Competition Advocate

Date:

IP.A.12