JA ESIP Extension P00049 - REDACTED.pdf

Enterprise Services Integrated Platform and System Administration Services Extension

Control Number: VA-25-00053352

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 the Firm-Fixed-Price (FFP) Task Order (TO) 36C10B20N10020015 issued under Transformation Twenty-One Total Technology Next Generation (T4NG) Contract VA118-16-D-1002 with Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), 12010 Sunset Hills Road, Reston, VA 20190. The purpose of this modification is to extend the period of performance (PoP) of Option Period Six and Optional Tasks Two through Seven for two months and incorporate an additional one-month option period. This extension will serve as a bridge of support for Enterprise Services Integrated Platform (ESIP) Development, Sustainment, Data Management, and System Administration Services support until a new competitive TO is awarded.

3. Description of the Supplies or Services: On January 22, 2020, The TO was awarded to Halfaker and Associated on a competitive basis under Service-Disabled Veteran- Owned Small Business (SDVOSB) set-aside procedures on the T4NG contract vehicle with a total value of $188,953,297.46. Subsequently, Halfaker and Associates was acquired by SAIC on October 15, 2021, and on April 22, 2022, the TO was novated to reflect the change. On June 28, 2023, Modification P00029 subsequently descoped excess unused ceiling due to ceiling realignment of the total number of months transferred to reflect only whole months transferred, decreasing the TO total value from $188,953,297.46 by $89,079.53 to $188,864,217.93. On January 7, 2025, Modification P00045, extended Option Period Six period of performance two months from January 23, 2025 through March 22, 2025 and incorporated two one-month option periods. As a result, the TO total value increased from $188,864,217.93 by $640,157.85 to $189,504,375.78. On March 20, 2025, Modification P00048 subsequently descoped reallocated unused ceiling excess unused ceiling due to ceiling realignment of the total number of months transferred to reflect only whole months transferred, decreasing the TO total value from $189,504,375.78 by $31,652.94 to $189,472,722.84. The scope of the ESIP Development, Sustainment, Data Management, and System Administration Services TO is to provide development and sustainment scrum teams for Data and Analytics products: VA Profile, Repositories (Administrative Data Repository)/Health Data Repository (HDR)/ VA/DoD Identity Repository (VADIR)), Veteran Information /Eligibility Records Services VIERS and Data Access Services (DAS). Agile scrum teams provide system administration (monitoring, system backups, patches, performing installations, etc.), Capacity/Availability planning, help desk support, data analysis, issue remediation, technical analysis, architectural guidance, development, feature testing, maintaining partner interfaces and associated support, performance testing,

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 SAIC, 1120 Vermont Ave NW, Washington, DC 20005. SAIC was awarded the ESIP TO on January 23, 2020, on a competitive basis under Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned Small Business (SDVOSB) set-aside procedures on the T4NG contract vehicle. The PoP for VA's current TO with SAIC ends on May 22, 2025. VA is in the process of competitively awarding a new TO for Data Analytics Integrated Modernization and Operations (DAIMO), which encompasses the ESIP TO services. In August/September 2023, VA leadership determined it would be best to consolidate two current TOs into one effort, TO 36C10B20N10020015 which provides ESIP Sustainment, Data Management, and System Administration Services for VA facilities located in Salt Lake City, UT; Washington, DC; and/or Austin, TX and TO 36C10B20N10020015, which provides ESIP services for Austin, TX and various remote sites. SAIC is currently providing and meeting the programmatic and technical support requirements as described in Section 3 above for ESIP. The ESIP environment is complex and unique. The platform and services needed to operate the environment include an infrastructure composed of multiple models of storage and servers, Extract Transform, and Load services, cohort development and provisioning services, Windows and Linux administrative services, SAS expertise, Software development along with many other products and services are required to support the SAIC environment. Extending the current TO with SAIC enables continuity of operations, sustainment, and knowledgeable resources to address outages or other service needs.

Previously, with the data analytics work being spread across multiple portfolios and pillars, there were numerous contracts that all had similar and/or redundant scope.

This dispersion of Data Analytics project work created challenges in ensuring effective oversight and created unnecessary cost inefficiencies. To address these shortcomings, leverage economies of scale, produce tangible and intangible cost savings and to improve management oversight of all data analytics work, the Data Analytics Pillar has made the strategic decision to consolidate all data analytics efforts into one standalone TO, called DAIMO. The DAIMO contract received a significantly higher number of proposals than initially anticipated. The unexpectedly high volume of proposals has directly impacted the evaluation timeline. Due to higher number of proposals received and the extensive reviews related to the down-selection process the schedule was pushed an additional two months beyond the original projection. Once the competitive TO is awarded, there is also a need for at least 30-60 days of overlap due to SAIC possessing significant institutional knowledge of the technical environment, operational processes, and historical challenges. This knowledge includes a thorough understanding of the system architecture, existing workflows, and stakeholder relationships critical to maintaining continuity of operations to support a seamless transition of the services to a new vendor. For these reasons, ESIP requires support

Any source other than SAIC would require significant ramp up time of approximately 30- 60 days, which would cause significant delays in VA’s ability to provide the level of technical support necessary to continue support of all SAIC operations including the continuous operation and availability of the aforementioned infrastructure, application, and software. While some of the support needed is industry standard (e.g., break/fix, license upgrades, new installs, upgrades, and patches), other sustainment and operations are unique to the SAIC environment. This would have very real and dire consequences to researchers and clinicians who continue to require uninterrupted access to the SAIC environment they depend upon to conduct critical healthcare information. Further, additional time would be necessary to account for the onboarding process which is estimated to take approximately 30-60 days.

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 meet the Government’s requirements. 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 Contract Opportunities Page 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.

The follow-on TO is anticipated to be awarded in third quarter of Fiscal Year 2025 under competitive procedures. All Future actions are anticipated to be competitively awarded, ensuring transparency, promoting fair and open competition, and providing opportunities for a diverse range of qualified vendors to participate.

8. Market Research: This requirement is leveraging market research conducted in November 2023 as part of the competitive procurement, which includes support for the same services. On November 23, 2023, the Government released an RFI for DAIMO on the Contract Opportunities site via SAM.gov. The RFI included a draft PWS and requested that interested parties provide indication of their respective capabilities to perform the aforementioned services. On December 6, 2023, the RFI closed and 36 responses were received to include; 15 Large Businesses: Accenture Federal Services LLC, Ampcus Inc., Booz Allen Hamilton Inc. (BAH), Carahsoft Technology Corporation, Cloudera(Government Solutions), Inc., International Business Machines (IBM) Corporation, Deloitte Consulting LLP, Dell Technologies Inc., Huron Consulting Services LLC, InterSystems Corporation, SAIC, TISTA Science and Technology Corporation (TISTA), Leidos Inc., Acumen Solutions Inc., and CGI Federal Inc.; seven SDVOSBs: Castillo Technologies LLC (doing business as (dba) Cloud Computing Technologies), Andrew Morgan Consulting LLC, ClearCore LLC, HPC Solutions, Mind Computing Inc., Rios Partners LLC, Veterans EZ Info Inc.; 10 Small Businesses: RV Global Solutions Inc, BPM Advisors LLC, Amida Technology Solutions Inc., Burntcow MediaWorks LLC, Cogitativo Inc., Initiate Government Solutions LLC, Federal Management Partners LLC. (dba FMP Consulting), OmniSync Incorporated, Vega Management Consulting LLC joint venture with Mahaaya, Vidya LLC; and four HUBZone, SBA 8(a), & Women-Owned Small Businesses: 6e Technologies, Diaconia LLC, Judit Inc. and RCI, Choksi Inc. (dba Proksi Systems). The Government technical experts completed a thorough technical analysis of the RFI responses, which resulted in the Government deeming nine of the above vendors capable of meeting the requirement.

In November 2024, the Government technical experts reviewed the above-mentioned vendors and found that only SAIC would be able to start on day one providing the ESIP services. While there are nine vendors deemed capable of meeting the requirements due to its similar general capabilities, most of the vendors would be unable to provide the seamless support needed for ESIP. Additionally, specifically for this action, the Government technical experts conducted market research in November 2024 by reviewing the T4NG Prime contract holder’s websites. As a result of that market research, it was determined that at least four T4NG Prime contract holders are capable of performing the effort; BAH, IBM, TISTA, and Cognosante MVH, LLC; however, only SAIC is capable of providing seamless ESIP support until award of the competitive TO.

Only SAIC has the technical expertise and experience that can meet VA’s needs in the required timeframe for seamless continuation of cybersecurity services for VA consisting of all technical activities described in Sections 3 and 5 above until the new TO is awarded. The competitive TO is currently projected to be awarded in the June timeframe. This extension will provide for the timely continuance of this critically needed support in order to ensure there is no gap in service.

9. Other Facts: None.