JA_TeamSiteV4_Redacted.pdf

OpenText TeamSite Software Maintenance CONTROL NUMBER VA-25-00046553

JUSTIFICATIONFOR 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 (DO) under the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Solutions for Enterprise-Wide Procurement (SEWP) V Government Wide Acquisition Contract (GWAC) for the renewal of brand name OpenText TeamSite software maintenance.

3. Description of the Supplies or Services:

The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), Office of Information Technology (OIT), Web Solutions Services (WSS) has a requirement for brand name Opentext TeamSite software maintenance for the Business and Technical user perpetual licenses currently deployed and in use by the WSS as well as Casual User licenses in use VA wide.

Renewal of Opentext TeamSite annual maintenance is required to allow the Enterprise Content Management System (ECMS) TeamSite to continue running and deploying content onto VA production servers and migrate content and functionality to latest version of the OpenSSL, Apache, SQL server and Apache log4j to make application secure and reliable. ECMS TeamSite provides automated support of business processes such as content authorization and approval workflow processes, change control for tracking and managing updates (versioning, rollback), compliance verification and integration with other authoring and applications development tools.

The required software maintenance shall provide 24x7x365 technical support and software updates, patches, point releases, service releases and security release of applicable software on a quarterly basis, and/or within 48 hours in cases where a high-risk vulnerability fix becomes available. The software maintenance is required to ensure the existing VA owned ECMS Teamsite software remains up to date and fully operational. No software licenses will be procured under this proposed action.

The period of performance shall include a base period from date of award through June 30, 2026, followed by two 12-month option periods for continued software maintenance renewals. The total estimated value of the proposed action, including options, 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 extensive market research, as described in Section 8 of this document, it was determined that limited competition is viable among authorized resellers of the required brand name OpenText TeamSite software maintenance. The current WSS infrastructure is based on existing OpenText TeamSite software and VA requires software maintenance capable of supporting the existing infrastructure protocols and functionality for continued operational availability. Only OpenText, or its authorized resellers, can provide the necessary software maintenance to include updates, patches and releases, because access to the propriety source code is required to develop and implement software updates. No other source is capable of providing the required software maintenance due to the proprietary nature of the software, protocols, and software application programming interfaces. In addition, access to this code is required to ensure the software is properly configured when services are provided. The current system supports content management for VA’s 487 internet websites and 380 Intranet websites. Maintenance support includes remediation of security findings and bug fixes for multiple, critical applications, such as Web Registry, Web Request, Child Care Records Management System (CCRMS) which directly support VA patient care. The use of any other maintenance provider would necessitate the replacement of the existing OpenText TeamSite software licenses in place. Replacing the existing Teamsite software licenses with any other brand software is estimated to cost a minimum $1.5M and require an extensive and complex redesign and integration effort to deploy a new ECMS. Any such replacement effort is estimated to take at least 2 years to complete all while still retaining the critical functionality provided through VA’s existing ECMS until the new system is fully operational. These estimates are based on VA’s initial investment in the Teamsite licenses being maintained and on previous integration efforts of similar size and scope. Failure to renew maintenance on the existing software will leave VA’s content management system without critical updates thereby resulting in significant security vulnerabilities for these vital applications which will affect VA's ability to provide services to its Veterans. Therefore, only brand name Opentext software maintenance support can meet VA’s requirements for this effort.

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. However, the Government determined that limited competition is available among resellers of the required Opentext software maintenance. 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.

7. Actions to Increase Competition: In order to remove or overcome barriers to competition in future acquisitions for this requirement, the Government will continue to conduct market research to ascertain if there are changes in the marketplace that would enable future actions to be fully competed.

8. Market Research: The Government’s technical experts conducted market research in February 2025 by reviewing software maintenance and support services offered by other content management software manufacturers including Adobe, Drupal, and Mura CMS. Specifically, the Government’s technical experts conducted web-based research to ascertain whether other manufacturers’ maintenance services could be provided to existing OpenText TeamSite software. As a result of the market research, the technical experts confirmed that since the source code required to issue the updates is proprietary, OpenText, or its authorized resellers, are the only sources capable of providing the required maintenance and updates for the currently fielded OpenText TeamSite software. Based upon these market research efforts, the Government’s technical experts have determined that only OpenText TeamSite software maintenance can meet VA’s requirements.

Additional market research was conducted in February 2025 utilizing the NASA SEWP V Request for Information (RFI) tool. This RFI resulted with 10 resellers responding to the RFI, four (4) of which were SDVOSB’s. Furthermore, additional market research was conducted by utilizing the Manufacturer Lookup tool on the NASA SEWP V website. This search identified 128 contract holders of OpenText, 18 were identified as SDVOSB’s, and 72 listed as an approved reseller. As a result, there is reasonable expectation that competition exists on NASA SEWP V for brand name OpenText TeamSite Software and Maintenance Support among SDVOSB authorized resellers.

9. Other Facts: N/A

10. Technical/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) historical pricing of previous orders, anticipated competition and discounts among NASA SEWP V GWAC holders. Additionally, NASA SEWP V determined that the catalog prices on it GWACs are fair and reasonable.

Finally, the Contracting Officer shall further determine fair and reasonable pricing based upon comparing contractor quotes to the Government’s Independent Government Cost Estimate.

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

Approval

In my role as procuring activity Advocate for Competition, based on the foregoing justification, I hereby approve the acquisition of brand name OpenText TeamSite software maintenance 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.