JA_NCPTSD Literature Database Published_Redacted.pdf

SOLE SOURCE JUSTIFICATION UNDER SIMPLIFIED PROCEDURES FOR CERTAIN

COMMERCIAL ITEMS IN ACCORDANCE WITH FEDERAL ACQUISITION

REGULATION (FAR) 13.5

1. Contracting Activity:

Department of Veterans Affairs Office of Acquisition Operations Strategic Acquisition Center (SAC) 10300 Spotsylvania Ave, STE 400 Fredericksburg, VA 22408

2. Description of Action:

The proposed action is for a twelve (12) month firm-fixed price (FFP) contract with four (4) twelve

(12) months option periods for procurement to provide a platform and support for PTSDpubs, an online bibliographic database for literature on PTSD. VHA has previously purchased these services from Cygnus Corporation, Inc., under contract VA119-17-C-0077, from September 29, 2018 through September 28, 2022, and this proposed contract will continue the procurement of such services. This activity proposes to award a non-competitive sole source award to Cygnus Corporation, Inc., a woman owned small business.

3. Description of the Supplies or Services:

The proposed action is to provide PTSD online bibliographic services. The overall purpose of this project is for NCPTSD is to retain PTSD bibliographic services. These services will enhance the dissemination of PTSD information to PTSD researchers, Veterans, clinicians etc. VA’s National Center for PTSD is to advance the clinical care and social welfare of America's Veterans and others who have experienced trauma, or who suffer from PTSD, through research, education, and training in the science, diagnosis, and treatment of PTSD and stress-related disorders. The intended contractor shall be Cygnus Corporation, a woman owned small business, beginning in September 2022. The Independent Government Cost Estimate (IGCE) and Market Research revealed an estimate value of with a Base Period estimate valued at and four twelve (12) month Option Periods estimate value at

4. Authority:

The statutory authority permitting other than full and open competition is 41 U.S.C.1901 as implemented by the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) 13.501(a)(1)(ii) entitled, “Sole Source Justification Under Simplified Procedures for Certain Commercial Items In Accordance with Federal Acquisition Regulation.”

5. Rationale Supporting Use of Authority Cited Above:

The proposed requirement is to enhance the dissemination of PTSD information to PTSD researchers, Veterans, clinicians etc. VA’s National Center for PTSD is to advance the clinical care and social welfare of America's Veterans and others who have experienced trauma, or who suffer from PTSD, through research, education, and training in the science, diagnosis, and treatment of PTSD and stress-related disorders. Cygnus is a Small Business (Women Owned) and not an SDVOSB (see SAM report). Cygnus has been the contractor who can efficiently and effectively executed the expired contract which ran from September 29, 2018, through September 28, 2022. PoolParty and Drupal expertise are key elements to the success of PTSDpubs. PoolParty is a software that is distributed by few companies. PoolParty is a software that is essential to automate metadata creation and make information readily available to be used, shared and analyzed within the PTSDpubs Database. PoolParty uses advanced text mining algorithms and Natural Language Processing (NLP) to automatically extract relevant entities and terms from documents. It also allows you to automatically tag these entities to create further metadata which are very valuable for knowledge management search engines. Of the few PoolParty companies only Cygnus pairs this with the Drupal experience.

Drupal is an open-source web content management system and provides an open-source back-end framework. There is no competition anticipated for this acquisition. Additionally, the cost and potential IT systems failure associated with having a new vendor would be at a cost significantly higher than that of Cygnus. A new vendor would need to get established, along with being familiarized with the PoolParty and Drupal software to be ready to publish with minimum to no errors.

6. Efforts to Obtain Competition:

Market research was conducted, details of which are in the market research section of this document. This effort did not yield any additional sources that can meet the Government’s requirements. Additionally, the proposed action will be synopsized on the Federal Business Opportunities Page in accordance with FAR 5.201. Any proposals that are received shall be evaluated.

7. Actions to Increase Competition:

The Government will continue to conduct market research to ascertain if there are changes in the market place that would enable future actions to be competed; however, all future requirements will be handled on a case-by- case basis to determine any future acquisition strategy.

8. Market Research:

Market research for this requirement was conducted in August 2017, again in March 2022. It was determined the most applicable is NAICS 518210 – Data Processing, Hosting and Related Services and PSC R605 Support – Administrative, Library. The VA’s Vendor Information Page (VIP) database query returned a result of no vendors with NAICS 518210 and keyword PoolParty.

The National Center for PTSD’s PTSDpubs database is a multi-platform system that integrates a Drupal content management system with Semantic Web Company’s PoolParty knowledge management platform. Although there are five PoolParty distributors in the U.S., only Cygnus is able to provide both Drupal development services and access to PoolParty. The other distributors include:

Baon Enterprises who primarily focuses on cyber security, data management using MarkLogic (a proprietary software), and access to enterprise knowledge tools such as PoolParty. Their lack of Drupal development experience makes them unqualified for our current development and data management needs.

EBCONT America Corporation is an Austrian IT company that also provides access to PoolParty, but without the aforementioned Drupal experience. Also, all of their locations on their website are based in Austria and Germany, and there is no website for an “EBCONT America Corporation.”

Factor Firm is an “information architecture and human experience consultancy” that appears to advise on constructing taxonomies for information architecture. They do not offer any data management/development services.

Tahzoo offers content management as part of their suite of services (their clients include Starbucks, American Express, Jaguar, DirectTV, etc.), but there is no indication that they provide Drupal development/support.