JEFO_DEC AWS Ceiling Increase (Redacted).pdf

Justification for an Exception to Fair Opportunity Exceeding the SAT pursuant to FAR 16.505(b)(2)(ii)(B)

JEFO No.

JEFO No.:

PR Number:

Agency and Contracting Activity.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Office of Procurement Operations (OPO) Information Technology Acquisition Center (ITAC) prepared this Justification for an Exception to Fair Opportunity (JEFO).

2. Nature and/or description of the action being approved.

DHS OPO intends to increase the value of DHS Enterprise Cloud – Amazon Web Services (DEC-AWS) Task Order 70RTAC24FR0000054 by $ from $ to $3 in support of Solutions Development Directorate (SDD) Headquarters (HQ) without considering other awardees under the First Source II (FS II) Indefinite Delivery Indefinite Quantity (IDIQ) contracts pursuant to FAR 16.505(b)(2)(ii)(B).

3. A description of the supplies or services required to meet the agency’s need (including the estimated value).

Task Order 70RTAC24FR0000054 provides AWS for SDD under the Office of the Chief Information Officer (OCIO) to support DEC, an enterprise government cloud (GovCloud) environment supporting the DHS strategy to acquire and implement enterprise applications and services for joint use across the Department, standardize cloud adoption, and enable cross-department collaboration. AWS hosts functions such as software development, functional quality testing, user acceptance testing, performance testing, and disaster recovery as a Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP) High compliant public cloud service provider. AWS services include:

Relational Database Services ECS-Other S3 FSx Elastic File System CloudWatch Direct Connect

VPC

EC2-ELB

EC2-Instances.

SDD, in support of OCIO, will satisfy OBIM HART’s AWS requirements which include the following AWS GovCloud services:

ECS (RI – On Demand) Relational Database Service EC2 Compute Savings Plan EC2 Compute Saving Plan for HART Proxy Gateway (HPG) EC2 c5.9xl: HART Parallel Ops Start up: Saving Plan NUF EC2 r5: HART Parallel Ops Start Up: Savings Plan NUF Elastic File System (EFS) Fsx Simple Storage & S3 Glacier OCS Redshift Monthly Services Virtual Private Cloud GuardDuty Cloudwatch Backup CloudTrail Config Data Transfer Direct Connect Key Management Service Secrets Manager Elastic Load Balancing (ELB) HPG Elastic Load Balancing (ELB) Route 53 Quicksight Database Migration Service Enterprise Support Material Request (MRF)

The estimated value for the proposed ceiling increase is $

4. Identify the exception to fair opportunity and supporting rationale.

The DEC AWS task order’s value will be modified in accordance with Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) 16.505(b)(2)(ii), “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.”

Task Order 70RTAC24FR0000054 was awarded to Four Points Technology under the DHS FS II IDIQ strategic sourcing contracts for AWS. Pursuant to the terms of the IDIQ contracts and FAR subpart 16.5, fair opportunity was provided to all IDIQ contract holders who were AWS Resellers in the socio-economic category of Service Disabled, Veteran-Owned Small Business (SDVOSB). Four Points Technology, LLC was the only SDVOSB contract holder to submit a quotation and was subsequently awarded the task order for DEC AWS. The period of performance for this Task Order is July 16, 2024 to July 15, 2025. Market Research was performed prior to the award of the task order. Due to the short period of time that has elapsed since award, new Market Research was not performed specifically for this modification.

As a result of the HART Executive Program Manager and HART Program Management Office’s move to OCIO and the ensuing directive to satisfy OBIM HART’s AWS requirements under SDD, the ceiling amount of Task Order 70RTAC24FR0000054, SDD’s current task order for AWS requirements, needs to be increased.

Task Order 70RTAC24FR0000054 was awarded on a brand name basis in accordance with FAR 16.505(a)(4)(i). The brand name is essential to the Government’s requirements and market research indicates other companies’ similar services do not meet, and cannot be modified to meet, the agency’s needs.

DHS Headquarters (DHS HQ) Cloud Service Providers must meet the requirement of a Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) Publication 199 rating of High, High, High and achieve FedRAMP Joint Authorization Board Approval at High. AWS has been tested to provide the DHS HQ Cloud with FedRAMP-compliant public Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) cloud services and has also been tested to support FedRAMP High – High – High (HHH). In addition, it also offers “US Only” support personnel.

Currently, there are only two Cloud Service Providers that meet the requirement of a FIPS Publication rating of High, High, High: Amazon Government Cloud and Microsoft Azure for Government. Therefore, Microsoft Azure is the only approved alternative to AWS for DHS HQ customer systems, including OBIM HART.

Although Microsoft Azure is an approved alternative to AWS, the current DHS HQ customer systems, including OBIM HART, were built on and engineered for use in the AWS IT ecosystem. Accordingly, DHS HQ network architecture, maintenance platforms, and configuration systems, including those used by OBIM HART, require the use of AWS services to ensure that information flows from the stakeholders to the platform and then back to the stakeholders. Since Microsoft Azure has different controls and interfaces and requires differing resource skill sets, switching to Microsoft Azure services would result in interoperability, compatibility, interface, and scheduling issues that would preclude the OBIM HART system’s support team from providing efficient and effective customer support.

If OBIM HART systems were to migrate out of the AWS GovCloud IT ecosystem, the program would have to re-start at the beginning of the program management life cycle. This would require a massive re-investment by the agency, with costs including testing services for security, engineering buildout, documentation, and training. A migration of the OBIM HART systems out of AWS GovCloud would also result in the platform almost certainly being unusable during a re-competition. As such, procuring something other than the brand name services is not feasible.

The costs of migrating the OBIM systems onto an alternative platform would not be re-couped through potential cost savings from a more competitive procurement, and any downtime of the OBIM systems during a re-procurement has national security ramifications that are unacceptable.

Having established that DHS HQ network architecture, maintenance platforms, and configuration systems, including those used by OBIM HART, require the use of AWS services, it is also imperative that the work be awarded to the vendor currently supporting DEC. If a new vendor were to be awarded the OBIM HART requirements, SDD would be in the position of managing multiple platforms and/or providers for the same services at the same time which would result in duplication of effort, increased cost for management, administration, and oversight, and inefficient use of time and other resources. Additionally, it is in the Government’s best interest to leverage the existing DEC AWS account to benefit from economies of scale, as with some items, such as enterprise support, the cost decereases per unit due to the larger overall spend. Increasing the current DEC AWS contract will align all DHS HQ AWS workloads and maximize efficiency.

5. Determination by the contracting officer that the anticipated cost to the Government will be fair and reasonable.

Prior to the award of Task Order 70RTAC24FR0000054, a comparison of proposed prices to the independent Government cost estimate and the Amazon published commercial pricing list was conducted, and Four Points Technology’s quoted price was determined by the Contracting Officer to be fair and reasonable. Under the task order, Four Points Technology provided the Government a discount off of the Amazon published commercial pricing list which was less than the independent Government cost estimate. The proposed contract action will add additional ceiling to the Task Order and the Government will continue to obtain the discounted rates that were previously determined to be fair and reasonable.