JA_DTC_Second_Extension Redacted.pdf

Digital Transformation Center (DTC) PoP Extension VA-24-00097729

JUSTIFICATION

FOR AN EXCEPTION TO FAIR OPPORTUNITY

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 a modification to a Firm- Fixed-Price (FFP) Task Order (TO) 36C10B19N10080030, titled "Digital Transformation Center (DTC)," issued under the Transformation Twenty-One Total Technology Next Generation (T4NG) Contract VA118-16-D-1008 with B3 Group, Inc., 13241 Woodland Park Road, Herndon, VA 20171. On September 26, 2019, the TO was awarded with a 9-month Base Period beginning on September 26, 2021, with 4 12-month Option Periods and 11 Optional Tasks (OT). The last Option Period (Option Period Four) was exercised on June 26, 2023, and currently expires on September 25, 2024. The purpose of this modification is to extend the period of performance (PoP) of Option Period Four to allow the Government the ability to provide core DTC support and exercise OTs 2 through 10 (referenced as OT2 through OT10), for 4 months for the continuation of DTC. This extension will serve as a bridge of support until a new competitive TO is awarded and transitioned. No duplicative OTs will be exercised on the new competitive TO until completion of the current TO's OT PoPs (there will be no duplicative services performed). The OTs executed on the current TO are required to run until the completion of the three-month extension due to the complexity of services required, versus conducting a hand-off to a new vendor mid-PoP.

3. Description of the Supplies or Services: The scope of the DTC TO is to provide technical and operational support to the DTC for Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS), and emerging technologies. Ongoing support also includes all aspects of the DTC Program including project management, security and compliance, platform management, release management, intake, communications, license management, sustainment, and end user support for VA's Salesforce, MuleSoft, Microsoft Power Platform, Microsoft Dynamics 365, Pega, and Appian platforms. This support consists of supporting nearly 70 programs/efforts. The overall support for DTC is critical to ensure continued sustainment support for over 161 SaaS applications, 140 Salesforce Production applications, 91 Power Platform applications, 25 MuleSoft integrations, 11 Dynamics applications, and a Pega application. The work outlined in this justification encompasses enhancement of Cloud Development Standards, Governance and Compliance, Security and Compliance, Platform Management, Intake Processes, Communications, License Management, End User Support, Periodic Data Collection and Data Updates, Core DTC Tasks (OT2), SaaS Services (OT3), PaaS and Emerging Technology Services (OT4), Additional DTC vfvfvDigitalfhfnhnbbgggggg

Core Services (OT5), Infrastructure Improvement (OT6), Configuration (OT7), IT Operations and Maintenance Sustainment Support (OT8), Business End User Support (OT9), and IT End User Support (OT10). Additionally, VA requires core DTC support for 4 months under Option Period Four for additional sustainment services during the time the OTs are exercised. This is required for project management, reporting, security, compliance, platform management, SaaS intake, communications, license management, and end user support. These core services are currently under the task order. This support is critical to sustain and operate these platforms and applications. DTC requires that the current services outlined above continue without interruption to prevent a negative impact to Veterans and patient care resulting from system degradation of mission-critical healthcare applications (such as, VA Health Connect which provides 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year (24x7x365) healthcare services, Tele- Emergency Care which enables nurses to connect a patient with Tele-Emergency medical providers to address emergencies, Provider Connect which increases access to specialists for Veterans in rural and underserved areas, the Status Query and Response Exchange System (SQUARES) application which is critical to house homeless Veterans, the Caregiver Record Management Application (CARMA) which is used to provide payments to Veteran Caregivers, and many others). This extension will ensure continued cybersecurity Authority to Operate (ATO) compliance and end user support for over 400 SaaS/PaaS applications currently in use. The overall period of performance shall be extended from September 26, 2024 to January 25, 2025. The total estimated value of the proposed action is XXXXXXXXXX. However, as there is unused ceiling in Optional Tasks 2 through 10 from the original TO award, that would cover the 4-month extension. As such, the overall TO value of XXXXXXXXXXXX will not increase.

4. Statutory Authority: The statutory authority permitting an exception to fair opportunity is Section 41 U.S.C. 4106(c)(2) as implemented by the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) 16.505(b)(2)(i)(B), entitled "Only one awardee is capable of providing the supplies or services required at the level of quality required because the supplies or services ordered are unique or highly specialized."

5. Rationale Supporting Use of Authority Cited Above: The proposed source for this action is B3 Group, Inc., 13241 Woodland Park Road, Herndon, VA20171.

B3 Group, Inc. is the current Prime Contractor on the DTC TO. On September 25, 2019, the TO was awarded with a 9-month Base Period beginning on September 26, 2019, with 4 12-month Option Periods and 11 Optional Tasks.

Subsequently, on June 26, 2023, the final option period was exercised and currently expires on September 25, 2024. VA is in the process of competitively awarding a new TO. The requirements development for the competitive TO began in the first quarter of fiscal year (FY) 2024, with additional requirements refinement through the second quarter of FY 2024. The Request for Information was released on March 19, 2024, with award currently projected in September

2024. Upon further consideration, due to unplanned delays in the competitive TO award, once it is awarded, there is a now a potential need for a 4 month overlap to support a seamless transition of services to a new vendor, if need be, for such a large-scale acquisition. Awarding a competitive TO at the very end of a government fiscal year introduces additional layers of challenges and risks. This four-month overlap is required for multiple reasons that were not all previously considered or required with the last J&A, including:

• 90 days of overlap required to accommodate:

• Additional time anticipated for onboarding new contractors at the end of a Fiscal Year and beginning of a new Fiscal Year. Typically, the VA onboarding/badging/obtaining equipment/access process takes about 60 days, but the DTC program office has been advised by VA onboarding specialists that onboarding new contractors at the end of a Fiscal Year and/or at the beginning of a Fiscal Year will likely take about 90 days. This contract requires elevated privileges for many of the contractor staff to successfully perform the work, which takes longer than the standard onboarding time. The new vendor must obtain access to all of the applicable environments in order to learn all of the respective systems and become experts to support issues that arise in production.

• An extended period for transition activities between the incumbent and new prime vendor due to the technical complexities of the work required. As the current DTC TO provides support for numerous enterprise-wide platforms that host hundreds of mission-critical VA systems, it is critical to properly address and transition technical and functional requirements spanning security compliance, production incident management, end user support, interoperability standards, architecture, governance, and privacy compliance. A new vendor must learn all existing DTC processes and procedures for building, releasing and sustaining applications within the ecosystem and must take ownership of numerous projects that are in the middle of the build phase that have not yet been released and then perform the subsequent testing and release process to push those features into production.

• 30 days of additional overlap for the new vendor to intake requirements and generate levels of effort (LOEs) and for the government to obtain CIO approvals of the LOEs and process them for award on the new competitive contract.

Not having a 4 month overlap and transition period would result in a break in service. This overlap is to allow for all of the critical activities listed above to occur, which are required for performance of the contract. For these reasons, VA requires a no ceiling increase PoP extension so that VA does not experience a break in service for the following critical services: sustainment support for over 161 SaaS applications, 140 Salesforce Production applications, 91 Power Platform applications, 25 MuleSoft integrations, 11 Dynamics applications, and a Pega application. This support is critical to sustain and operate these platforms and applications. Without continuation of these services, VA faces a gap in support for the critical sustainment, cybersecurity, platform management, incident response, release management, SaaS/PaaS intake/discovery, and end user support provided under the current TO, which would negatively impact patient care, healthcare related applications, security compliance with Federal mandates, and a seamless transition to a new vendor. Any interruption of these tasks executed by the DTC team supporting VA would immediately result in direct impacts to VA mission-critical programs such as the Veteran Homelessness Program, VA 24x7x365 healthcare services, Tele-Emergency Care, Provider Connect, VA Loan Guaranty services, and many other systems/programs, which would cause degradation of systems, services, and applications VA-wide and would severely and negatively affect VA's ability to provide healthcare and homelessness benefits to our Veterans.

For background, the purpose of the first J&A was that the timeline to solicit the follow-on competitive TO has taken longer than anticipated due to unanticipated delays in the competitive award of the new TO. Since the start of the current DTC TO, the DTC Program has taken ownership of multiple new platforms, including Microsoft Dynamics 365, Microsoft Power Platform, Pega, and Appian, which has significantly changed and influenced the requirements for the new competitive contract. The addition of these new platforms has introduced new requirements for cybersecurity support to remediate critical security vulnerabilities and maintaining compliance with FedRAMP/VA ATO requirements. Additionally, there have been emerging PACT Act related requirements that have surfaced over the past six months, specifically for Application Programming Interface improvements which will reduce time to deploy PACT Act related enhancements by 50% and enhance connections with authoritative VA data sources related to toxic exposure to Veterans. The addition of new platform related requirements, new cybersecurity requirements, and new PACT Act requirements were unforeseen when developing the acquisition requirements package for the competitive contract, which contributed to the timelines in which the program was operating.

Based on market research, which can be found in Section 8 of this document, it was determined that B3 Group, Inc. remains the only responsible source capable of satisfying DTC requirements within the required timeframe. Until a new TO is awarded and an orderly transition can occur, no other source can provide the support or continuity of services required because of the delays in the award and execution of the new TO. This extension will provide for the timely continuance of this critically needed support to ensure there is no gap in service, where this continuance is crucial to ensuring continued daily operations of VA's critical sustainment, cybersecurity compliance, platform management, incident response, release management, and end user support for hundreds of SaaS/PaaS applications and over 150,000 users across VA.

Additionally, there are critical custom components and applications which require elevated privileges that rely upon the technical expertise and VA specific knowledge of B3 Group, Inc. contractors in order to maintain functionality and provide maintenance; any impact to the level of support for these applications would result in system degradation of applications that directly impact patient care, such as VA Health Connect which provides 24x7x365 healthcare services, Tele-Emergency Care which enables nurses to connect a patient with Tele- Emergency medical providers to address emergencies, Provider Connect which increases access to specialists for Veterans in rural and underserved areas; as well as VA mission-critical applications such as the SQUARES application which is critical to house homeless Veterans, the Loan Guaranty application which helps allow Veterans to keep their homes by avoiding loan defaults, and the CARMA application which is used to provide payments to Veteran Caregivers.

VA also relies on the technical expertise and VA specific knowledge of the B3 Group, Inc. contractors to ensure continued compliance with FedRAMP/VA ATO Cybersecurity requirements and Federal mandates.

Over the years, DTC has developed very specific methods and applications in order to maintain operations and help VA meet its mission. Any source, other than B3 Group, Inc., would require a ramp-up period of 4 months to onboard and transition appropriate staff, develop a DTC intake/level of effort process, conduct site visits to fully understand end user processes, understand the backend interdependencies with VA authoritative data sources in order to maintain existing connections, obtain necessary permissions and access to VA systems, recruit and train staff with the appropriate skill sets, and properly transition all required tasks and workloads. Without a 4 month ramp-up period, a new vendor would not be able to correctly operate, administrate, and maintain the respective platforms and applications on day one (to include VA Health Connect, Tele- Emergency Care, Provider Connect, SQUARES, CARMA, etc.), nor apply the appropriate processes/procedures until after a transition timeframe, which would have cascading negative effects across VA, resulting in adversarial cyber infiltration, loss of VA data, and significant impacts to patient care. Interruption to any of the above mentioned critical operational activities and essential service tasks executed under the existing TO with B3 Group, Inc. would immediately impact operations of over 400 SaaS/PaaS applications mentioned above. This onboarding period is based on lessons learned and past experience on this effort in addition to similar OIT support contracts. Failure of DTC to provide all current functions until such a time as a follow-on TO and an orderly and complete transition can occur between VA, B3 Group, Inc., and the new TO awardee would cause undue negative impacts to VA such as interruptions to patient care, Federal mandates being missed or not adhered to, and cyber threats going unmitigated, all of which would be unacceptable to VA. Therefore, VA needs to extend the PoP to ensure critical services are continued until a competitive award is finalized. The extension accounts for the time needed to have a new TO awarded as well as the 4 months needed for onboarding, transition, and processing LOEs under the new TO.

6. Efforts to Obtain Competition: Market research was conducted, details of which are in Section 8 of this document. This effort did not yield any additional sources that can provide the seamless support required while the competitive procurement is being solicited, awarded, and transitioned. Due to the critical need for continuity of support, there is no competition anticipated for this acquisition. In accordance with FAR 5.301 and 16.505(b)(2)(ii)(D), the award notice for this action will be synopsized on the Contracting Opportunities website, SAM.gov, and the justification will be made publicly available within 14 days of award.

7. Actions to Increase Competition: No barriers to future competition are anticipated. A competitive TO is anticipated to be awarded in September 2024 and future acquisitions will be awarded on a competitive basis. No duplicative OTs will be exercised on the new competitive TO until completion of the current TO's OT PoPs (there will be no duplicative services performed).

8. Market Research: Throughout FY24 Q2-Q3, DTC Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) regularly reviewed industry trade publications and conducted internet research to ascertain which vendors would be capable of providing the required DTC support. The DTC SMEs conducted continuous market research of the following companies: B3 Group, Inc., SAIC, Optum Serve, Cognosante, Capgemini Government Solutions, LLC., Accenture Federal Services, LLC., Clearwaters Industry Solutions, LLC., Semper Valens Solutions, Inc., Quantum Management, LLC., Oddball, Inc., Veterans EZ Info, Inc., and ICF Incorporated, LLC. From these efforts, the Government's technical experts determined that only the current technical support team from B3 Group Inc. could meet VA's immediate requirements for continued sustainment, cybersecurity support, and end user support within the timeframe. While DTC SMEs concede that other vendors may have the general capabilities to perform the current DTC requirements, none other than B3 Group, Inc. could meet the immediate requirements in a seamless manner.

This market research supports a VA determination that only B3 Group, Inc. is capable of providing continued DTC services until award and transition of the competitive TO. Only B3 Group, Inc. has the technical expertise and experience that can meet VA's needs in the required timeframe for seamless continuation of sustainment, cybersecurity, and end user support services for VA, consisting of all technical activities described in Sections 3 and 5 above until the new contract is awarded. The competitive contract is currently projected to be awarded in the September 2024 timeframe. This extension will provide for the timely continuance of this critically needed support to ensure there is no gap in service.

9. Other Facts: None