JA DevOps Tools Suite FINAL_Redacted.pdf

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JUSTIFICATION FOR AN EXCEPTION TO FAIR OPPORTUNITY

1. Contracting Activity: Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Office of Procurement, Acquisition, and Logistics

Technology Acquisition Center (TAC) 23 Christopher Way Eatontown, NJ 07724

2. Description of Action: The proposed action is for a modification to Time and Materials Task Order (TO) 36C10B19N10090016 titled, “Development Operations (DevOps) Tool Suite (DOTS)”. This action will provide a 7-month extension of services to manage the DOTS tools enclave and continue providing service desk support to VA employees and contractors for existing software applications that comprise the DOTS solution. The proposed effort will be awarded under contract VA118-16-D-1009 to Cerner Federal Solutions LLC (herein after referred to as Cerner), located at 1910 Oracle Way, Reston, VA 20190.

3. Description of the Supplies or Services: The proposed action is to provide a 7-month extension to the current DOTS task order for the management and sustainment of DOTS. The original task order was competed on Transformation Twenty-One Total Technology-Next Generation (T4NG) in 2019 and resulted in the award of a base plus 4 option year TO with a value of . The DOTS task order provides technical support teams that configure, administer, and provide help desk support for over 78,000 licensed users of 21 commercial software products and databases that are used by more than 600 VA project teams. DOTS supports critical VA systems that rely on the following tools, including the renewal and management of all required software licensing, to design, develop, test, deploy code, and monitor system performance for thousands of licensed users (license count): Mural (5,590), MiniOrange (13,500), Cloudera CDP (5), JIRA Data Center and Confluence (including all plugins), JIRA TAM and JIRA Align (1) (20,002), Confluence (20,000), Zoom for Government (50), AlteryX (300), SD Elements (2), Jrebel (10), MongoDB (5), Aqua Security (2) and Prodigy (1).

Some of the critical systems in VA that rely on DOTS services and tools are Veterans Benefits and Management System, Loan Guaranty, Veterans GI Bill, VA.gov, and the Veterans Crisis Line. The total estimated value for labor is and for the renewal of existing DOTS tools is . The total estimated value of the proposed action, including labor and tools, is .

4. Statutory Authority: The statutory authority permitting an exception to fair opportunity is Section 41 U.S.C. 4106(c)(3) as implemented by the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) 16.505(b)(2)(i)(C), entitled “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 awardees were given a fair opportunity to be considered for the original order.”

5. Rationale Supporting Use of Authority Cited Above: These requirements are needed to continue the operation, sustainment, help desk support, and software license renewals of the DOTS solution. The work involves the procurement of certain tools, DevOps Tool Suite (DOTS) 7-month Extension CONTROL NUMBER management of licensing for both tools procured under this TO and through other contracts, as well as several open source tools while providing VA with the training, migration, mentoring, configuration, integration, support, and operations/maintenance as needed by VA project teams to deliver features in systems that use various technology stacks and are hosted on different platforms and in different hosting environments. Additionally, the TO is responsible for ensuring the DOTS tools are compatible and the technical support teams ensure interoperability between these tools.

Going without the required support for DOTS would have a significant negative impact on the ability of these programs to operate and ensure Veterans’ access to the important and well-earned benefits provided through these programs. Any lapse or disruption in support and continuity would cause degradation of these critical services, which would negatively impact VA, Veterans, and their beneficiaries.

Firstly, the management of DOTS was shifted from the VA Innovation Unit

(VAIU), whose primary goal is piloting new technologies, to the VA Architecture and Engineering Service (AES), who are responsible among other things for the management, consolidation, approval, and security of enterprise applications across VA. This shift, not made final until Summer 2024, introduced a change to the scope of services that will be needed on a follow-on contract as well as the quantity and type of software that the follow-on will require the contractor to purchase and manage. While these changes are imminent, AES needs more time to finalize an analysis of the current DOTS effort and incorporate the changes into the requirements for the new contract.

These changes will have impacts on several of the underlying business units this contract supports. Given the recent change in direction there is insufficient time for the business units to adjust in time to avoid losing support from the current DOTS contractor. Additionally, the Office of Information Technology, in concert with AES, has started developing a software factory (SWF) approach to capability development. This will require approved tools be used for common services and technical support throughout VA, several of which to be managed under MTS.

In the interest of economy and efficiency, VA will be awarding a modification to Cerner to benefit from continued sustainment, operations, and maintenance of DOTS while these changes and updates are incorporated into a new competitive solicitation. Cerner has been working on these tasks under the current TO for the past five years and is in the best position to continue needed efforts without any disruptions or delays to supported VA programs. Not only does the technical support team provide interoperability between the compatible tools, but they also provide interoperability between DevOps tools, processes, and people enabling the ability to connect, in a coordinated manner, within and across organizational boundaries to access, exchange, and cooperatively use data to deliver and maintain critical systems. Thus, any lapse or degradation in support for DOTS will greatly affect the VA’s ability to provide benefits to

Veterans through the aforementioned systems. DOTS’ integration with project management tools, like JIRA, allow teams to communicate more efficiently resulting in improved service levels that translate to improved quality and faster delivery. The technical support team integrates DevOps tools to provide automated notifications to project teams of system outages or problems affecting the ability for end users to access or complete actions. This integration automatically notifies project teams of incidents and alerts as part of performance monitoring enabling real time communication to the staff that are responsible for troubleshooting and resolving system issues, allowing for timely resolution of problems. The integration of DevOps tools provided by this TO also eliminates the need for resources to manually enter information into disparate systems. The technical support team prevents this duplication of costs by eliminating the need for resources on the 600 project teams to maintain their own set of DevOps tools and eliminating the need for each product team to separately integrate those disparate tools. DOTS also supports project teams to collaborate, track, and monitor continuous integration as well as continuous deployment of changes to systems ensuring all programs are using the appropriate versions of tools and improving the overall security posture of VA. Given the size, complexity and existing integrations within DOTS, any other contractor would require additional time to learn and understand the interplay and interoperability of all 21 tools used by 600 different project teams in order to build upon and take over the current work in progress with no disruption in the operations of DOTS or the underlying program teams. To reduce costs, delays, and disruption to continued accomplishment of the agency’s mission, the management and support of DOTS cannot be handed off and must be continued by the current contractor, Cerner.

It is estimated that any contractor other than Cerner would take three months to fully replace the support currently provided by Cerner, including onboarding staff, and gaining all knowledge to fully perform the requirements of the Performance Work Statement, without any transition between it and Cerner whose current task order expires in September 2024. Based on prior acquisition history and the steep learning curve, VA estimates it would cost approximately to transition all current software licenses to a new contractor, to onboard and train staff to understand the complexities of the current DOTS architecture, and be able to maintain numerous integrations between 21 separate commercial applications and 600 separate VA project teams, as well as transition all documentation and Authority to Operate documentation for DOTS to achieve the overall expertise and knowledge already acquired by Cerner.

During this transition, required technical and help desk support, as well as the availability of the commercial applications that make up the suite, would be greatly at risk of disruption. Discontinuing the DOTS technical support team and the DevOps Tools Suite would result in delays to the delivery of VA benefits while project teams decouple their current continuous integration and continuous delivery process and integrated DevOps tools from their underlying systems. Delivery of new, and maintenance of existing, Veteran facing features and tools would also be delayed as a result of the need to resume manual data entries and communications across organizational boundaries and with each separate system, something not required with the DOTS integrated solution.

Utilizing Cerner is the most efficient and economical method to meet the Government’s critical requirements and support Veterans. Cerner’s continued support is crucial due to its unique, intimate, and specialized knowledge, understanding, and lessons learned over the past five years of support to VA. Cerner has the technical and institutional knowledge, experience, and staff in place to prevent any undue delays. In the interest of economy and efficiency, this logical follow-on will avoid cost from delays, disruption of services, and duplication of efforts.

6. Efforts to Obtain Competition: Market research was conducted, the details of which are in Section 8 of this justification. Although there are other vendors with appropriately skilled employees, none could prove they fully understood the complex dependencies and interfaces to complete this work without a duplication of time and effort to provide a smooth transition. Additionally, as described above, VA is still finalizing the requirements for the follow-on MTS and thus it is impossible for VA to fully determine and evaluate capable vendors at this time. In accordance with FAR 5.301 and16.505(b)(2)(ii)(D)), the award notice for this action will be synopsized on the Contracting Opportunities website and this justification will be made publicly available within 14 days of award of the modification.

7. Actions to Increase Competition: No barriers to future competition are anticipated.

The Government plans to finalize requirements, solicit, and award a new, long-term competitive contract or task order that can be transitioned during this 7-month period.

The VA TAC anticipates issuing a competitive solicitation in the 1st quarter of fiscal year (FY) 2025. This extension will provide continued support and allow for several months for a transition to any potential new vendor for a procurement of this scope and size should a new vendor be awarded the new long-term contract/task order.

8. Market Research: VA’s technical experts conducted market research in July and August 2024 to ascertain if other vendors could satisfy the requirements. Specifically, market research was performed by researching use of alternative contractors under the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Solutions for Enterprise-Wide Procurement (SEWP) V Governmentwide Acquisition Contract (GWAC). While alternative sources were found that may be able to meet VA’s need for software licenses, the NASA SEWP V GWAC was not deemed appropriate for procuring the necessary technical support and services, and thus the VA has had to begin market research again to ensure an appropriate contract vehicle is identified. Additionally, since VA’s requirements are still being finalized, it is hard to determine fully which vendors are fully capable and which are not. Formal market research will be released prior to the close of Fiscal Year 2024 to determine a strategy for the competitive follow-on to be awarded in FY 2025. However, currently there is no alternative source that could immediately address, and continue working, to ensure the continued operations and maintenance of DOTS without a transition of three months. While market research indicates there are several contractors in the federal marketplace that are interested in performing the required services, only the incumbent possesses a full understanding of the scope of work, the requisite institutional knowledge, and the staff in place that would avoid significant negative impacts to DOTS and the important VA programs it supports.

Therefore, this 7-month extension will be awarded in the interest of economy and efficiency to prevent a disruption or delay in service while a new competitive solicitation is completed.

9. Other Facts: None.

10.Technical/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

12.Contracting Officer Certification/Approval

I certify that this justification is accurate and complete to the best of my knowledge and belief.

Advocate for Competition Approval

In my role as procuring activity Advocate for Competition, based on the foregoing justification, I hereby approve the acquisition of a 7-month extension to the current DOTS Task Order on an other than fair opportunity basis pursuant to the authority cited in Section 4 above, subject to availability of funds, and provided that the property and services herein described have otherwise been authorized for acquisition.