IHS1527597 NAO Area Wide Secondary Internet Service RFI.pdf

1 INTRODUCTION

1.1 TERMS

1.2 RFI PURPOSE AND OBJECTIVES

2 PROJECT BACKGROUND

3 PURPOSE

4 INFORMATION SUBMISSION INSTRUCTIONS

IHS1527597 – NAO Are-Wide Secondary Internet Service

1 INTRODUCTION

1.1 TERMS

This Request for Information (RFI) is issued solely for information and planning purposes and does not constitute a solicitation or a promise to issue a solicitation in the future. This RFI does not commit the Government to contract for any supply or service. Responses to this RFI are not offers and cannot be accepted by the Government to form a binding contract.

1.2 RFI PURPOSE AND OBJECTIVES

The purpose of this RFI is to conduct market research, obtain technical information, and to determine the availability and technical capability of Indian Economic Enterprise (IEE) and Indian Small Business Enterprise (ISBEE) to provide the services outline in this request for information. Responces will assist the Government in determining the appropriate acquisition method, including whether a set-aside is possible.

2 PROJECT BACKGROUND

Navajo Area Indian Health Service (NAIHS) is one of twelve (12) Regional Administrative units of the Indian Health Service (IHS). The NAIHS delivers Health Services to a user population of over 244,000 American Indians in five (5) Federal Service Units on and near the Navajo Nation.

The five (5) Federal Service Units (SUs) include Chinle, Crownpoint, Gallup, Kayenta, and Shiprock SUs. Navajo Area Indian Health Service Office is located in St. Michael’s Arizona.

Indian Health Service is an Agency within the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

Navajo Area Indian Health Service also includes the Office of Environmental Health & Engineering (OEHE). OEHE locations include the following: Navajo Area, Gallup, Crownpoint, Shiprock, Kayenta, Chinle, Fort Defiance, Tuba City, and Winslow.

The IHS IT infrastructure includes people, computers, communications, and security that support every aspect of the IHS mission. The IT infrastructure is based on an architecture that incorporates government and industry standards for the collection, processing, storage, and transmission of information.

The IHS IT program:

a. Is managed as a strategic investment

b. Is fully integrated with the agency's programs

c. and is critical to improving service delivery across the Indian health care system.

3 PURPOSE

Navajo Area Office Indian Health Service (NAIHS) Division of Technology (DIT) will be working with all Navajo Area sites and locations to add an additional internet circuit. The secondary internet circuit will be configured in an SD-WAN configuration as a means of redundancy; to maintain service continuity and mitigate disruptions due to primary ISP outages, a reliable secondary internet service is required at each site.

The SD-WAN solution allows the router to leverage both circuits simultaneously and if there is a circuit outage the failover will be quick.

a. Some sites have implemented SD-WAN.

b. Non SD-WAN sites are configured in a PIP or DMVPN configuration.

The Contractor shall plan, evaluate, install, and configure for a secondary internet service at all identified sites under Navajo Area Indian Health Service.

The Contract shall provide project planning for the scope of this project.

Specific requirements:

a. Provide satellite internet, Starlink Services as the first choice.

b. If Starlink Services is not available in locations, provide alternatives solutions such as the following, broadband, fiber, LTE, or equivalent internet access at each location.

c. Bandwidth requirements per site:

i. Starlink Business/Priority – Local Priority: Mid to High Tier offering for Download/Upload speeds.

ii. Non-Starlink:

1. Primary Service Unit sites: 500 Mbps down/50 Mbps up

2. Remote satellite sites: 100 Mbps down/20 Mbps up

d. Static Public IP needed

e. Coordinate installation schedules with the organization’s technical team

f. The contractor shall validate that the provisioned internet service achieves the contracted bandwidth for both download and upload. This validation must include periodic speed testing using industry-standard tools under typical usage conditions. Any failure to meet the specified bandwidth must be promptly reported, along with corrective actions to ensure compliance.

g. Contractor is responsible for secure roof-top mounting, weather proofing, and proper sealing of all penetrations for exterior network hardware installation.

4 INFORMATION SUBMISSION INSTRUCTIONS

The information shall be provided in Adobe PDF or Microsoft Word. Submissions shall be limited to 10 single-spaced pages, with 1-inch margins, and using not less than 12-point font.

Charts, tables, diagrams and captions can be in 10-point font and shall be counted as part of the 10-page limit; the cover page is not included in the 10-page count. The information should consist of the following:

A cover page including the respondents’ technical and administrative points of contact, with names, titles, addresses, telephone, and e-mail addresses; title of project;

socioeconomic status; and Unique Entity Identifier (UEI) Number

Existing Federal contract vehicles awarded A focused response to Section 3

Please refrain from including marketing brochure materials. HHS is requesting tailored responses and not submission only of capability statements. Respondents do not need to address all bullet points but are requested to address as many as possible.

IEE/ISBEE representation - Vendors shall confirm there IEE and/or ISBEE status by submitting the attached IHS-IEE-Represenation form with there submission.

Any Governmentwide Acquisition Contract (GWAC), General Services Administration (GSA) Schedule vehicle, or other available procurement vehicles your company maintains that could meet this requirement

The response must be submitted no later than 07/20/2026 at 9:30 AM Eastern Time. The response should be submitted via SAM.gov portal as an interested vendor, along with all required documents listed above.

Disclaimer and Important Notes. This notice does not obligate the Government to award a contract or otherwise pay for the information provided in response. The Government reserves the right to use information provided by respondents for any purpose deemed necessary and legally appropriate. Any organization responding to this notice should ensure that its response is complete and sufficiently detailed. Information provided will be used to assess tradeoffs and alternatives available for the potential requirement and may lead to the development of a solicitation. Respondents are advised that the Government is under no obligation to acknowledge receipt of the information received or provide feedback to respondents with respect to any information submitted. Responses to this notice will not be considered adequate responses to a solicitation.

Confidentiality. No proprietary, classified, confidential, or sensitive information should be included in your response. The Government reserves the right to use any non-proprietary technical information in any resultant solicitation(s).