Justification Exception to Fair Opportunity Redacted.pdf

UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION

Office of Finance and Operations

Contracts and Acquisitions Management

JUSTIFICATION FOR AN EXCEPTION TO FAIR OPPORTUNITY (JEFO)

AUTHORITY: FAR 16.505(b)(2)(i)(C) and 10 U.S.C 3406(c)(3)

The following Justification for Exception to Fair Opportunity is prepared in accordance with the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) 16.505(b)(2)(ii)(B).

1. Identification of the agency and contracting activity, and specific identification of the document as a “Justification for an Exception to Fair Opportunity.”

Agency:

United States Department of Education (Department) Institute of Education Sciences (IES)

Contracting Activity:

Contracts and Acquisition Management Office of Finance and Operations

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

IES intends to award a logical follow-on task order to Accenture Federal Services (AFS) on the Alliant 2 Governmentwide Indefinite delivery, indefinite-quantity contract (IDIQ) pursuant to FAR 16.505(b)(2)(ii). The current task order 91990022R0032/RFQ ID RFQ1556207 was awarded on September 26, 2022, and will expire on September 25, 2024.

This logical follow-on task order will continue the digital modernization efforts that began in the current task order that ends on September 25, 2024.

Logical Follow-On Period of Performance Base Period: September 26, 2024 – September 25, 2025 Option Year (OY) 1: September 26, 2025 – September 25, 2026 OY2: September 26, 2026 – September 25, 2027

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

IES intends to award a three-year (one base year plus two options) logical follow on to continue the work Accenture is conducting as part of a digital modernization project that the Institute has undertaken since 2020. Phase 1 of this digital modernization is currently under a task order that ends on September 25, 2024. This new task order is for Phase 2 work and is required as a direct continuation of the work Accenture has conducted under 91990022R0032/RFQ ID RFQ1556207. The total estimated dollar value of the Phase 2 task order is

In 2020, IES embarked on a digital modernization effort in order to meet our statutory mission to conduct “wide dissemination activities in areas of demonstrated national need” and to bring our digital properties in line with the 21st Century Integrated Digital Experiences Act and the requirements laid out in OMB Memorandum M-23-22. As such, this work is critical to the functioning of IES.

Below are the critical elements of phase two implementation that will be required in this task order.

Phase Two Implementation and Continuation

Phase Two begins when the initial modernized IES website launches and will support iterative enhancements and the development of additional capabilities and the continued migration of legacy IES.ed.gov and nces.ed.gov web content to the modernized environment. While Phase One has provided the foundation for the Phase Two work, a significant effort is still required to move content, tools, and data from the previous site into the new infrastructure. Phase Two work includes the following objectives:

Website Enhancements:

o Design: Draw upon Phase One implementation experience and lessons learned and continue to transition legacy content to the modernized environment while simultaneously implement enhancements for continued improvement to the overall modern website experience and information hierarchy.

o Content Management System (CMS): Draw upon extensive understanding of legacy system content and system interoperability to develop, modify, and version new or enhanced content and workflows within the IES Drupal environment.

Also, complete What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) and surveys and programs page design, development, and migration.

o Universal Search: Apply lessons learned from analysis of legacy search functions to enhance search functionality for continued improvement to the search-based user experience, allowing users to quickly find the information they need.

o Operations and Maintenance: Support the Phase One Drupal CMS solution and ongoing releases including technical, feature-based, and administrative support in coordination with the IT Director while continuing to enhance the functionality and infrastructure as part of Phase Two.

Universal Taxonomy: Continue term identification, definition, and hierarchical mapping using quantitative and qualitative measures to expand upon the existing universal taxonomy.

Data Repository: Continue to ingest data into the data repository and facilitate the consolidation and simplification of IES data structures. Complete setup and implementation of metadata management platform.

Data Portal: Advance data portal functionality to include data analysis and visualization capabilities.

Internal Tools Consolidation: Build internal tools solution, migrate existing tool datasets, archive existing internal tools, and train users on new tools and capabilities.

Key Digital Tool Updates: Enhance functionality and user experience of high-demand digital tools across IES including retirement, replacement, consolidation, or modification.

Customer Engagement: Implement framework and mechanisms for collecting, analyzing, and applying user feedback to enable an iterative and continuous improvement to user experience across the digital landscape of IES.

Survey Tool(s): Support IES guidelines for implementation of a third-party hosted survey tool for optional use across IES.

Governance: Implement and contribute to data, website design, and security governance standards and processes for the foundational phase of the digital modernization initiative as part of the uniform governance program of IES.

4. Identification of the exception to fair opportunity (see 16.505(b)(2)) and the supporting rationale, including a demonstration that the proposed contractor’s unique qualifications or the nature of the acquisition requires use of the exception cited. If the contracting officer uses the logical follow-on exception, the rationale shall describe why the relationship between the initial order and the follow-on is logical (e.g., in terms of scope, period of performance, or value).

ED intends to issue a task order to Accenture Federal Services to support IES DM work in accordance with FAR 16.505(b)(2)(i)(C): the order must be issued on a sole-source basis in the interest of economy and efficiency because it is a logical follow-on to an order already issued under the contract, provided that all 38 Alliant 2 awardees were given a fair opportunity to be considered for the original order. Of these, 8 vendors submitted initial proposals for the work. The rationale for this exception is detailed below.

(1) Acquisition history and why the relationship between the initial order and the follow-on is logical.

Acquisition History:

The IES DM is intended to be and was originally competed as a multi-phased approach with the overarching vision to optimize the IT spend and environment, increase access to IES data, and ease resource burden through the implementation of new technologies, tools, and capabilities.

ED issued 91990022R0032/RFQ ID RFQ1556207 to all 38 Alliant 2 contract holders on May 4, 2022. The solicitation included a Statement of Objectives (SOO) that outlined the three key phases of work to complete the DM effort (as noted above, IES has since made the decision to combine Phases 2 and 3). The solicitation included Contract Line Item Numbers (CLIN) for each phase for a period of performance extending through July 10, 2027, if exercised.

Moreover, the SOO described the need for a single vendor to support the full range of future-state modernization activities in Section 11 of the Phase One SOO (quoting directly):

As described at the beginning of this SOO, IES is working toward the full implementation of a multi-phased digital modernization effort. IES recognizes the interdependencies [outlined in this document in Sections 4(2) and 4(3)] between Phase One foundational activities and the activities to be addressed in future phases. Additionally, IES appreciates that transitioning to a new vendor presents potential risks of program disruption and quality impacts, therefore IES retains the flexibility to award future phase activities to the Phase One vendor if it is in the best interest of the government. Therefore, it is the intention of the Government that should the implementing vendor for Phase One successfully meet the needs of the Government, that vendor may also be solicited to complete future tasks through available option periods as related to the DM effort.

ED obtained labor pricing for three out-years based on the optional tasks provided in the SOO. However, the Department could not definitize Phase Two activities with sufficient granularity to include a pre-priced CLIN in the awarded task order, however the requirement clearly notified vendors that three additional years of implementation work beyond the initial two-year effort would be required.

Digital Modernization Roadmap

The IES DM roadmap laid out a five-year modernization roadmap for execution using an iterative agile approach. This ongoing modernization identified three phases with continuous development crossing phases as each phase builds on the prior and the functionality continues to evolve. Phase One from 9/2022 – 9/2024 sets a technical foundation, but not does not yet position IES to operate and maintain the modernized technical architecture. After careful consideration of the interdependencies of each of the phases that became evident in Phase One, IES combined the work proposed in Phases Two and Three into a single phase (Phase Two) to ensure that the necessary work is conducted in the most rational sequencing possible. The DM roadmap was described in the initial RFP posted to Alliant 2 in Section 18, Appendix D:

Assessment and Phase One Implementation

Phase One of the IES Digital Modernization began in September 2022, and required the contractor to assess fully the IES current state for websites, tools, and data. Phase One activities also included website redesign and backend technology improvement efforts. Phase One will end on September 27, 2024, with the launch of the redesigned IES website. The redesigned website will not include all IES webpages, tools, and data and some template design will be midstream. A total redesign, technical modernization, and migration of all content currently housed on IES.ed.gov and nces.ed.gov will occur in Phases Two and Three. The scope of the work to support these broad goals included the following activities as documented in the initial SOO:

Website Redesign: IES website redesign for IES-owned sites with consistent, intuitive navigation across four centers. Scope includes redesigning webpages for ies.ed.gov and nces.ed.gov.

Enterprise Content Management System (CMS): Implement an enterprise CMS for the IES website.

Universal Search: Implement universal search functionality on the IES website to replace existing search tools.

Universal Taxonomy: Create globally defined hierarchies, terms, and definitions.

Data Repository: Centralize data storage solution through a data repository.

Data Portal: Build a user-facing data portal to provide a single point of access to IES datasets, publications, reference documents, reports, and other digital assets.

Governance: Implement and contribute to data, website design, and security governance standards and processes for the foundational phase of the digital modernization initiative as part of the uniform governance program of IES.

Enterprise Internal Tool Strategy: Develop a strategy and roadmap for consolidation of internal IES tools associated with the following business functions: grants, vendor contracts, reports, and project management.

(2) The Logical Follow-On Represents a Continuation of Interdependent Workstreams

The DM was scoped, planned, and solicited as a five-year (one base year and four option years), ongoing modernization where each year builds on the prior and the functionality continues to evolve. Phase One will set a foundation; however, it was always intended for the vendor to continue service if they were successful in Phase One (as stated in the SOO).

A substantial amount of the work to be performed under the new task order is a direct continuation of work performed under the initial task order and includes enhancements to the foundational site and capabilities. There are multiple workstreams underway such as the modernization of the What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) and the NCES surveys and programs pages. Notable examples of how the current requirements are a logical follow-on to the initial efforts include:

Follow-on to Web Design Work:

Phase One of the IES DM began in September 2022 with a planned period of performance end date of September 2024, resulting in the initial launch of a new IES website that incorporates a portion of existing IES web content. Phase Two of the implementation is scheduled to continue immediately following go live of the website and will migrate web content not included in Phase One and will continue with migrating legacy tools into the new web environment.

Additionally, Phase Two will include iterative enhancements to existing capabilities and development of additional capabilities that build on and integrate with the enterprise architecture established during Phase One.

The current vendor will have invested two years in understanding IES’s complex environment and the IES data center architecture, which includes over 350 databases, 15,000 website pages, and 100+ unique tools. Initial onboarding of the current vendor took place over the course of four months before any development work could begin and continuous discovery work is ongoing to support implementation of Phase Two work. Onboarding would require IES to spend funds to onboard new, inexperienced personnel and pay for analysis and assessment activities that would otherwise not be required if work continues under a logical follow-on task order. Continuing with the current vendor will result in significant economies to IES for these reasons.

Follow-on to CMS Implementation

The incumbent vendor designed, configured, and installed the initial enterprise architecture for the content management system (CMS), data repository, universal search, and data portal. Phase two activities will continue to migrate content into the CMS and will continue development and enhancement efforts of the CMS once the CMS is managing IES content. Not all IES content will migrate to the CMS at go-live. Additional content will migrate during Phase Two, and IES anticipates additional development and refinement of templates within the existing CMS based on lessons learned from the first several months of utilization.

A new vendor would need to reassess all existing content, the architecture behind the new CMS, and the user stories and needs that underlie the design of the new CMS. While the DM technology solutions are non-proprietary and IES maintains appropriate data rights, the application and development use tailored solutions specific to IES business and technical needs. The incumbent possessing this contextual and applied knowledge provides IES and the government with a significant advantage in terms of both economy and efficiency. A new vendor starting Phase Two absent of this knowledge will present a greater risk of defects, technical debt, and ultimately delays to timelines to meet DM objectives, resulting in higher overall costs to the government. Additionally, a new vendor would likely need to interview IES staff and other stakeholders to adequately understand the documentation that does exist thus resulting in additional cost to IES in terms of wasted staff labor as well as duplicative contractor labor.

Phase Two work will focus on migrating additional content to the CMS, including but not limited to NCES surveys and programs, Regional Educational Laboratory toolkits, and What Works Clearinghouse content types (see below for more detail). Work of developing requirements and understanding existing infrastructure for the aforementioned content areas has already begun in Phase One.

Follow-on NCEE What Works Clearinghouse Custom Tool Development

The integration of the NCEE What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) custom tool, the Online Study Review Guide (OSRG), with the CMS and the migration of data and content from the OSRG tool and database. The incumbent team has spent several hundred hours over one and a half years learning the complexities around the OSRG including existing processes/workflows, functionality, data structure, differences among product types, underlying technical architecture, etc.

This also entailed understanding the intricacies of NCEE’s business and functional/technical requirements, which will be translated into future pages on the website and templates in the CMS. This work is partially underway, and the knowledge gained is from conversations and not fully documented by IES.

In doing so, the incumbent has provided and reached agreement with the WWC team on a technical solution that will integrate the OSRG as well as provide both technical enhancements and process improvements using three separate APIs:

Drupal taxonomy, Drupal OSRG Integration, and Study Reviews Export Data API. Development work of the technical solution is ongoing and will proceed into Phase 2. The WWC task will include CMS development activities such as building OSRG content types and templates, integrating the OSRG Integration API to facilitate programmatic draft page creation triggered by the OSRG application, and implementing custom page review index view, grouping related pages pending review by their associated Intervention to enable bulk review and publishing of related pages, building UI for Data from Study Reviews functionality and integrate with Data About Study Reviews Export Data API.

Furthermore, due to the agile build of the DM, additional requirements gathering activities for items related to the OSRG integration / technical solution (e.g., final approved taxonomy and tagging, maintaining independent search functional in Find What Works, indexing with universal search, etc.) are ongoing and will extend beyond September 2024.

Additionally, the DM vendor will need to work closely with the vendor responsible for OSRG development and maintenance to support migration of the OSRG database into PostgreSQL-based IES data repository. This requires enabling database connections from the OSRG application to the IES data repository database via service account. Due to IES and contractor resource constraints, changes in scope, and schedule delays integration of the OSRG and migration of WWC content will occur after the planned Phase One go live. Due to the amount of time invested in understanding the complexity as well as being mid-development of the technical solution by Phase One go live, it is imperative the incumbent stay on to complete this work. After WWC content slated for early Phase Two goes live, several activities will need to take place including a backup of the legacy WWC database, archive and retire legacy WWC CMS application, code, data, and media library, enhancements to DM CMS, and maintenance of APIs.

Additional Phase One to Phase Two Follow-on Activities

Maintenance and enhancement of the technical enterprise architecture described above and imperative knowledge transfer to the IES IT team and vendor.

Data migration into the IES data repository that requires continued tool-oriented use cases and activities such as developing detailed plans for deprecating existing SQL data stores, iterating on the newly developed data architecture, API integrations, ETL processes, and other technology configurations completed in Phase One.

Additionally, the incumbent vendor is implementing a Metadata Management Platform with core data repository and universal search integrations, and this work will continue from Phase One to Phase Two.

Continued iterative enhancements to the data portal require intimate knowledge of its source data architecture — the data repository. Data portal feature enhancement relies on the recently developed stage gate process and intimacy with technical dependencies, data integrations, data standards, existing vendor contracts, and relevant federal mandates. The Phase Two must support capacity to maintain and operate features developed in the data portal during Phase One in addition to Phase Two enhancements including both technical and administrative support in coordination with the IT director. Lastly, the Phase Two implementer must continue to provide innovative ideas for data portal enhancement by combining their understanding of IES stakeholders and customers with best practice technology advancements in artificial intelligence as IES learns lessons from Phase One and Phase Two implementation activities.

Universal taxonomy enhancements require revisiting existing universal taxonomy composition of terms and relational structure that were originally created during Phase One work. Additionally, taxonomy enhancements require the contractor to evaluate and iterate the existing universal taxonomy governance framework and continue to perform stakeholder engagement exercises to determine new local taxonomies to incorporate directly or via identified ontological relationships.

Content migration of content not included in Phase One migration activities, and maintenance of custom modules, APIs, and integrations. Phase One work will only migrate a portion of IES webpages into the new environment. Phase Two activities will apply lessons learned during the initial migration and continue the work of migrating legacy, bespoke systems into the new environment.

(3) The logical follow-on task order will benefit the Department by substantially mitigating cost risk associated with Phase Two DM work:

Significant time will need to be devoted to bringing the knowledge base up to the current level of the incumbent which is necessary for successful completion of the Digital Modernization. This is due to the steep learning curve any new contractor will experience at IES to gain sufficient knowledge of the organization and its large complex system and data ecosystem. For example, IES has 350 databases, 15,000 website pages, and 100+ unique tools that are subject to an array of federal mandates including but not limited to the Confidential Information Protection and Statistical Efficiency Act, the OPEN Data Act, and Open Science Policy from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). This challenge is exacerbated when the scope of work requires the contractor to continue in-progress development work.

Additionally, much of the continued phase two work requires integration with and knowledge of the IES’s legacy systems, which Accenture has built over two years through research and conversations with IES staff; information which is not formally documented by IES.

This allocation of time will result in substantial duplication of effort translated to additional costs which have already been incurred through performance of the original order. The estimated cost associated with this duplication of effort—and therefore cost savings should the government issue a logical follow on—could range from at least $2,500,000.00 to $2,854,757.69. This first figure is the cost to IES of losing four months of continued development work and immediate website troubleshooting in the first year of phase two (i.e., the onboarding time for a new vendor). This second figure was estimated using JIRA data associated with the technical architecture work completed to date and its level of effort (19.83%) as a portion of the overall DM effort. These figures do not even include the 18.28% of work allocated to date on the CMS, which is knowledge that is relevant throughout phase two. Issuing the order as a logical follow-on guarantees this knowledge gained over the past two years is maintained and can be used to drive efficiencies for the execution of Phase two and three. A thorough understanding of IES’s current technical architecture and environment possessed by the current contractor will reduce cost risks in Phase Two.

(4) The logical follow-on task order will benefit the Department by substantially mitigating schedule risk associated with Phase Two DM work:

A new vendor would require substantial time and effort to assess and synthesize the work done over the past two years. Based on the time required to onboard the vendor (including security clearances), we anticipate the total transition time before the vendor could resume where the incumbent left off to be between four and six-months of delays to the Digital Modernization schedule.

(5) The logical follow-on task order will benefit the Department by substantially mitigating technical risk associated with Phase Two DM work:

The logical follow-on task order will substantially mitigate technical performance risk. The logical follow-on task order will allow IES to troubleshoot and resolve any unforeseen technical issues and critical incidents that may arise with the launch and initial implementation of the IES website. A new vendor will require time to orient itself with both the legacy and the new website and architecture, and the risk to IES and the Department of incidents going unaddressed is much higher if there is a several month gap for a new vendor to be onboarded and become familiar with the IES technical environment. Any issues with functionality would negatively impact IES’s ability to disseminate education statistics and key information on grants and education research to the community.

5. A determination by the Contracting Officer that the anticipated cost to the Government will be fair and reasonable.

The Contracting Officer and COR team will use two primary methods to ensure the reasonableness of costs associated with this logical follow-on task order. First, the team will ensure that Accenture Federal Services is using labor rates that are consistent with rates provided on the ALLIANT 2 Best in Class contract vehicle. Second, the Department has obtained sufficient insights into the initial phase of the digital modernization work to accurately estimate costs for the next three years in the Independent Government Cost Estimate (IGCE). This estimate will form the basis of any future reasonableness determination. IES will also request additional discounts over and above the Alliant 2 rates.

6. Any other facts supporting the justification.

The original DM task order always intended to support five years of work as documented in the opening sections of this justification. However, because the latter phases of work were heavily dependent on what the vendor discovered in Phase One, fully defining the scope of work for Phases Two and Three in sufficient detail to allow vendors to quote a definitized price for these later phases was not feasible at the time of award. When submitting proposals for Phase One, vendors provided hourly rates for option years 2-4 based on a high-level description of future-state work to support objectives in the later phases, and vendors were aware that future implementation work would be issued to the successful vendor to support modernization efforts in these later phases.

7. A statement of the actions, if any, the agency may take to remove or overcome any barriers that led to the restricted consideration before any subsequent acquisition for supplies and services is made.

This logical follow-on task order will be used to continue the core phases of the five-year digital modernization as the requirement originally intended. All 38 Alliant 2 awardees were given a fair opportunity to be considered for the original order. Of these, 8 vendors submitted initial proposals for the work.

For twenty years, IES IT acquisitions have been siloed and independent from any consolidated effort. The modernized IES digital infrastructure makes it easier to compete future work in a competitive environment. For example, after modernization concludes in 2027, IES will be able to provide robust system documentation about the current state so that other vendors can understand and price IES work effectively. Content will be more unified and more easily analyzed. The work should be less complex than the initial modernization efforts and thus more competitive for a wider range of companies.

8. The ordering activity contracting officer’s certification that the justification is accurate and complete to the best of the contracting officer’s knowledge and belief.