JA Redacted FMS.pdf

VA-21-00075439

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 (FFP) Task Order (TO) under Transformation Twenty-One Total Technology Next Generation (T4NG) Contract VA118-16-D-1016 with Systems Research and Applications Corporation (SRA).

3. Description of the Supplies or Services: The proposed action is to provide a four month task order for continued operations and maintenance support to VA's core financial management system (FMS), which is the same support currently being provided under Transformation Twenty-One Total Technology (T4) contract/order number VA11-16-D-1016 / VA118-1010-0047 with SRA. The FMS is a mainframe-based application that has been heavily customized. The required support includes technical support, troubleshooting support, and technical solutions to maintain the FMS, Management Information Exchange (MinX), and Financial Reporting Data Warehouse (FRDW) Systems; as well as support for the financial management annual closeout process and remediation of audit finding to FMS, MinX, and FRDW.

The period of performance of this action will be four months beginning August 01, 2021 through November 30, 2021. The total estimated value of the proposed action is $664,985.00.

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), which states that "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 SRA, 4300 Fair Lakes Court; Fairfax, VA, 22033. SRA was awarded the original FMS support task order on May 26, 2016 on a competitive basis under the T4 contract vehicle. This task order is set to expire July 31, 2021. There has been a delay in the award of the new, competitive, service-disabled Veteran-owned small business (SDVOSB) set-aside task order under T4NG entitled, “Corporate Consolidated Support Services (CCSS)”, which is going to consume the FMS support work currently being performed by SRA under contract/order number VA11-16-D-1016 / VA118-1010-0047.

The delay of the competitive task order for CCSS is due to the complexity of the CCSS requirements which, in addition to FMS support, includes support for the ongoing operations, maintenance, and enhancements of the products assigned to the corporate (CORP) Portfolio that provides services to support Legacy Sustainment Applications and DevSecOps for CORP Portfolio Product Lines (PL) and Products. The CORP

Portfolio is currently responsible for approximately 155 products assigned withing four PLs and is subject to change over time.

The estimated award date for the competitive CCSS task order is September 30, 2021, which would thereby result in a lapse in FMS support if the current task order with SRA ends on July 30, 2021. SRA is the only vendor with the ability to seamlessly continue providing project management, operational, troubleshooting, and technical solutions support to the current requirements of T4 contract/order number VA11-16-D-1016 / VA118-1010-0047. As such, it would be impractical and inefficient to attempt to onboard a new vendor to provide the required services for the limited performance period between the expiration of the current task order with SRA and award of the new CCSS task order, taking into account at least 30 days being required for any new staff under the CCSS task order to be onboarded and working at full capacity given the learning curve associated with FMS requirements.

FMS manages and accounts for all of the money in VA's Congressional appropriation.

FMS handles the funds that support, directly or indirectly, Veterans' housing, benefits, and medical care. A disruption to the services will result in critical outages or delays in approximately 16 million transactions per year to include Veterans housing, pensions, medical, disability, and travel payments.

6. Efforts to Obtain Competition: Market research was conducted, details of which are in Section 8 of this document. This effort did not yield any additional sources that can meet the Government’s requirements without a negative impact on current operations.

There is no competition anticipated 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 Contract Opportunities/SAM.gov site and the justification will be made publicly available within 14 days of award.

7. Actions to Increase Competition: As noted above, the Government is in the middle of a competitive, SDVOSB set-aside procurement for CCSS support, which includes the requirements for FMS support currently being provided by SRA. The estimated award date of the competitive CCSS task order is September 30, 2021.

8. Market Research: FMS subject matter experts regularly review industry trade publications and conduct internet research to ascertain what vendors are capable of providing the required FMS support. From these efforts, the Government’s technical experts have determined that only the current technical support team from SRA can meet VA’s immediate requirements for continued FMS support. While FMS subject matter experts concede that other vendors may have the general capabilities to perform the current FMS requirements, none other than SRA could meet the immediate requirements in a seamless manner.

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.

Charles Schoolcraft Date: ______________________

Contracting Officer Representative Signature:________________________

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 a comparison of the proposed pricing with the price currently being paid under existing contract/order number VA11-16-D-1016 / VA118-1010-0047 with SRA.

Robert C. Kately Date: ___________________________

Contracting Officer Signature: ____________________________

12. Procuring Contracting Officer Certification: I certify that this justification is accurate and complete to the best of my knowledge and belief. As this contract action exceeds the simplified acquisition threshold, but does not exceed $700,000, the certification required by FAR 16.505(b)(2)(ii)(C)(1) serves as approval.

Robert C. Kately Date: ________________________________

Procuring Contracting Officer Signature: ____________________________

Approval

In my role as Procurement Service Director, One Level Above the Contracting Officer, based on the foregoing justification, I hereby approve the acquisition of FMS Support, in accordance with VAAM M816.505(b)(2)(ii)(C)(1), on an other than fair opportunity basis pursuant to the authority cited in Section 4 above, subject to availability of funds, and provided that the property and services herein described have otherwise been authorized for acquisition.

Date: ____________ Signature: _________________________________ Robert Kirzow Director, Procurement Service A Technology Acquisition Center

Office of Procurement, Acquisition, and Logistics