JA MathWorks Software Maintenance and Support Renewal - Redacted.pdf

MathWorks Software Maintenance Control Number VA-25-00021254 Renewal and Support

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 action is for a firm-fixed price delivery order issued under the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Solutions for Enterprise-Wide Procurement (SEWP) Governmentwide Acquisition Contract (GWAC) for renewal of brand name The MathWorks, Inc. (MathWorks) software license maintenance and support.

3. Description of the Supplies or Services: VA Office of Information and Technology (OIT), VA Informatics and Computing Infrastructure (VINCI), located at the Austin Information Technology Center, requires renewal of brand name MathWorks MATLAB software maintenance and support for a quantity of ten (10) existing MathWorks MATLAB licenses and quantity of one (1) Deep Learning Toolbox license for a 12-month period. The Deep Learning Toolbox provides functions, apps, and Simulink blocks for designing, implementing, and simulating deep neural networks. The toolbox provides a framework to create and use many types of networks, such as convolutional neural networks (CNNs) and transformers. The Deep Learning Toolbox can visualize and interpret network predictions, verify network properties, and compress networks with quantization, projection, or pruning. The Government requires the renewal of software maintenance and support to ensure continued support of brand name software that allows VA Health Researchers utilizing the VINCI environment the ability to analyze Veteran data to develop research algorithms, models, and applications. VINCI is the analytical environment which provides researchers with multiple methodologies for analyzing Veteran health data. MathWorks MATLAB allows the integration of MathWorks MATLAB code with other programming languages such as C and C++ and is essential for the collaborative research supported by VINCI. MathWorks MATLAB is a highly utilized tool within the VINCI environment.

Technical support shall consist of access to the latest software releases twice per year, advanced application engineering support, the ability to add new toolboxes, security measures, access to MathWorks MATLAB online, and help desk technical support during business hours of 8:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. Monday through Friday. The period of performance (PoP) for maintenance and support under this proposed action shall be from August 1, 2025 to July 31, 2026.The total estimated value of the proposed action is

4. Statutory Authority: Pursuant to Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) 16.505(a)(4), the following brand name requirement is being justified and approved as an exception to fair opportunity under the statutory authority of Section 41 U.S.C. 4106(c)(2) as implemented by 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: Based on market research, as described in section 8 of this justification, it was determined that limited competition is available for this brand name requirement.

Specifically, MathWorks is the only source capable of providing proprietary software patches, updates, maintenance support, warranty support, and technical support to existing software that is deployed. VA requires seamless interoperability between the aforementioned patches/support and the existing licenses. Failure to provide the proposed continued maintenance and support for the current MathWorks software would result in the software not running efficiently, perform its intended functions, and possible disruption of service impacting 100 researchers and 8,000 daily VINCI users.

Any alternative source is incapable of providing these updates and analysis of the existing code as the software is proprietary and access is restricted to only the Original Software Developer, MathWorks. Access to this proprietary code is paramount to perform root cause analysis, testing, and correction, thereby ensuring optimal functionality of the software and ensuring that the mission critical research is not unduly influenced by malfunctioning software.

While there are similar software solutions with like functional capabilities, VA cannot leverage these solutions without a significant pivot and the incursion of duplicative costs. With such a pivot for use of any other like-software, VA researchers would need to, at a minimum, re-write the individual data query tools that were individually developed for each researcher, and re-run the base results of a research project and execute subsequent changes in the data modeling for each of the research projects in order to get to the current point of progress for those research projects. This change alone would require an approximate 40 hours of work per research project, of which there are currently 100 researchers, totaling nearly 4,000-man hours needed to switch to a new software platform. This estimate is based on historical information for like efforts. In addition to the above-mentioned changes, researchers would need to update all prior research documentation with the new analytical software tool information and the results provided by the tool. Further, this change introduces unacceptable risk that prior findings may be unintentionally invalidated based on the analytical data model used by a different software solution. This would require additional effort to identify the root cause of the deviation. This change would extend the time required to complete individual research projects as revalidation of findings occurs or the findings of long-term research projects could be invalidated, thus requiring the project to start over.

If this brand name maintenance and support is not procured as proposed above, VA would not be able to maintain a monitored, audited, and controlled data environment.

VA would not be able to provide validated findings in a timely manner to meet research mission goals. In summary, a change in the software solution would have a real-world impact on scientific research, rehabilitation, clinical care, and health services provided to Veterans.

6. Efforts to Obtain Competition: Market research was conducted, details of which are in section 8 of this justification. This effort did not yield any additional sources that can meet the Government's requirements. However, the undersigned VA technical representative determined that limited competition is available among authorized resellers for brand name MathWorks licenses, software maintenance and software support. In accordance with FAR 16.505(a)(4)(iii)(A)(1), this justification will be provided with the solicitation to all appropriate NASA SEWP V GWAC holders. Furthermore, IAW FAR 5.301 this action is not required to be synopsized on the System for Award Management Contract Opportunities website at time of award as the total estimated value is below the simplified acquisition threshold. However, an award notice will be posted on the NASA SEWP V website notifying all interested parties of the award decision.

7. Actions to Increase Competition: In order to remove or overcome barriers to competition on future acquisitions for this requirement, the agency will continue to perform market research to consider and ascertain if there are changes in the marketplace that would allow other brand products to work with the existing infrastructure, thus enabling future actions to be fully competed.

8. Market Research: The Government’s technical experts conducted market research in February 2025 by reviewing similar software and alternate technical solutions. The similar software reviewed included RStudio/R, SAS, Stata, and Python. The Government’s technical experts determined that none of these solutions can meet the Government’s need as they do provide a solution to meet the VA’s requirements as described in section 5 above.

Additional market research was conducted by reviewing the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Solutions for Enterprise-Wide Procurement (SEWP) V Government-Wide Acquisition Contract (GWAC) and found there were 37 vendors that provide the brand name renewals, of which there were 12 VetCert Certified Service- Disabled Veteran-Owned Small Businesses (SDVOSBs) listed under Groups B, C, and D. As such, limited competition exists among SDVOSBs for the requirements noted above, and this action will be set-aside to Service-Disabled Veteran Owned SBA VetCert certified business concerns under those groups on NASA SEWP V GWAC.

9. Other Facts: None.

10. Technical and 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 anticipation of competition and discounts among NASA SEWP V GWAC resellers of the required renewal of brand name MathWorks Software Maintenance and Support.

Additionally, catalog pricing for NASA SEWP V GWAC holders has already been determined by NASA to be fair and reasonable. Finally, price analysis shall be conducted by comparing the successful quotation with the independent government cost estimate.

12. Procuring Contracting Officer Certification: I certify that this justification is accurate and complete to the best of my knowledge and belief