ID40160174_J A_signed_7.1.16_redacted.pdf

Open Market Justification for Other Than Full and Open Competition

General Services Administration National IT Commodities Division

1. Requiring and Contracting Activity

a. Requiring Activity: US Central Command (USCENTCOM) Unified Combatant Command (COCOM) MacDill AFB Tampa, FL

b. Contracting Activity General Services Administration Federal Acquisition Service NITCP Division 401 West Peachtree St., NW, Suite 820 Atlanta, GA 30308

c. Contracting Officer: Mary E Clark

d. Task ID: ID40160174

e. Estimated Value:

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

The General Services Administration (GSA), Federal Acquisition Services (FAS), National IT Commodities Program (NITCP) has received a requirement from the US Central Command (USCENTCOM), Unified Combatant Command (COCOM) at MacDill AFB, Tampa, FL for brand-name products for continued data mining software licenses, support, and configuration. This acquisition will be conducted under FAR 13.5 procedures in accordance with 41 U.S.C. 1901. In accordance with FAR 6.302-1, only one responsible source and no other supplies or services will satisfy agency requirements. This sole source requirement will be purchased from the following company:

3. Description of Supplies:

IT Consulting (ITC) Product Services – This is a data mining tool with software licenses for disseminating internet data.

4. Authority:

Pursuant to FAR 6.302-1(a)(2), this contract will be awarded without providing for full and open competition because the supplies or services required by the agency are available from only one responsible source, or, for DoD, NASA, and the Coast Guard, from only one or a limited number of responsible sources, and no other type of supplies or services will satisfy agency requirements, full and open competition need not be provided for.

5. Justification Rationale:

The proposed action provides Department of Defense’s USCENTCOM, Services, and Agencies with access to specialized vendor software that was developed and modified by IT Consulting to meet the U.S. Government’s need to have a program that can rapidly acquire and ingest publically available information (PAI) to combat terrorist recruitment and propaganda Outside the Continental United States (OCONUS) as well as support to humanitarian assistance/disaster relief (HA/DR) events. ITC supported USCENTCOM since 2013 when USCENTCOM sponsored a Joint Capability Technology Demonstration (JCTD) called Information Volume & Velocity (IV2). The IV2 JCTD was a 30 month congressionally approved, government-owned project, to develop and operationally demonstrate a solution to assist Combatant Commander’s (COCOM) situational awareness of communications occurring within an area of responsibility with respect to the following missions: Public Affairs, Psychological Operations, and Civil Affairs. The support vendor (ITC) was involved in the development of IV2 since the beginning of the effort (2013), supporting decomposition of technical and operational requirements, execution of two Technical Demonstrations and three Operational Demonstrations, the deployment of IV2 capability to three COCOMs and one Army support element. The development of IV2, which is GOTS, coupled with the ITC mining solution, (COTS), is the end-to-end system being deployed to the DoD community. Decoupling the GOTS solution with the ITC mining technologies, would require an entirely new developmental baseline that would require a complete restart of the R&D solution that IV2 is supporting.Threats to U.S. interests are abundant on the internet. With the rise of social media as a central location for people to seek and disseminate information, social media plays an important and ever increasing role in terrorist planning as well as recovering from HA/DR events. ITC specialized software provides USCENTCOM, Services, and Agencies with the tools to understand what is being said and how information is being propagated through cyberspace. USCENTCOM’s require continuous discovery, collection, filtering, and parsing of Internet data to enable continuous full site crawls and keyword searches of relevant sites. Skilled parsing and structuring allows for an enhanced understanding of conversations and events occurring within the PAI trade space. IT Consulting’s proxy network utilization manages the attribution of crawlers and disperses crawlers across a global network so they appear to site administrators like local web traffic. Local traffic languages provided by ITC include, but are not limited to: Arabic, Urdu, Farsi, Russian, Uzbek, Dari, Pashto, French, Bengali, Indonesian, Malaysian, and Hindi.

IT Consulting has provided direct support for the past three years and has led the research, development and sustainment of technology services to the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) and USCENTCOM. Software applications developed by ITC during the Information Volumn & Velocity (IV2) JCTD are owned by the US Government. ITC retains its unique proprietary capability to acquire data within the Open, Deep and Dark web. The current service in use by USCENTCOM, US European Command, and the US Army Civil Affairs and Psychological Operations Command provides a unique set of tools for anonymously gathering open-source content from the internet, providing specialized workflow systems for the collection of data in-language, in-context, and providing graphical outputs. The IT Consulting proxy network targets sites through a local internet protocol (IP) that is capable of mimicking human behavior to ensure site administrators do not identify them as automated crawlers through utilization that manages attribution, and disperses operations across a global networkNo other manufacturer can provide continued service due to proprietary issues relating to the collection as well as development and sustainment expertise in the management of the technologies. A minimum of two years would be required to replicate the current capability offered by IT Consulting. The current personnel that supports operations at two (2) COCOMs are trained on the IV2 tool that allows users to provide queries to the IT Consulting interface to the internet. If new software was replicated, the support staff would have to learn this new software which would also add to the delay. It is estimated a minimum of six months would be required to develop proficiency on new software if it could be replicated. Delays of this magnitude to ongoing operations and congressionally directed activities will directly impact warfighter missions and increase risk to critical established resources as proficiency is acquired. IT Consulting software tools are part of an integrated solution and are fully interoperable with multiple external systems operating in support of COCOM missions. Integration risk associated with the introduction of a replacement of existing operational solutions is high and will result in a minimum delay of two and a half years.

6. Other Facts Supporting the Justification

7. Efforts to Obtain Competition

Technologies on the market or in development do not meet the operational requirement.

There are other technologies in the tradespace, however, they do not provide an end-to-end solution that IV2 is addressing. Over the course of the two year development timeframe, and 6 months of operational support, the ITC team supported the development of a solution that meets DoD system regulations for deploying and employing an operational requirement of this kind. In addition, the solutions on the market are not government owned and do not have the capacity and state of the art interface to interoperate with the ITC data mining technologies. The IV2 interface software is government owned and we designed the system to interface with the ITC data mining infrastructure, to provide the rate and volume of information that is requested by the user.

In order for a vendor, other than the proposed sole source awardee, to be able to provide services support for the proprietary systems, the new vendor would have to be provided access to the manufacturer’s proprietary source code. This would require (1) the Govt.

having unlimited rights to the proprietary software and (2) the manufacturer granting/selling any vendors other than the proposed sole source awardee a license to access/use the manufacturer’s proprietary source code. However, USCENTCOM program managers continuously conduct market surveys to keep current on technology and to identify new technologies that can satisfy system requirements.If an alternative technology becomes available, it will be reviewed and tested for approval to use. .

8. Determination That the Anticipated Cost is Fair and Reasonable:

The Contracting Officer will determine that the anticipated cost to the Government will be fair and reasonable and in the Government's best interest in accordance with FAR Subpart 12 and FAR Subpart 13.106-3. The Contracting Officer will use price analysis and techniques to ensure a fair and reasonable price. The Contracting Officer will use various price analysis techniques and procedures to ensure a fair and reasonable price. This includes, but not limited to, comparison of the proposed prices with the independent Government cost estimate, comparison to the vendor’s published price list, and other than certified cost and pricing data such as history of sales to non-governmental and governmental entities, cost data, data on prices previously sold.

9. Market Research

USCENTCOM Science and Technology office’s mission are required to continually comb the Service Laboratories portfolitio and industry tradespace. USCENTCOM assess dozens of technologies in this tradespace periodically, and have not been able to find a comprehensive, end-to-end solution , whereby the government software can integrate and operationally support the users in the field.

USCETNCOM is currently in discussions with SOCOM to issue a broad area agency announcement (BAA) in the late FY18 realm, upon completion of a Defense wide assessment of like technologies. The responders of the BAA have to interface with the current government toolset (IV2) and will require a spin-up time of at least 6 months to understand the operational requirement, interface with the user community and conduct R&D to deploy a system for operational testing before we can support one end user. Additional market research was conducted in accordance with FAR Part 10 by researching GSA MAS Schedules, Government-wide Acquisition Contracts (GWACS), and Open Market as well as contacting IT Consulting. Market research revealed that there are no known sources besides IT Consulting that can provide the proprietary software. No other manufacturer can provide continued service due to proprietary issues relating to the collection as well as development and sustainment expertise in the management of the technologies. The requested IT Consulting software is available open market.

10. Listing of Sources

IT Consulting Partners, LLC 125 S King Street Jackson, WY 83001-8124

CAGE 69SX0

DUNS 967277661

11. Statement of Actions to Overcome Barriers to Competition

In an effort to remove or overcome barriers to competition in the future, the market will be scanned for new companies and products that could satisfy the Government’s requirements.

USCENTCOM program managers continuously conduct market surveys to keep current on technology and to identify new, open technologies that can satisfy future infrastructure requirements. USCENTCOM continuously revisits the sole source equipment currently being used and researches technology manufacturers and products that will be in the Government’s best interest as best value for future replacement equipment at the agency’s site and at sites the agency supports.

12. Requiring Activity Certification:

I certify that the supporting data under my cognizance which form the basis for this justification are accurate and complete to the best of my knowledge and belief.

13. Contracting Officer Certification and Approval:

The undersigned has determined that the anticipated cost to the Government for this acquisition will be fair and reasonable. Further, I certify that this justification is accurate and complete to the best of my knowledge and belief.

14. Approval: