ID08200044 -Fair Opportunity Exception 7.30 Final Signed.pdf

JUSTIFICATION FOR AN EXCEPTION TO FAIR OPPORTUNITY

PROJECT ID08200044

1) Identification of Agency :

Agency:

General Services Administration (GSA) Region 08, Federal Acquisition Service (FAS) Acting in support of: United States Space Force (USSF) Space and Missile Systems Center (SMC)

2) Nature and/or Description of Action Being Approved:

GSA FAS requests approval to award a contract for Defensive Cyber Operations for Space (DCO-S) Agile Release Teams. The USSF/SMC current contract for DCO-S Agile Release Teams is under an automatic stay in response to an U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) protest, effective July 22, 2020. Due to time constraints that could not be overcome, GSA is unable to responsibly award a competitive action at this time. A contract needs to be awarded in order to prevent further delay in the performance of vital services for national security. A temporary new contract to the currently performing contractor is the only way to ensure essential services are provided timely.

The contract will be a task order award to OASIS IDIQ to contractor Karthik Consulting, a Small Disadvantaged Business (SDB) using the exemption to fair opportunity. It will be a time and materials (T&M) contract.

3) A Description of Supplies/Services Required to Meet Agency’s Need:

The United States Space Force (USSF) is leading efforts in defensive cyber operations to facilitate rapid identification / reporting / response of anomalous cyber activity within the space enterprise and integrated threat-based intelligence at all operational levels. The effort continues to scale across USSF wings and Mission Defense Teams (MDTs), equipped with an enterprise level Defensive Cyber Operations for Space (DCO-S) suite of tools. In addition to executing the DCO-S mission, MDT operators provide the feedback necessary to continuously evolve a suite of tools to counter sophisticated, determined, and persistent adversarial threats against the USSF space enterprise in, through, and from the cyberspace domain. The DCO-S Program Office (SMC/ECXCO) is designated as the responsible office to provide enterprise level DCO capability to the Space Enterprise.

The Agile Release Teams (ART) contract provides capabilities to execute effective and responsive integrated research, development, production, and lifecycle acquisition activities in support of DCO-S. Required activities in the Performance Work Statement

DocuSign Envelope ID: 2CCAA31C-1A47-4832-9D65-23D640077C39

(PWS) provide the engineering foundation upon which all program development and prototyping activities depend.

The period of performance for the contract will consist of a four month period of performance commencing July 31, 2020, should the government need the full 100 days that the GAO receives to issue a decision. This performance term is the minimal amount of time needed in order to minimize any mission impact and allow for the responsible completion of a competitive contract action.

The total estimated price of $914,231.88.

4) Identification of the Exception to Fair Opportunity:

This fair opportunity exception is using the authority at FAR 16.505(b)(2)(i)(A), specifically, the agency need for the supplies or services is so urgent that providing a fair opportunity would result in unacceptable delays.

The government awarded four contracts through the Space Enterprise Consortium (SpEC) Other Transactional Authority (FA8814-18-9-0002) on 30 June 2020 for a total of $9.44M to accomplish software development and prototyping efforts that deliver cyber defense capability. The four contracts address lines of effort aligned to the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Cybersecurity Framework: Detect, Protect, Identify, and Respond. The four contracts develop the foundational capability included in the DCO-S Suite.

The DCO-S Program Office currently has operationally fielded DCO-S suite prototypes at three geographically separate locations, executing the cyber defense mission for seven space systems. As prototypes, the systems require additional support, not normally needed by operationally accepted Air Force systems. The ART contract provides the core software development and engineering support vital to the stability of the DCO-S Suite. A protracted delay in contract support to the fielded DCO-S Suites will result in the fielded systems operating at extremely high risk. The high risk is driven by the ever changing landscape of cyber threats. Any system driven outage or critical security vulnerability may result in extended loss of cyber defense capabilities for the seven space mission systems.

Additionally, the DCO-S program office employs a Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) DevSecOps model which is critically reliant upon the ART contractor’s skillsets, which are not inherent to the government. Without the expertise provided by the ART contractor, SMC/ECXCO will be unable to provide the government furnished development environment required by each of the four recently awarded contracts. The critical skills gap will cause instability in the currently fielded software baseline, and will inhibit new development by the four contracts. This will result in degraded cyber defense capabilities for the space enterprise, which could result in significant harm to the Government by not having these key cyber defense capabilities in place on time.

The urgency in timeline to award the ART work is a result of dependencies created by the four SpEC contract awards. The government must provide a suitable development environment to each of the contractors by the terms of the contracts. Each contractor then must be onboarded into that development environment by 15 August 2020 in order to provide contract deliverables. Also, the SpEC contracts must complete their first cyber defense software deliverable within 90 days of the authority to proceed date, 16 July 2020. Any delay on one of the contracts would create Government dependencies which would cost the Government significantly more to complete these contracts or create a breach in the terms of the contract resulting in more delay and cost to the Government.

Without immediate award of a temporary contract, utilizing the fair opportunity exception, the government risks completion of the following contracts:

-$944,000 on 16 August 2020. The first milestone deliverable for each of the SpEC contractors requires onboarding into the government furnished development environment;

-$1,416,000 on 16 October 2020. The second milestone deliverable for each SpEC contractor is contingent on successful delivery of capability developed within the government furnished development environment.

It is in the Government’s best interest that the services encompassed in the protested award be carried out due to both the cost and delay that it would present but also the risk it would pose to national defense.

5) A Determination by the Contracting Officer that the anticipated cost to the Government will be Fair and Reasonable:

A competitive best value award determination has recently been made for the Agile Teams requirement with competitive pricing and past performance. Karthik’s price was determined fair and reasonable in the competitive best value award that is under protest.

Best value was determined in accordance with the solicitation, per the RFQ, “Award will be made upon the basis of best value, utilizing trade-offs of non-price factors and price" and that "the technical factors when combined are significantly more import than price."

Karthik Consulting LLC, the currently performing contractor, was determined to be the best value to the Government. Karthik Consulting LLC will honor their recently competed rates for the work described in this contract. Based on the above facts, the order is determined to be at a fair and reasonable price and is the best value to the Government.

6) Any other facts supporting the justification:

None.

7) A Statement of the Actions, if Any, the Agency May Take to Remove or Overcome Any Barriers that led to the Fair Opportunity Exception before any subsequent acquisition of the supplies or services is made:

For this effort, limited market research has been conducted. Market research has been conducted for the awarded contract that is currently under protest. Market research has shown that these services for Agile Teams are a commercial service. Seven vendors replied to a Request for Information with five which indicated they were capable of performing the required services. This was confirmed with a competitive award being made on July 9, 2020.

There are no barriers to competition as this action was released May 13, 2020 via the GSA OASIS contract providing fair opportunity to all IDIQ holders. This fair opportunity exception is only necessary due to the stay of performance in response to a timely GAO protest.

8) Contracting Officer Certification that the Justification is Accurate and Complete to the Best of the Contracting Officer’s Knowledge and Belief:

I certify that this justification is accurate and complete to the best of my knowledge and belief, and I determine on the basis of the findings above that a sole source approach is in accordance with the requirements and is in the best interest of the Government.

David Shamburger Date Contracting Officer

GSA/FAS/R8

9) Certification by the technical requirements personnel that supporting data and rationale which form a basis for the justification have been certified as complete and accurate I certify that this justification is accurate and complete to the best of my knowledge and belief.

Major Benjamin A. Garoutte Date DCO-S Core Program Manager

SMC/ECXCO

10) Final Approval

I determine that circumstances under FAR 16.505(b)(2)(i)(A) apply to this justification.

Sarah Hoffman Date Competition Advocate

GSA/FAS/R8

31 July 2020

GAROUTTE.BENJAMIN.ADAM.129

1061075

Digitally signed by

GAROUTTE.BENJAMIN.ADAM.1291061075

Date: 2020.07.31 12:56:21 -06'00'

DAVID SHAMBURGER Digitally signed by DAVID SHAMBURGER Date: 2020.07.31 13:17:19 -06'00'