J_A for SPOK_Redacted.pdf

Control Number VA-22-00007105

JUSTIFICATION FOR OTHER THAN FULL AND OPEN COMPETITION

1. Contracting Activity: Department of Veterans Affairs (VA)

Office of Procurement, Acquisition, and Logistics Technology Acquisition Center 23 Christopher Way Eatontown, NJ 07724

2. Description of Action: The proposed sole source action is for award of a 6-month firm-fixed price (FFP) effort for paging lease and support services with ancillary hardware with SPOK, Inc., located at 5911 Kingstowne Village Parkway, 6th Floor, Alexandria, VA 22315-4644.

3. Description of Supplies or Services: VA Office of Information and Technology (OIT) Development, Security, and Operations (DevSecOps) Solution Delivery (SD) has a requirement to continue existing wide area paging lease and support services for multiple VA locations. Specifically, the Contractor shall provide services for 21,000 pagers distributed at VA Medical Centers within the following states: Alaska, Washington, DC, Hawaii, Connecticut, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Virginia. This includes Numeric, Alphanumeric, Two-Way pagers that support local, statewide, regional, and national level of service. Additionally, the Contractor shall provide for multiple different feature sets of these pagers. Further, the Contractor shall provide service in accordance with the Service Level Agreements (SLA) of 99.99% availability and 24x7x365 covererage. Additionally, the Contractor shall maintain the solution by providing helpdesk service, pager management services (pager replacement) and continuity of operations support. The total period of performance shall be 4-months with two (2) 1-month option periods for continued maintenance.

4. Statutory Authority: The statutory authority permitting other than full and open competition is 41 U.S.C. 3304(a)(1) as implemented by the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) 6.302-1 entitled, “Only One Responsible Source and No Other Supplies or Services Will Satisfy Agency Requirements.”

5. Rationale Supporting Use of Authority Cited Above: No other vendor other than the proposed source, SPOK, Inc., located at 5911 Kingstowne Village Parkway, 6th Floor, Alexandria, VA 22315-4644 can meet the Government’s requirements.

Specifically, no other source can meet the government’s requirement to provide seamless renewal for continued lease and maintenance of deployed pagers at VA medical centers, nor provide the required maintenance and support services.

VA conducted market research, as noted in Section 8 of this document, to support a planned acquisition that would provide pager lease and maintenance for the majority of the enterprise to include performance within the 50 states, did not include the outlying areas. However, due to unforeseen circumstances and extended

Brand Name SPOK Pager Control Number VA-22-00007105 Services Bridge Renewal requirements development period, VA was unable to solicit the award in a timely manner to pick up performance of several efforts that expire on October 1, 2021. VA requires continued performance and support of these services until the competitive orders can be issued against the enterprise vehicle and transition occurs, if applicable. Continued service will prevent a service disruption at the VAMCs, CBOCs, and outpatient facilities. A service disruption will interupt electronic messaging to an estimated 5,000 mobile employees. The government estimates that to the time to complete all activities is up to 180 days.

Additionally, no other source other than the proposed, can provide the required maintenance and support services. Specifically no other vendor, other than the incumbent, has access to the proprietary hardware, software, and frequencies necessary to provide this coverage. Any other source would require access to this specialized equipment, proprietary software, and the OEM’s network in order to identify and resolve potential issues with the deployed solution. For instance, in the event of a system error, should a source not have access to the specialized equipment, proprietary software, and the OEM’s network, that source would be unable to perform root cause analysis and successfully mitigate whatever potential issues may arise. Further, the vendor would be unable to test the network to ensure that any software patch or change to the system was successful, and that the pagers are able to receive and send messages. Additionally, without access to the OEM’s proprietary source code and software updates provided by the OEM, regular and preventative pushes could not be deployed. This increases the risk that the network will not be operating within the required SLA requirements. As such, as the OEM does not resell these services, only the OEM can provide this required pager service for the VA medical center(s).

The only avenue for another source to provide these required services is to completely replace the technology stack that provides the paging service for the VA medical center(s). Based upon the market research and historical information, VA estimates that any source, other than the incumbent, would require approximately 45 days per site to convert to a new solution. While some of these activities can occur concurrent to each other, when taking into account the fact that this effort covers multiple states across the VA enterprise, the VA estimates that full conversion would not occur until 180 days after award of a competitive action. During that time, VA must maintain the pager support and services described above as these pagers are utilized in direct patient care by VA healthcare professionals to receive timely status and updates of patient conditions and in extreme cases, may require emergency medical intervention. Without continuing the service as proposed, VA will not be able to complete its’ mission of providing health care to Veterans and their families, and could endanger Veteran lives if doctors are not immediately notified of life-threatening occurrences.

6. Efforts to Obtain Competition: Market research was conducted, details of which are in the market research section of this document. This effort did not yield any additional sources that can meet the Government’s requirements. There is no competition anticipated for this acquisition. Additionally, the proposed action will be synopsized on the Contracting Opportunities Page in accordance with FAR 5.201.

Any proposals that are received shall be evaluated.

7. Actions to Increase Competition: The Government is currently developing and intends to solicit a competitive 50-state vehicle to provide the future paging requirements for the agency.

8. Market Research: The government’s technical experts conducted market research in September 2021 via release of Request for Information (RFI) 36C10B22Q0004 posted to Contracting Opportunities page to ascertain if there were any other sources that could meet the larger enterprise-level Governmental requirements. Responses were received from SPOK, Inc, American Messaging Services, LLC., SelectPath Holding, Inc.

DBA Contact Wireless). Based on the information provided in response to the RFI, VA determined that only the incumbent could provide the seamless continuation of services as VA solicited and awarded the aforementioned 50-state procurement. As such, there is no expectation for competition for this requirement as no other source can provide the government’s timeliness requirements.

9. Other Facts: N/A

10. Technical and Requirements Certification: I certify that the supporting data under my cognizance, which are included in this justification, are accurate and complete to the best of my knowledge and belief.

11. Fair and Reasonable Cost Determination: I hereby determine that the anticipated price to the Government for this contract action will be fair and reasonable based on comparison of the proposed price to historical prices paid and comparison to the independent government cost estimate.

12. Procuring Contracting Officer Certification: I certify that this justification is accurate and complete to the best of my knowledge and belief. As this contract action does not exceed $750,000, the certification below required by FAR 6.304(a)(1) serves as approval.