JA_PTEMS_Bridge Final Redacted.pdf

PTEMS Total Task Order Value Increase Control Number VA-25-00022285

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) 36C10B21N10150056 titled “Product and Technology Ecosystem Management Services (PTEMS)” issued under Transformation Twenty-One Total Technology Next Generation (T4NG) Contract VA118-16 -D-1015 with Liberty IT Solutions, LLC., which has since been acquired by Booz Allen Hamilton Inc., (referred to herein as BAH) 8283 Greensboro Drive, McLean, VA 22102. On January 8, 2021, the TO was awarded with a 12-month Base Period beginning on January 8, 2021, with 4, 12-month Option Periods and 8 Optional Tasks. On January 8, 2024, the third option period was exercised and currently expires on January 7, 2025.

Subsequently, a Justification for an Exception to Fair Opportunity (J&A) was executed on April 25, 2024, and then again on August 7, 2024, to increase the total TO value for the current PTEMS T4NG TO to serve as a bridge of support until a new competitive TO was awarded. VA competitively awarded a new TO on July 31, 2024; however, the awarded PTEMS 2.0 TO was protested and a mandatory stay of award was issued as a result of the protest. As such, a formal transition of critical efforts from the PTEMS TO to the newly awarded PTEMS 2.0 TO was never performed and will face a gap in service beyond January 7, 2025, when the PTEMS TO will reach its total TO value. The purpose of this justification is to request another increase of the total TO value for the current PTEMS TO so that active program efforts will not experience a gap in service.

No increase to the period of performance is required as PTEMS Option Period Three and Option Period Four can be utilized for this action. This total TO value increase will serve as a bridge of support until successful transition between the current PTEMS vendor and the new PTEMS 2.0 vendor can occur. It will take 60 days to onboard the new awardee and then up to 90 days to transition projects. Additionally, due to the protest and mandatory stay of award issued as a result, some efforts that were supposed to transition to the new PTEMS 2.0 TO could not. As a result, approximately 60 efforts under PTEMS were only funded through December 16, 2024, and will lose support between December 16, 2024, and January 7, 2025. If a protest had not been received, the transition of work for these approximately 60 efforts would have been completed by December 16, 2024.

3. Description of the Supplies or Services: The scope of the PTEMS TO is to enable the delivery of enterprise technology-agnostic capabilities across a broad range of Digital Transformation Center (DTC) Ecosystem solutions for business transformation and digital modernization while mitigating technology debt from developing and maintaining enterprise or monolithic systems. This includes Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS), and emerging technology implementation, lifecycle management and delivery, systems/software engineering, web services development, software release and change management services, data migration, and integration including application programming interface (API) and operations and maintenance support.

Due to a protest that occurred on the newly awarded PTEMS 2.0 TO and from the technical nature and criticality of this task order, mission-critical system requirements need to be addressed via another extension. The overall support for VA is critical to ensure continued sustainment services, cybersecurity support, and mission-critical healthcare modernization support services, currently supporting approximately 60 on-going efforts which were critical to start and must get to a completed state for transition to be successful. VA anticipated these approximately 60 efforts to be executed on the competitive TO, but because that award was protested, VA must continue them via this action due to their criticality. Efforts will transition at various times prior to April 15, 2025.

Each effort will be completed based on technical need and ability to get to a completed state prior to transition. PTEMS is critical to VA’s digital modernization by leveraging a technology-agnostic acquisition strategy that scales across the enterprise and helps VA customers accelerate business outcomes by leveraging the benefits of the cloud ‘as a service’ marketplace and optimizing technology investments through scalability and reusability. DTC requires that the current services outlined in Section 5 below via Optional Task Three (CLIN 7001) and Optional Task Four (CLIN 8001), under TO 36C10B21N10150056, continue without interruption to prevent a negative impact to sustainment of mission-critical applications, VA’s cybersecurity posture, and delivery of healthcare and benefits services to the nation’s Veterans. The total estimated value of the proposed action is XXXXXXXXXX. Due to a protest that occurred on the newly awarded PTEMS 2.0 TO and from the technical nature and criticality of this task order, mission-critical system requirements need to be addressed via another extension.

PTEMS 2.0 was awarded on July 31, 2024. A Government Accountability Office (GAO) protest was filed on August 12, 2024, which immediately stopped all performance including any transition planning. A GAO decision was issued on November 18, 2024, which caused a delay of 100 days for the new awardee to begin performance and transition. This total TO value increase will allow these critical services to continue through April 15, 2025. The new awardee will require up to 60 days to onboard and then start to work on new or continue projects. Once a project is started or extended, from that point it will take up to an additional 90 days to complete transition, to allow projects to get to a completed state for the successful transition to the new awardee.

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 BAH, 8283 Greensboro Drive, McLean, VA 22102. BAH is the Contractor on the PTEMS TO, which is currently in Option Period Three, expiring January 7, 2025, but has Option Period Four to utilize for this action.

Due to a post award protest filed by the unsuccessful incumbent contractor on the newly awarded PTEMS 2.0 TO, there are approximately 60 efforts facing a gap in service between December 16, 2024, and January 7, 2025. On November 18, 2024, GAO denied the protest. On November 20, 2024, the stop work order was lifted for the new competitive contract. This J&A action enables critical ongoing work to continue, which allows for the required 60 days to onboard the new awardee, as well as 90 days to transition projects, intake new requirements, generate levels of effort (LOEs), and for VA to obtain Chief Information Officer approvals of new LOEs and process them for award on the new competitive contract.

Without a proper transition, there would be a break in service. For these reasons, VA requires a modification to increase the total TO value so that these critical services can continue through April 15, 2025. A 90-day transition period is critical to ensure a seamless handoff to a new potential Contractor as there are currently approximately 60 active projects on the current PTEMS TO. In order to properly transition activities to the new competitive TO, it is critical to address technical and functional requirements spanning functional, compliance, non-functional, and visualization aspects to include End-User Requirements and Research, Mock-Ups, Wireframes, Prototypes, Screen Flows and Navigation, Taxonomy and Information Architecture, Business Rules and Reporting, Configuration and Change Management, Acceptance Criteria and Testing Scenarios, and Measurable Success Metrics to comply with critical VA requirements that include Section 508, FedRAMP Authorization, Authority to Operate (ATO), Privacy Impact Assessments, and Interoperability standards.

This up to 90-day transition is required for the following critical knowledge transfer activities, for on-boarding to occur, and for the current efforts to be sustained:

o Some projects have mandates for decommissioning legacy systems and firm requirements for the new system to go-live. A new vendor would not only have to learn the new system but also be able to train thousands of users on how to use the system prior to go-live (training and change management) plus perform data migration of critical data.

o A new Contractor would need to learn all existing DTC processes and procedures regarding VA Lighthouse API capabilities in order to ensure current service level agreements are met, avoiding degradation to APIs and Veterans not being able to access their information. This learning process is required as part of the DTC PaaS onboarding and governance process.

o A new Contractor would need to learn all existing DTC processes and procedures for building and releasing applications within the ecosystem.

o A new vendor would need to learn all existing DTC processes and procedures regarding the Veterans Crisis Line (VCL) Medora system and VA Health Connect (VAHC) system to perform the on-call 24x7 support for both programs. This learning process is required as part of the DTC PaaS onboarding and governance process.

o A new Contractor would need to obtain access to all of the applicable environments in order to learn all of the respective systems and become experts to support issues that arise in production.

o A new Contractor would need to be able to functionally administer and monitor multiple platforms and tools (Medora, Lighthouse, Salesforce, VA.gov, Centralized Data Repository, DTC Integration Platform, etc.).

o A new Contractor would need to take ownership of numerous projects that are in the middle of enhancements development that have not yet been released and then perform the subsequent testing and release process to push those features into production.

o A new Contractor would need to review existing project backlogs and gain technical understanding of each user story and associated priorities.

This total TO value increase will ensure continuity of sustainment support for mission-critical applications (such as Medora, used by the Veteran Crisis Line), VA’s cybersecurity compliance support, digital modernization of healthcare related applications, as well as continued compliance with Federal mandates and mandatory Federal reporting and a seamless transition to a new vendor. Any interruption of these tasks executed by the BAH team supporting VA would result in direct impacts to millions of Veterans and associated VA mission-critical programs such as the Veterans Crisis Line, the Veteran Homelessness Program, VA 24x7x365 healthcare services, Tele- Emergency Care, VA.gov, Provider Connect, Lung Cancer Screening, the API Lighthouse Program which serves over 118,000 Veterans, Community Care Scheduling, Veteran Billing System, National Call Centers (NCCs), Clinical Patient Assessment Calculators, Veteran-Home Intake Contact Center, Eligibility and Enrollment, Veteran Whole Health Mobile App, the Center for Care and Payment Innovation, the Women Veteran Call Center (WVCC), Identity Governance and Administration, Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) Security Support, and many other systems/programs, which would cause degradation of systems, services, and applications VA-wide and would severely and negatively affect VA’s ability to provide suicide crisis support, homelessness benefits, critical healthcare to Veterans, benefits eligibility services, benefits processing, payments to Veterans, and essential security protection/response support. Only current/active program efforts that are facing a gap in service will be continued under this justification; no new projects/program efforts will be executed under this justification. Any new projects/program efforts will be executed on the new competitive TO (or an alternate acquisition vehicle).

Additional high visibility efforts that will lose support starting on December 16, 2024, include Veterans Exposure Team – Health Outcomes Military Exposures (VET-HOME), and Veterans Crisis Line (VCL), which require sustainment of Veteran-facing capabilities mandated by PACT Act. Without the required sustainment support, these applications run the risk of shutting down or experience major delays. It is critical that VCL remains operational as the risk is even higher with Veterans’ lives at stake.

There are approximately nine efforts that will lose support between December 17, 2024, through December 22, 2024; VA Customer Experience Service Recovery Platform (VA CX SRP) (formerly White House Hotline (WHHL)), DIP Sustainment, Beneficiary Travel Self-Service System (BTSSS), VES Modernization, VAHC Mental Health, VA innovation Unit (VAIU), Women’s Information & Services Engine (WISE), Visitor Outreach Interaction & Communication Engine (VOICE), and BTSSS Migration.

Additionally, there are approximately nine efforts that will lose support between December 23, 2024, through December 29, 2024; Customer Experience Insights (CX Insights, formerly CxDW), Voicebot Surge Team, VET-HOME Customer Relationship Management (CRM) AI, Veterans Integrated Service Network (VISN) 2, Robotic Process Automation (RPA) Platform O&M, Tele Urgent Care, RPA National Call Center (NCC), and cATO Renewal – DarkWolf.

Further, there are approximately 25 efforts that will lose support between December 30, 2024, through January 5, 2025; VA Health Connect Customer Relationship Management (VAHC CRM), VA Health Connect Technology Enterprise Integration Support (VAHC EIT), Community Care Customer Relationship Management (CommCare CRM), Identity Governance & Administration (IGA), VHA Enrollment System (VES) Claims Processing and Eligibility (CP&E), Veteran Transition Support, VHA Enrollment System - Product Lifecycle Delivery, VHA Enrollment System – ESM, VHA Enrollment System - ESM Sustainment, VHA Enrollment System - VistA HPS, VHA Enrollment System - IVM/EDB Sustainment, VHA Enrollment System - VistA REE Sustainment, VHA Enrollment System - VistA REE, cATO Base (Rise8), Status Query and Response Exchange (SQUAREs) Sustainment, VHA Enrollment System (VES) Veteran Family Member Program (VFMP) Other Health Insurance (OHI), VFMP Correspondence, External Provider Scheduling (EPS) Wellhive Additions, Enterprise Environment Occupational Safety and Health (EOSH) Cority, VA Centralized Adjudication and Background System (VA-CABS) Sustainment, Veteran Tracking Application (VTA), Voicebot, and API Data/ETL Additions.

Lastly, there are approximately 15 efforts that will lose support between January 6, 2025, through January 7, 2025; Provider Connect, Chatbot Extension, Identity Credential and Access Management (ICAM) SSO, External Provider Scheduling (EPS), Robotic Process Automation (RPA) – Automation Operations and Management (O&M), Veterans Experience Integration Solution (VEIS) Operational Component, VHA Enrollment System (VES) PACT Act, cATO Renewal – DarkWolf, cATO Renewal (Rise8), Dynamics, Lighthouse Additions, Lighthouse Additions (PACT Act), cATO Renewal – DarkWolf, and Veteran Outreach.

In summation, there are approximately 60 efforts that have current end dates that fall between December 16, 2024, and January 8, 2025. Many of these efforts support and sustain applications related to Veterans’ Health and fall under PACT Act requirements.

Any source, other than BAH, would require a ramp-up period of 90 days to onboard and/or transition appropriate staff, develop a PTEMS intake/level of effort process, conduct site visits to fully understand end user processes, understand the backend interdependencies with VA authoritative data sources, obtain necessary permissions and access to VA systems, recruit and train staff with the appropriate skill sets, and properly transition all required tasks and workloads. This 90-day onboarding time period is based on lessons learned and past experience on this effort in addition to similar OIT support contracts. Failure of DTC to provide all current functions until such a time as a follow-on TO and an orderly and complete transition can occur between VA, BAH, and the new TO awardee, would cause undue negative impacts to VA such as interruptions to patient care, Federal mandates being missed or not adhered to, and cyber threats going unmitigated, all of which would be unacceptable to VA. Therefore, VA needs to increase the total TO value to ensure critical services are continued until a competitive award is finalized. The total TO value increase accounts for the time needed to have a new TO awarded as well as the 90 days needed for the transition period. The estimated total TO value increase amount was determined by utilizing a program-specific total cost of ownership model level of effort based on previous and existing requirements.

Based on market research, which can be found in Section 8 of this document, it was determined that BAH remains the only responsible source capable of satisfying PTEMS requirements to successfully transition the projects to the new awardee. No other source can provide the aforementioned support or continuity of services required. This total TO value increase will provide for the timely continuance of this critically needed support to ensure there is no gap in service, where this continuance is crucial to ensuring continued daily operations and sustainment of mission-critical VA applications, cybersecurity posture, and digital modernization.

6. Efforts to Obtain Competition: Market research was conducted, the details of which are in Section 8 of this document. This effort did not yield any additional potential sources that could provide the seamless transition support to the new awardee. Due to the critical need for continuity of support, there is no competition 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 Contracting Opportunities website, SAM.gov, 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. VA awarded a new competitive task order on July 31, 2024, and future acquisitions will be awarded on a competitive basis.

8. Market Research: Throughout FY24 Q2-Q4, DTC Subject matter experts regularly reviewed industry trade publications and conducted internet research to ascertain what vendors might be capable of providing the required PTEMS support. DTC subject matter experts conducted market research of the following companies: BAH, Cognosante MVH, LLC, Accenture Federal Services, Huron Consulting Services, LLC, TISTA, Acumen Solutions, Inc., and Deloitte Consulting, LLP. From these research efforts, the Government’s technical experts determined that only the current technical support team from BAH can meet VA’s immediate requirements for continued sustainment, cybersecurity support, and digital modernization support. While DTC subject matter experts concede that other vendors may have the general capabilities to perform the current PTEMS requirements, none other than BAH could meet the immediate requirements in a seamless manner as detailed above in Section 5 of this justification.

9. Other Facts: None.