JA - Pentaho 5-28-24 final CO signed Redacted.pdf

Pentaho Data Integration Premium Enterprise Edition for Inbound eRx

Control Number: VA-24-00047783

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 order to be issued under the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Solutions for Enterprise-Wide Procurement (SEWP) V Governmentwide Acquisition Contract (GWAC) for Pentaho Data Integration (PDI) Premium Enterprise Edition for Inbound e-prescribing (eRx).

3. Description of the Supplies or Services: VA, Office of Information and Technology, Software Product Management (SPM), has a requirement for brand name PDI Premium Enterprise Edition license that VA relies on for use in the Inbound eRx application. The application, Inbound eRx, provides the valuable ability for Veterans to have electronic prescriptions from external providers submitted to VA to be filled at VA pharmacies. The PDI Enterprise licenses require annual renewal. The period of performance shall be a 12-month base, with three 12-month options. The total estimated value of the proposed action is , inclusive of all options.

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 procurement. The Inbound eRx application has been in production for approximately six years. Only the brand name PDI Premium Enterprise license is compatible and interoperable for its intended use with the Inbound eRx application. PDI is an extract, transform, and load (ETL) solution that can be used to integrate, manipulate, and visualize data. PDI is used to import, transform, and export data from multiple data sources, including flat files, relational databases, Hadoop, and Not Only Structured Query Language (NoSQL) databases. Users can then display this data in a singular view. Inbound eRx was specifically designed to utilize PDI software which is approved for use in accordance with Technical Reference Model v. 24.5. PDI has two editions: a Premium Enterprise Edition and a Community Edition. The Community Edition (Kettle) is an open-source version and is what Inbound eRx is currently using.

VA has since determined that the Community Edition will no longer satisfy the needs of the Government, and that an upgrade to the Premium Enterprise Edition would remedy these deficiencies.

Pentaho Data Integration (PDI)

00047783

Control Number: VA-24-

Not procuring the PDI Premium Enterprise Edition would result in unacceptable cyber security vulnerabilities as updates to the Community Edition are no longer quite as robust or as frequent as they used to be. Also, continued use of the Community Edition would pose an overall greater level of risk of experiencing a major incident because the less frequent updates have to be manually applied, which is both labor intensive and poses a greater overall risk of human error in the way the updates are applied. Ensuring additional optional years will safeguard VA’s ability to continue to fulfil Veterans prescriptions that are submitted from external providers for fulfillment at VA pharmacies, as this application is projected to be utilized for the foreseeable future.

In addition, not procuring the PDI Premium Enterprise Edition would require an additional contract for a software developer to assess other potential products and then re-engineer the application to work with the existing Inbound eRx application that is already in production and serving Veterans. This would cost the Government time and development money estimated to be between $250,000 to $500,000.

6. Efforts to Obtain Competition: Market research was conducted, details of which are in section 8 of this justification. It was determined however, that limited competition is available among authorized resellers for the brand name PDI Enterprise Edition with Premium level of 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, in accordance with FAR 5.301, 16.505(b)(2)(ii)(D), and 16.505(a)(4)(iii), the award notice for this action will be synopsized on the Contract Opportunities website and this justification will be made publicly available within 14 days of award.

7. Actions to Increase Competition: The Government will continue to conduct market research to ascertain if there are changes in the marketplace that would enable future actions to be competed.

8. Market Research: The Government’s technical experts conducted market research in May 2024 to identify other available software that may meet the Government’s requirements. The Government’s technical experts conducted an internet search and evaluated other various brand name ETL data integration software such as Apache Airflow, Oracle Data Integrator, and Talend Open Studios (TOS), however, these software applications do not have the present ability to interface with the Inbound eRx application as it is currently comprised. At present, the Inbound eRx application is in production and is designed to utilize the PDI ETL.

Therefore, the Government’s technical experts determined that only brand name PDI Premium Enterprise Edition can meet VA’s requirements.

Pentaho Data Integration (PDI)

00047783

Control Number: VA-24-

Furthermore, the Government's technical experts conducted market research by issuing a request for Information (RFI) on the NASA SEWP GWAC to all contract holders on December 5, 2023. The RFI closed on December 12, 2023, with no responses received which prompted the Government’s technical expert to contact Hitachi the developer of the PDI product directly. Hitachi had their channel partner, Alvarez, send a quote directly to the Government’s technical expert. The quote was reviewed by the Government technical experts and was determined capable of meeting the Governments requirements.

Additional market research was conducted in May 2024 by the Contract Specialist utilizing the NASA SEWP V Provider Lookup Tool and it was determined that there were nine Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned Small Business resellers of the brand name Pentaho Premium Enterprise Edition. The NASA SEWP V GWAC has a dynamic catalog where line items can be added based on customer requests as long as the required item or service is within scope of the NASA SEWP V GWAC. Based on the above, there is a reasonable expectation that limited competition exists on the NASA SEWP V GWAC. As a result of the aforementioned market research, VA intends to issue a Request for Quotation on the NASA SEWP V GWAC.

Therefore, the Government’s technical experts determined that only brand name PDI Pentaho Premium Enterprise Edition can meet VA’s requirements.

9. Other Facts: None.