JA JEFO ODT_OIM Data Center Support_ Bridge 5 Order_redact_Redacted.pdf

Justification for an Exception to Fair Opportunity

1. Identification of the agency and contracting activity:

a. Federal agency and contracting activity.

Department of Health and Human Services, U.S. Food and Drug Administration, Office of Acquisitions and Grants Services (HHS/FDA/OAGS)

b. Sponsoring organization.

FDA/OO/OIMT/OIM/OTD/DIO

c. Contracting Officer’s Representative (COR)/Requiring Activity Point of Contact (POC) information.

i. COR/POC:

ii. Mailing address:

iii. E-mail address:

iv. Telephone number:

2. Nature and/or description of the action being approved.

The subject acquisition is a bridge task order to an existing sole source task order to Enterprise Services LLC/Perspecta Enterprise Solutions LLC in support of the Office of Information Management and Technology (OIMT); to be issued under NIH Information Technology Acquisition and Assessment Center (NITAAC) CIO-SP3 Government-Wide Acquisition Contract (GWAC) number

HHSN316201200026W.

The new order is to provide services for continued support for the FDA’s four data centers and IT infrastructure until the new contract is awarded. The period of performance will be for a base period of 12 months with one (1) 6-month option period. The services are mission critical to the ensure the FDA infrastructure operations are not interrupted or compromised.

a. Acquisition purpose and objectives.

The purpose of the bridge order is to maintain continuity of operations of all the tasks in the FDA Data Center and Infrastructure Support Task Order until such a time when a new contract is awarded and transition activities are completed. Tasks include the management of FDA’s four data centers, providing enterprise services, data center lease and operations, application operations, database operations, running the System Management Center (SMC), and related project management activities.

Enterprise Services LLC/Perspecta Enterprise Solutions LLC is the only responsible source for this bridge order as the FDA cannot afford unacceptable delays in fulfilling the agency’s requirements and would result in a duplication of transition costs.

The services to be provided under the bridge order are mission critical to the FDA; without the services, the FDA would not be able to serve the public as the FDA would not have any network connectivity, or data center and enterprise services. The incumbent contractor has all the necessary the staff in place with expert knowledge for operating and maintaining the data center and networks. A rushed and improper transition from one contractor to the next could severely impact the continuity of operations for the FDA and creates a great potential for an overarching agency failure.

Due to delays in soliciting and awarding the new contract and the fast-paced changing nature of technology, FDA’s Office of Information Management Technology (OIMT) needed to re-evaluate the needs going forth for FDA’s IT infrastructure. The change in strategy going-forth will enable FDA’s modernization of regulatory science; acceleration of medical product development;

support of innovations in the health sciences; and increase the efficiency and cost effectiveness of regulatory operations. FDA needs to undergo a significant technical transformation focused on information technology modernization emphasizing innovation, cost efficiency, data management, and operations. This will allow FDA to deliver on its mandate to promote and protect the public health of Americans. The FDA is currently finishing market research and developing the solicitation requirements with anticipated timeline of issuing the solicitation if December 2023.

Competing this bridge order and possibly awarding it to another contractor would create a duplication for the cost of transition services from the incumbent to the new contractor; and again when the new contract action is awarded; thus needing transition costs twice. The FDA anticipates transition period of performance estimated to be at a minimum of 60 days; current cost per month for the operations of the data center is approximately $3.75 million. Therefore, if this bridge order is solicited, the estimated duplicative transitions costs is estimated to cost the FDA $7.5 million. Additionally, there would be time and effort wasted by the FDA to facilitate the transition requirement multiple times when there is already a pending competitive solicitation.

b. Project background.

The FDA Data Center and Infrastructure Support Task Order was competitively awarded under the FDA’s Information and Computing Technologies for the 21st Century (ICT21) multiple-award IDIQ contract vehicle to Perspecta under contract no. HHSF223200850014I, order no.

HHSF22301001T. The order’s initial end date was March 29, 2019. This order was extended three times in accordance with FAR clause 52.217-8, for 2 months each time, and the FDA could not extend it past September 29, 2019. The total award value inclusive of the extension was $173,205,666.98.

Subsequently, a sole source GWAC bridge order issued off CIO-SP3 to Perspecta under contract

no. HHSN316201200026W, order no. 75F40119F80458 to bridge the gap until a new data center contract can be awarded. A modification was issued to the bridge contract for an additional 12-month period of performance which extended the period of performance through September 29, 2021. A second 12-month period of performance extended the order through September 29, 2022. The value of this order is $131,108,988.32. Due to further delays, another sole source GWAC order was issued off CIO-SP3 under contract number HHSN316201200026W, Task Order Number 75F40122F80448, with a base period of six (6) month and three (3) two-month options periods for a total period of performance of 12 months; expiring September 29, 2023. The value of this order is $46,498,851.00.

As the new contract is not in place, it is critical and necessary for the continuity of operations.

Therefore, a new bridge task order is required.

The purpose of the sole source GWAC order was to bridge the gap between the previous contract and the new anticipated, competitively awarded contract. The original solicitation for the recompete of the data center services contract was originally issued in winter of 2019 on CIO-SP3.

All the responses received were found to be technically unacceptable. The solicitation was reposted to CIO-SP3 in summer of 2019 after some amendments, but the responses again were found to be technically unacceptable. Following the revised solicitation, OIMT determined that they needed to review the scope of work before soliciting again. A sources sought was posted to beta.sam.gov in July 2020 to seek feedback from the industry to better define the FDA data center requirements and strategies moving into the future. With to the volume of responses received from the sources sought from both small and other than small size businesses, the FDA determined that additional time would be required to determine the best acquisition strategy going forward before re-solicitation.

FDA currently manages its worldwide IT infrastructure from a centralized Systems Management Center (SMC) that provides Network Operations and Cybersecurity Operations oversight. SMC is a Government-owned/Contractor-operated (GOCO) Data Center. Notwithstanding the procurement delays, OIMT has continued planning for the modernization of FDA’s IT infrastructure and data center to ensure it meets the future needs of the FDA as well as meeting FDA’s mandate to promote and protect the public health of Americans; and is moving away from a GOCO Data Center to a Private/Public Cloud Management Services (PPCMS) Solution. The FDA is currently finishing market research and developing the solicitation requirements with anticipated timelines of issuing the solicitation in December 2023, proposals due in February 2024 with evaluations and award of the new contract by June 2024.

With the new direction for FDA’s IT infrastructure and data center requirements, the FDA now requires the subsequent bridge task order to ensure there is no interruption of services for the FDA data centers and infrastructure operations and to allow time for transition-out services from the GOCO data center model that FDA currently utilizes to the new PPCMS solution. The bridge effort will consist of a base period of one-year to maintain current operations of the FDA IT infrastructure and data centers with a six-month option period for transition out of data center services. The option period will allow time for the approval of the project plan of new vendor and FDA Authority to Operation (ATO) approvals for the transition to the PPCMS solution. During this process, the bridge order will maintain services for management of FDA’s four data centers and IT infrastructure and conducting an inventory of FDA’s hardware and software to align with new solution approach and requirements for security; infrastructure; applications, middleware and databases; enterprise operations, service management; and managed services. Dependent upon the project plan by the new vendor and the technical dependencies of the project, some services will transition directly to the new cloud solution while others will need to be transitioned to the new vendor based on ATO’s are received and the logical technical dependencies of the FDA’s IT infrastructure, and data center hardware and software components.

3. Description of the supplies or services required to meet the agency’s needs (including the estimated value).

a. Project title.

FDA Data Center Support Services

b. Project Description.

To ensure continuity of operations, the Office of Information Management and Technology (OIMT) seeks to exercise another bridge contract for continued operations of its data centers and infrastructure needs. As a result of delays with competitive follow-on contracting efforts, OIMT seeks to obtain continued services through the incumbent contractor. This bridge contract will mitigate any risks of losing support services for tasks covered in this contract. The FDA is seeking the same level of support services with the incumbent until a new competitive procurement is awarded in 20242. The bridge contract serves an important role in bridging service gaps and risks to the Agency’s public health mission.

The FDA’s four (4) data centers are located in Silver Spring, MD (9,300 SF), Jefferson, AR, College Park, MD (2,570 SF), and Ashburn, VA (5,300 SF). All of the data centers are Government-owned facilities except for the 5,300 SF data center in Ashburn, VA, which is leased from Digital Realty by the incumbent contractor. This commercially leased data center in Ashburn, VA is considered a Tier three (3) Data Center (as described by uptimeinstitute.org) facility. The lease includes the Data Center Pod and a separate storage room for the storage of equipment and deliveries.

The task areas defined below will support lights-on activities as the FDA works toward realigning its next generation data center requirements. Some tasks from previous bridge orders have been removed as the tasks have been completed. The task areas defined in the scope of work include managing the FDA’s four data centers (subtask areas include providing Enterprise services, Data Center Operations, Application Operations, Database Operations, and running the System Management Center (SMC) (includes the FDA’s SOC and NOC)); managing the FDA’s IT infrastructure (Infrastructure Operations); conducting an inventory of the hardware and software which comprise the FDA’s data centers and IT infrastructure; providing program management support; and transition in and out support.

Requirement type.

Support services (non-R&D) Information Technology (IT)

Type of action.

Follow-on

Proposed contract/order type.

Time and materials

Acquisition identification number.

ALP No.: ODT-23-C-0300

c. Total estimated dollar value and performance/delivery period.

The total period performance for the new bridge task order will be for a base period of 12 months with one (1) 6-month option period with an estimated .

4. Identification of the exception to fair opportunity (see 16.505(b)(2)) and the supporting rationale, including a demonstration that the proposed contractor’s unique qualifications or the nature of the acquisition requires use of the exception cited.

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. Due to the complexity of the scope of services, Enterprise Services LLC/Perspecta Enterprise Solutions LLC is the only awardee capable at this time to support the the FDA data center and IT infrastructure at the level of quality needed to ensure a continuity of services with minimal risk. No other vendor at this time can has the in-depth knowledge to provide the services without significant risk to the FDA mission.

5. Determination by the Contracting Officer that the anticipated cost to the Government will be fair and reasonable.

The new bridge task order will be issued off the CIO-SP3 GWAC. The Program Office will determine if the level of effort is commensurate to the technical solution proposed for the period of performance.

The rates proposed will be against those on the contractor’s GWAC schedule, which have already been determined to be fair and reasonable at the time of GWAC award. A request for discounted rates will be submitted to the contractor. Prior to award, FDA will perform an additional analysis to ensure that the labor mix and level of effort are appropriate for the completion of the work, resulting in a fair and reasonable price.

6. Any other facts supporting the justification.

All the tasks and functions of the FDA Data Center and Infrastructure Support Task Order are essential.

These tasks include but are not limited to server operations, email operations, network operations, security monitoring, etc. This contract is responsible for every facet of the operations of the infrastructure. Without this contract no repairs, changes, upgrades or additions could be made to the environment. The staff on this contract manages outages and the prevention of outages. Without this bridge contract it would be possible for FDA to have many issues and outages. Outages would shut down the operability of the FDA and prevent the normal operation of daily business.

7. Statement of the actions, if any, the agency may take to remove or overcome any barriers that led to the exception to fair opportunity before any subsequent acquisition for the supplies or services is made.

The FDA is an advocate of competition. As mentioned above, the FDA is pursuing competitive action to fulfill its long-term needs for data center support services to align with the needed modernization strategy for the FDA’s IT infrastructure and data center. The actions requested in this justification are essential to maintain operations and protect health and safety of the FDA while a full and open acquisition pursued while an orderly and thorough transition is completed.

10. Head of the Procuring Activity approval and signature.

Signature:

11. Competition Advocate approval and signature.

Signature