SSJ Pure Software RIMS 13NOV2024 Redacted.pdf

PROCUREMENT SENSITIVE INFORMATION – FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY

Justification and Approval for Other than Full and Open Competition under FAR Part 13

In accordance with FAR 13.106-1(b), Contracting Officers may solicit from one source if the Contracting Officer determines that the circumstances of the contract action deem only one source reasonably available.

Per FAR 13.106-1(b)(2), this requirement is for supplies and services and exceeds the Simplified Acquisition Threshold (SAT) but is not greater than $7.5 million and the Contracting Officer reasonably expects, based on the nature of the supplies or services sought and on market research, that offers will only include commercial items.

1. Identification of the agency and the contracting activity:

Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences (USUHS), Acquisitions Directorate

(ACQ)

2. Nature and/or description of the action being approved:

Issuance of a sole source award. This will be a firm-fixed-price contract for a new award with a base year and four option years.

3. Description of the supplies or services required to meet the agency’s needs (including estimated value).

USUHS School of Medicine (SOM), Department of Surgery (SUR), has a requirement for a Research Management Information System (RIMS) with 1,160 licenses, 1,160 Profile Refinement Service (PRS) profiles, and conversion from the USUHS on-premise environment to the Pure Amazon Web Services cloud environment. This requirement is an expansion of a previous pilot study with 499 licenses and PRS profiles of the Pure RMIS platform.

The estimated contract price is

4. Demonstration that the proposed contractor’s unique certifications or the nature of the acquisition requires use of the authority cited:

USUHS invested significant time and effort aggregating research data during the 3-year Pure RIMS pilot. Moving to a different system will require costly conversion services, system administrator training and end user education efforts. The time and effort required to implement a new platform would also result in a lapse of service resulting in a severe impact to the USUHS research mission.

Conversion services from one RMIS to another would include data export, data mapping, installation, configuration, data translation, data import, and data testing. The estimated timeline for these conversion services is 68 weeks. The estimated timeline for new RMIS training is 12 weeks.

The negative mission impacts for over a year lapse in service include the following:

PROCUREMENT SENSITIVE INFORMATION – FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY

100% of the 499 established user profiles would be deleted or frozen across four major SOM departments. This represents of the proposed budgeted USU profiles (499/1166).

Four out of 19 departments (21%) in the SOM are currently using the Pure platform as a data research management and administrative tool for tracking, managing, reporting, and dissemination of all aspects of research scholarly activities to include funding, collaborations, scientific publications-presentations, teaching, awards, social media output and intellectual property. A lapse in service would severely jeopardize USUHS’ research mission.

USUHS public (https://scholar.usuhs.edu) and private domains would be abolished. This would represent a lost capability to promote and market expertise, knowledge, scholarly activities, and showcase the impact of the institution's achievements to the world as well as foster collaboration. Currently, Pure is the leading RIMS with more than 500 institutional clients worldwide.

USUHS/SOM has made extensive monetary and administrative investments (hidden costs across multiple departments, OCIO, IT, others) in a 3-year pilot study using Pure. Exclusive of the time and energy faculty (499 users) have dedicated to developing individualized user profiles, SOM estimates the hidden administrative cost totals more than 1 FTE/year over all three years (> $100,000/year) has been incurred when considering the frequency of meetings, training sessions, and the amount of IT/administrative-technical support and adjustments, which was required in launching and maintaining the Pure platform on premise.

Pure is only available directly through Elsevier Inc. as they own the proprietary rights for this RIMS platform and have not authorized third party distributors to license or sell the Pure RIMS platform. Given the sole source availability and severe mission impacts associated with RIMS replacement, the circumstances of the contract action deem only one source reasonably available

5. Procedures of FAR 13.5 were or will be used in accordance with 41 USC 1901 or the authority of 41 USC 1903 (including publicizing required justifications):

X Yes No

If the notice to the Governmentwide Point of Entry (GPE) will not be publicized, indicate which exception applies:

This requirement is under $25,000. No synopsis to the GPE is required. (FAR 5.101(a)(1))

The following exception under FAR 5.202 applies:

On October 28, 2024, ACQ posted a notice of intent to sole source to the GPE as required by FAR Subpart 5.2. ACQ received no responses.

6. Determination by the Contracting Officer that the anticipated cost/price to the

Government will be fair and reasonable.