HRWorx Sole Source Justification Final Redact_Redacted.pdf

Limited Sources Justification

Agency, Contracting Activity and Document The National Science Foundation (NSF) proposes a Limited Sources Justification for an NSF confidential financial disclosures system provided by HRWorx, LLC (a Veteran Owned Small Business doing business as Intelliworx). The NSF Division of Acquisition and Cooperative Support (NSF/DACS) will accomplish this acquisition.

Action Being Approved NSF has a continuing need for an electronic filing system for confidential financial disclosure reports required to be filed by certain employees with the NSF Office of General Counsel (OGC) pursuant to regulations issued by the U.S. Office of Government Ethics (OGE). OGE requires certain executive branch employees to file confidential financial disclosure reports (OGE Form 450). See 5 C F R Parts 2634 & 2638. NSF employees who are required to file an OGE Form 450 (per 5 C F R § 2634.904) must submit a new entrant report within 30 days of assuming the duties of their position, unless OGC grants an extension. Thereafter, employees are required to file an OGE Form 450 on an annual basis. NSF employees currently use an in-house system to file these reports; this system is scheduled to sunset in 2025. OGE regulations provide that NSF’s Designated Agency Ethics Official (DAEO) is responsible for determining whether the OGE Form 450 confidential financial disclosure reports will be collected in an electronic or a paper format (see 5 C.F.R. 2638.205). In addition, OMB Memorandum M-19-21, Transition of Electronic Records, directs all Federal agencies to ensure that all Federal records are created, retained, and managed in electronic formats, with appropriate metadata.

NSF’s DAEO has determined that electronic filing of the OGE Form 450 will continue to effectively and efficiently manage NSF’s ethics program and address the intent of OMB Memorandum M-19-21.

This procurement is to acquire an electronic confidential financial disclosure report filing system to facilitate the filing and review of approximately 700 OGE Form 450 forms. The majority of Federal agencies, including NSF, have already discontinued the use of paper OGE Form 450s and implemented an electronic filing system. An electronic financial disclosure system is also considered a best practice of confidential financial disclosure review in the government ethics practice community.

Under this contract, NSF seeks to obtain an electronic confidential financial disclosure report system for confidential submission, review, certification, and maintenance of OGE Form 450s filed by NSF employees. This system will: (1) permit NSF employees to access their OGE Form 450s from any location with Internet access; (2) continue to maintain the accuracy of information employees disclose on the reports; (3) continue to maintain the quality of legal review of the reports; and (4) continue to enable a more efficient experience for both filers and reviewers. The contract will provide for cataloging of forms, searchable access and storage, as well as notification options for filers and reviewers. This procurement is for a cloud-based, commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) electronic confidential financial disclosure report system, to allow NSF employees and ethics officials to electronically file and review the annual and new entrant OGE Form 450.

The system is expected to meet all of the agency’s confidential financial disclosure report program requirements.

3. Description of Services

The NSF Ethics Office requires a COTS-based electronic confidential disclosure report system that does the following:

Support PIV/CAC single sign on logins;

Be FedRAMP authorized;

Be Section 508 compliant;

Provide the most current version of the OGE Form 450;

Permit access from any location with Internet access;

Provide encryption of the data consistent with Federal encryption requirements;

Provide instructions to filers for what and how to report items in each section;

Save each version of the form;

Have functionality that permits the automatic deletion of reports beyond the required retention period that the DAEO has the ability to adjust as necessary to avoid deletion of reports where appropriate;

Provide report functions that can be tailored by, among other things, date, filer, reviewer, or due date – at no additional cost;

Automatically populate annual reports with data from previous electronic forms;

Collect reportable information from filers through an interview wizard;

Allow reviewers to provide comments on the reports;

Allow documents to be uploaded and attached to the submission;

Allow reviewers to separate certified reports that have no reportable information;

Permit reviewers to change and update the list of filers and filings as necessary;

Permit access to certain reports to only certain reviewers as needed;

Retain all records for the required timeframes, including those records from filers who leave a covered position;

Purge records once they are no longer required to be maintained;

Support up to 700 concurrent users; and

Integrate training/helpful hints into filing process to aid in the completion and review of submissions.

The NSF intends to solicit and place a contractor for a one-year base period and four one-year option periods, for a total of five years. The estimated value of this acquisition is between $150,000.00 and $180,000.00.

4. Statutory Authority

The statutory authority for this action is 41 U.S.C. 152(3) as implemented by FAR 8.405-6(a)(1)(i)(B) - only one source is capable of providing the supplies or services required at the level of quality required because the supplies or services are unique or highly specialized.

5. Rationale or Contractor’s Unique Qualifications

NSF’s intended SOLE-SOURCE contractor, HRWorx, LLC (a Veteran Owned Small Business doing business as Intelliworx), is the sole owner and exclusive licenser of the only commercially available, off-the-shelf electronic filing solution for OGE Form 450s that NSF has identified as meeting all of NSF’s special needs as listed above.

HRWorx, LLC (a Veteran Owned Small Business doing business as Intelliworx) developed, owns, and maintains FDonline, the proprietary software that is used to automate the ethics financial disclosure reporting process for multiple federal agencies. FDonline is the only commercially available automated financial disclosure product that meets NSF’s financial disclosure requirements for OGE Form 450s.

As detailed below, NSF conducted research to identify all available electronic filing systems for OGE Form 450s that could meet the agency’s requirements. The only commercially available, off-the-shelf electronic filing system that NSF has identified as meeting the agency’s needs is FDonline. No other comparable COTS products exist on the market that are tailored specifically to managing e-filing of OGE Form 450s for federal agencies. Therefore, no other vendor can meet NSF’s requirement for a commercially available software that is available now, that will avoid the additional time and expense that would be required for a software developer to create a new solution for NSF.

6. Best Value Determination

The resulting contract will achieve the best value for the Government consistent with the requirements of FAR 8.404. The rates proposed will be considered against historical and market pricing and discounts will be requested from the schedule rates. Substantive additional value will not be achieved by issuing this requirement as a competitive action rather than limited source.

7. Market Research

NSF researched possible e-filing systems that could meet the agency’s requirements.

Only one commercially available, off-the-shelf solution was identified: FDonline.

HRworx, LLC (a Veteran Owned Small Business doing business as Intelliworx) developed, owns, and maintains FDonline, the proprietary software that is used to automate the ethics financial disclosure reporting process for multiple federal agencies. FDonline is the only commercially available automated financial disclosure product that meets NSF’s financial disclosure requirements.

The NSF conducted searches online for available commercial items that could appropriately fulfill the requirement, including public vendor material and information on other government agency sourcing. GSA Schedule contracts are an important acquisition sourcing mechanism that substantially reduces overhead for agency acquisitions, and is preferred for sourcing many commercial items.

According to the information available in public sources, the only applicable source available through the GSA Schedule contract that is able to provide a product that meets the NSF’s requirement is the HRworx product, FDonline.

Market research conducted of potential vendors revealed that only FDonline meets NSF’s confidential financial disclosure processing requirements. FDonline is the best software for the agency’s electronic financial disclosure system. At least two dozen other federal agencies are successfully using FDonline. Market research showed that other vendors do not provide necessary services for our financial disclosure requirements. Internet searches were conducted for commercially available, off-the-shelf solutions but only FDonline was identified as a possible solution that could meet the agency’s requirements.

8. Other Facts Supporting the Justification

The vendor is the only known source of a COTS-based e-filing system for OGE Form 450s that would meet NSF’s needs. More than 30 other federal agencies use FDOnline and several other agency documents support a similar set of conclusions regarding the available sourcing for NSF’s requirement.

9. Removing Barriers to Competition

NSF will continue to survey the market and evaluate whether competing products become available. In the event additional avenues for acquiring similar products arise, NSF will evaluate conducting competitive acquisitions for this requirement at each option period and when considering re-competition or novel contract vehicles.