HT0038-25-S-C002 - Notice of Availability - Customer Care_ 04NOV25.docx

Commercial Solution Opening Customer Care Prototyping

HT0038-25-S-C002

gabriela.y.hurte.civ@health.mil November 4, 2025

Defense Healthcare Management Systems – Contracting Division 1700 N. Moore, Floor 12 Arlington, VA 22209

1. Agency Name Defense Health Agency (DHA)

2. Issuing Acquisition Office Defense Health Agency, Defense Healthcare Management Systems - Contracting Division (DHMS-CD) in support of the Program Executive Office (PEO) – Defense Healthcare Management Systems (DHMS)

3. Funding Opportunity Title Customer Care Prototyping 2025-2026

4. Reserved

5. Announcement Type Notice of Availability (NoA), Commercial Solutions Opening (CSO) IAW 10 U.S.C. § 4022. PEO DHMS is interested in awarding other transaction agreements under the authority of 10 U.S.C. § 4022 to carry out prototype projects that are, among other things, directly relevant to enhancing the mission effectiveness of personnel of the Department of Defense, in particular for Customer Care activities outlined in this NoA. A prototype project includes, but is not limited to, a project that addresses:

(A) a proof of concept, model, or process, including a business process;

(B) reverse engineering to address obsolescence;

(C) a pilot or novel application of commercial technologies for defense purposes;

(D) agile development activity;

(E) the creation, design, development, or demonstration of operational utility; or

(F) any combination of subparagraphs (A) through (E).M An Agreement awarded under the authority of 10 U.S.C. § 4022 and is not subject to the Competition in Contracting Act, the Federal Acquisition Regulation, or the Defense Federal Acquisition Regulation Supplement. Any successful prototype project (or portion thereof) awarded under this CSO may be selected for a follow-on production agreement or contract pursuant to 10 U.S.C. § 4022(f).

The Government reserves the right to revise this NOA to include other types of CSOs, such as DFARS 212.7004 in the future. Applicable instructions to the relevant authority will be added, if required.

6. Funding Opportunity Number

HT0038-25-S-C002

7. Response Dates Solutions will be requested during individual seasons, and each season will establish deadlines for responses. The Government may accept submissions to any AOI listed in this CSO other than in accordance with published deadlines, and the CSO satisfies the use of a competitive procedure to the maximum extent practicable under 10 U.S.C. 4022.; provided, however, that the Government is under no obligation to review such submissions.

8. Overview This NoA supports the development and procurement of solutions in support of the Military Health System (MHS). The MHS provides support for the warfighter through the operation of a large-scale, integrated healthcare system. Increasingly, the provision of care is supported by technology solutions, in alignment with general trends in healthcare delivery. The Program Executive Office – Defense Healthcare Management Systems (PEO DHMS) is responsible for delivering many of these solutions for the Defense Health Agency and other Federal partners. As part of its ongoing digital transformation, PEO DHMS is implementing a product/platform operating model. To date, it has established and operationalized a core of Business and Technical Service Platforms to support its three major product lines, as shown in Table 1.

Table 1:

The purpose of this NoA is to support the Customer Care Foundational Platform shown in Table 1. This platform will provide both technical and functional product support for DHMS customers and its customers’ customers, as applicable, and throughout the product lifecycle from design until decommission. This platform has not yet been designed or established. The Government will take a “design/build” approach utilizing prototypes and experiments to rapidly and incrementally establish the platform’s capabilities from the bottom up. Multiple awards are anticipated. This NoA is considered related to the previous efforts conducted under the CSO called “Customer X”. While not a direct follow-on, it represents the next evolutionary step of the PEO’s nascent customer care model.

9. General Scope The fundamental purpose of this CSO is to enable the Government’s product teams, customers, and/or end users to rapidly react to stimuli in the most flexible possible way, and to continually attempt to evolve customer-facing product support capabilities in novel, unpredictable, and unknown ways.

10. Fundamental Prototype Questions Problem: In many areas, DHMS product teams can deliver technology capabilities at a velocity that exceeds its customers’ adoption of those products, despite spending a significant percentage of its budget on “change management” and “user adoption”. In fact, work breakdown structure line items aligned to these areas are the portfolio’s single largest expense. Further, expressed satisfaction with the portfolio’s products significantly lags what technical and operational metrics indicate – at least based on the limited metrics currently available.

Hypothesis: Resourcing is not driving the issues specified above. DHMS can, and should, spend less on these activities while moving more quickly. The high-touch, high-saturation, omnichannel change management practices that have become best practice for large DoD software systems are 1) incompatible with the newer product-platform model and Agile principles, 2) are not efficacious commensurate with expense even on the large platforms, and 3) the logistical and administrative burdens associated with them delay the process of “go to market” with new capabilities.

Questions:

Are we targeting the wrong industry partners and/or the wrong mix of industry partners to support these efforts?

Is our customer definition wrong, is our customer-centricity focused incorrectly?

Why do Government civilians need to be so extensively involved that they become a bottleneck?

What tools can we bring to bear to improve instrumentation of “go lives” instead of merely counting tickets?

Can we reduce the overall dependence on legacy Information Technology Service Management (ITSM) mentalities around things like tickets and become more proactive in our support management?

What digital technologies can reduce the need for “boots on the ground”?

What are the largest “bang for the buck” opportunities to reduce expenses?

Can we maximize the use of first-pass self-service support paradigms?

Can we adopt payment models to pay for “insights” and “successes” rather than labor and activities?

Additional questions may be added from time to time via modification to the CSO.

11. Areas of Interest Proactive, multi-discipline service management in lieu of “traditional” ITSM.

Using design principles to embed the customer experience into every phase of a product lifecycle.

Utilizing insight-driven approaches to improve products and their support.

Emerging neural technologies (e.g., machine learning, GenAI, agents, automation) Customer Care “Operating Systems” Adopting/adapting RevOps in a non-revenue organization Go-to-market approaches with comprehensive, full-lifecycle planning Precision Individualization for Customer Empathy Bespoke Customer Segmentation Maximizing User Self-Service Additional Areas of Interest may be added from time to time via modification to the CSO.

12. Areas of Risk or Challenge Disconnected environments Physical environments that are difficult, if not impossible, to enter Reduced financial resources Incredibly broad and diverse stakeholder groups Persistent low customer sentiment Highly dynamic and high stakes mission environment Extreme risk and change aversion throughout the organization

13. Goals Reduce delays to product go lives caused by “onboarding” processes and bureaucracy Significantly reduce dependency on human touch Significantly reduce expenses Turn around low customer sentiment Allow customer care insights to inform product design decisions Additional Goals may be added from time to time via modification to the CSO.

14. General Process Note: This is not a request for information.

Current levels of Customer Care capabilities frequently serve as a rate limiter for the implementation of our solutions for customer use. Accordingly, the Government’s objective is to conduct its selection processes in a rapid manner consistent with commercial best practices. Timelines for responses will be specified in individual seasons, but they are expected to be significantly shorter than normal. The polish, complexity, and detail in both Government issuances and industry responses are expected to be commensurate with the time allotted. A proposed solution’s merit, as described in the Season Notice, will be the sole consideration in making award decisions.

Prospective industry partners may participate by:

(1) Under the authority of 10 U.S.C. § 4022 to carry out prototype projects the Government will issue Season Notices. These will specify the rules for the submission, how the submissions will be evaluated, and what constitutes merit for award decisions, as well as a specific AOI(s) (see Section 11) for which the Government requires a solution. In these cases, the Season Notice is issued under the authority of 10 U.S.C. § 4022 and is not subject to the Competition in Contracting Act, the Federal Acquisition Regulation, or the Defense Federal Acquisition Regulation Supplement. Any successful prototype project (or portion thereof) awarded under this CSO may be selected for a follow-on production agreement or contract pursuant to 10 U.S.C. § 4022(f). Further, this CSO is a competitive solicitation that satisfies the requirement in 10 U.S.C. § 4022(b)(2) that the Government, to the maximum extent practicable, use competitive procedures when entering into agreements to carry out the prototype projects. Unless otherwise set forth in any Season Notices, there are no restrictions on who may submit a response to this CSO. As noticed above each Season Notice will identify the expected review process, which will vary depending on the complexity of the area and the anticipated number of responses.

A prototype project includes, but is not limited to, a project that addresses:

(A) a proof of concept, model, or process, including a business process;

(B) reverse engineering to address obsolescence;

(C) a pilot or novel application of commercial technologies for defense purposes;

(D) agile development activity;

(E) the creation, design, development, or demonstration of operational utility; or

(F) any combination of subparagraphs (A) through (E).

Unless the Season Notice states otherwise, submissions that fail to adequately address the following are unlikely to be considered to have sufficient merit to proceed to award:

1. Advancement. The Government desires more than the status quo. Therefore, solutions that do not in some way attempt to improve over the Government’s status quo will be ineligible for award.

2. Learning. Solutions must include mechanisms to address at least one hypothesis and/or fundamental prototype question in an objective data-driven and measurable way. For a solution to be eligible for award it must itself include a hypothesis to be proven/disproven and outline at least one question to be answered during the proposed execution.

3. Adjusting. Efforts to perform large-scale transformations have proven to bear little fruit. Solutions must include mechanisms to adjust to unfavorable circumstances in real time, regardless of who is at fault. To be eligible for award, the solution must delineate the prospective partner’s means of making adjustments, must reserve the discretion to implement adjustments to the contractor, and must not be dependent on additional Government funding. Prospective partners must demonstrate an understanding that continuous adjustment is a necessary and ordinary part of any performance.

4. Solutions. To be eligible for award, proposed solutions must delineate specific, measurable outcomes to define progress, and end points, and must match these outcomes to its cashflow requests. Award will not be made for proposed solutions that are merely levels of effort or labor hours. Awards under this CSO will utilize flexible pricing arrangements appropriate for the proposed solution.

To maximize the success of a given project, the Government expects to facilitate suggested team networking. In support of these efforts, prospective partners are notified that certain non trade-secret information about submissions may be provided to other prospective partners to facilitate a team solution with maximum merit. These teams may take the form of prime/subcontractor relationships with one award, or multiple awards with written and binding teaming arrangements.

Season To avoid administrative burden the Government will establish Seasons to group the submission, assessment, and award process for specific challenges into a unified process and timeline. These will be issued individually using Season Notices attached to this SAM.gov posting. Season Notices will specify the length of the season and include estimates for how long the Season is expected to last. Each Season will be conducted in four phases, Prospecting, Assessing, Kickstarting, and Episode(s). Prospective partners may be eliminated in any phase. It is expected that most submissions will be eliminated in the prospecting phase with only the most promising submissions proceeding forward. One, multiple, or no awards for Episode performance may be made in any given season. If no awards have merit, the Season may be re-run.

Illustration 1:

Season Notices will provide the relevant background and details about the AOI(s), as well as the process and rules of engagement. Season Notices may at the Government’s discretion also specify the Government’s estimated order of magnitude for funding availability, as well as the Government’s estimation about the acceptable degree of experimentation/disruption.

Table 2:

Experimentation/Disruption Tolerance (notional/context)

Assessment methods will be specified in Season Notices initially and will be updated and refined as the process progresses through each phase, for any prospective partners that are not eliminated.

If a prospect is selected to proceed to the next phase, the Government will notify the submitter, provide further instructions for the next phase, and provide a summary assessment of the Government’s current view of the proposal’s compliance with the four global criteria. The Government may choose to “hold” the decision as to whether to proceed to the next phase for prototype other transaction agreements for up to 180 days. For prototype other transaction agreements, the Government may make an award at any phase described below.

a. Prospecting The purpose of this phase is twofold. First, to determine whether the prospect and the Government are a good fit. Is the prospect the right organization and the right team? Is the Government the right client? Strong cultural and purpose alignment is critical to success. Second, the Government will assess whether the prospect has enough promise to make continuing to the next phase beneficial to both parties. This phase is expected to occur very quickly and will be the least formal and structured. The goal of this phase is to get the most real insight regarding fit and promise with the minimal investment of time for both parties.

b. Assessing In this phase, selected promising prospects will be invited to participate and provided instructions for their submittal. Prospects are expected to propose the first iteration of a tangible solution, along with early ideation, and to request any necessary information from the Government. Real-time bilateral conversations are expected, with assessment and revision/design/development of the submission occurring concurrently in an iterative process. In this phase, prospects will be expected to demonstrate early ideas to comply with the Advancement, Learning, Adjusting and Solutions as well as the Season Notice and will receive feedback on these from the Government.

A goal of this phase is to assess whether the early solution is worthwhile to proceed to the next phase where a project and supporting award will be designed.

The secondary goal of this phase is to allow the Government to identify and discuss critical Government-specific or circumstance-specific risk, such as entering conflict areas, obtaining IT privileges, or other long-lead necessities that may not be apparent to more inexperienced teams. The Government refers to this as “de-risking”.

c. Kickstarting In this phase, the Government will begin to invest significant time and resources into planning and designing the execution of the selected solutions. De-risking continues. Specifics are discussed. Metrics, outcomes, pricing, and contract structure are put together. Negotiations will occur. This process is expected to be iterative and cyclical with high contact from both sides, and frequent bilateral feedback.

d. Episodes Prospects who make it through the previous three phases will be awarded an agreement and become Customer Care partners. Initial episode awards may be seed awards to do more heavy lift design if the solution isn’t fully complete when moving beyond the Kickstarting phase. An example would be if Kickstarting focused on designing in depth the first 90 days, which could form the basis for a seed award, during which further awards would be planned out. These awards could advance the project, expand the project, or both. Further, if performance metrics and outcomes are not being achieved, the Government may decline to make further awards and discontinue the project.

15. Overarching Terms and Conditions Most terms will be specified in award vehicles. Nevertheless, prospective partners are notified that:

· Partners under this CSO will be required to cooperate as part of the larger DHMS team, including with a diverse array of other contractors. This may require the execution of associate and teaming agreements.

· Prospective partners should mark business plans and technical information that are to be protected from FOIA disclosure for five years, with a legend identifying the documents as being submitted on a confidential basis.

· Partners under this CSO will be required to submit the appropriate cost data reporting and performance monitoring data as delineated in any award document. This will likely require disclosure of sensitive data to other support contractors. These support contractors have strict non-disclosure and non-compete clauses with the Government and are required to execute the same with CSO awardees at their request.

· Partners under this CSO are likely to require privileged IT and security clearance access.

· Partners under this CSO are likely to be subject to “no foreign nationals” restrictions in certain roles.

· Some awards under this CSO will require supporting operational medicine in conflict areas and areas that require theater entry clearance and status of forces clearance.

· Personally Identifiable Information and Protected Health Information are likely to be encountered, and the appropriate HIPAA compliance, training, and Business Associate Agreements will be required as applicable.

· The Government will not pay for costs associated with the preparation of any materials used to determine whether the company has merit or is awardable for purposes of a prototype other transaction agreement.

Prospecting

Fit

Promise

Assessing

Feasibility

De-Risking

Kickstarting

Bilateral Design

Value

Episode(s)

Award

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