JA - AM FINAL REDACTED.pdf

JUSTIFICATION FOR OTHER THAN FULL AND OPEN COMPETITION

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

Technology Acquisition Center 23 Christopher Way Eatontown, NJ 07724

2. Description of Action: The proposed action is to award a solicit and award a firm-fixed-priced Contract on a sole source basis to American Messaging Services, LLC (American Messaging) located at 1720 Lakepointe Dr. Ste 100, Lewisville, Texas 75057.

3. Description of the Supplies or Services: VA Office of Information Technology (OIT) has a requirement to secure additional beeper lease services of the same kind as the existing task order in order to maintain continuity of operations for sites that currently utilize American Messaging beeper services. The proposed beeper lease services shall include lease of one-way, two-way messaging, and wireless information services, as well as maintenance and replacement beepers for lost devices. Additionally, the contractor shall provide access to a web-based portal for moves, adds, deletions and changes.

Further, the Contractor shall also provide shipping and return support of deployed devises. VA anticipates that several existing contracts will have performance periods that will lapse in the months of May, August and September. In order to provided continued support of those locations, VA intends to add four (4) Optional Tasks to continue support of the same kind on a pro-rated, FFP basis, with periods that end contiguous to this proposed action. The period of performance for this effort is 12 months from date of award.

4. Authority Cited: 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: Based on Market Research, as noted in section eight of this document, only the proposed source can provide all the Governments requirements. VA had anticipated creating an enterprise multiple award contractual vehicle in order to satisfy its commercial paging requirements, however, based on the feedback from industry, it was unclear that the native coverage requirements noted in the requirements document could be met without additional investment of time and potential cost to vendors. As such, VA OIT made a strategic determination and decision that it would not pursue the new action for an enterprise commercial beeper requirement. As such, VA must maintain its existing beeper footprint until such time that services can be transitioned to more optimal solution(s) that meet business requirements of the sites.

No other source, other than the incumbent can provide the required beeper solution and service at the required locations. Only 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.

American Messaging Commercial Beeper Service VA-22-00056940

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 beepers 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 beeper service for the VA medical center(s).

The only avenue for another source to provide these required services is to completely replace the deployed solution, and to transition VA staff to this new proprietary solution.

Even if VA could do this, there is no other source that can provide coverage to the VA locations that are affected by this action. Meaning that there are no other vendors that can provide the required service at these locations. Additionally, as mentioned previously, VA intends to transition to alternative solutions to meet its business needs.

Failure to procure the services as described above will hinder care provided to the Veteran as these devices and services. Specifically, without the addition of these services, approximately 20,000 employees would be without beeper service/messaging which directly support of current workflows. This hinders the Agency from fulfilling its mission of providing the best healthcare and support services to the Veteran.

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 will continue to conduct market research to ascertain if there are changes in the market place that would enable future actions to be competed.

8. Market Research: The government’s technical experts conducted market research in September 2021 via release of Request for Information (RFIs) 36C10B22Q0004 and 36C10B22Q0137 that were 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, and 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 required services to maintain the existing footprint. VA also confirmed that the incumbent does not resell its services.

9. Other Facts: N/A