JOFOC - CarrotSearch Lingo4G Clustering Tool Final Redact_Redacted.pdf

Justification for Other than Full and Open Competition

1. Agency, Contracting Activity and Document

The National Science Foundation (NSF), Office of the Director (OD) proposes a Justification for Other Than Full and Open Competition for software and analytics tools by Carrot Search. The contracting activity is the Office of Budget, Finance, and Award Management (BFA), Division of Acquisition and Cooperative Support (DACS) located in Alexandria, VA.

2. Action Being Approved

The action to be approved is solicitation and award of a Sole Source contract with Carrot Search S C, in Poznan, Poland for the purposes of acquiring licenses and further development of the Carrot Search product tool and tool data. This will be a Time and Materials contract.

3. Description of Services/Supplies

The NSF has an ongoing need to (a) continually enhance NSF’s existing production systems, (b) efficiently build new NSF tools and heuristic algorithms for document search, clustering and analysis at Enterprise scale, and (c) continue to provide critical support to US government National Counterintelligence investigations at the unclassified and classified level. In summary, the NSF requires a contractor to provide rapid and agile development in a manner well placed to respond to the new and constantly changing analytics and visualization requirements, both within NSF and at the agency-wide level.

NSF requires analytics tools that enable working at multiple levels of analysis; and that offer greater flexibility to segment or aggregate NSF “big data” and represent it in an actionable format. NSF believes there is only one vendor in the market currently capable of providing such services via state-of-the-art clustering and classification technologies, which solve the speed issues associated with older algorithms, while providing improvements in precision and recall.

The estimated value of the new 3-year contract for the Carrot Search tool suite is $650,000.

4. Statutory Authority

The statutory authority for this action is 41 U.S.C. 1901 as implemented by FAR 13.501, following the formatting requirements of 6.302-1 “Only one responsible source and no other supplies or services will satisfy agency requirements.”

5. Unique Qualifications

The Carrot Search product constitutes a highly effective technology solution to support NSF’s pre-award, award and post-award activities. The tools have been independently developed by Carrot Search but further refined in conjunction with NSF deliverables and plays a key role in NSF meeting the federal regulations and mandates. NSF is strongly focused on mandates to encourage agencies to leverage emerging technologies and strengthen evidence-building processes. The Carrot Search tools now also play a vital National Security role in supporting NSF’s Research Security Office and the cross-agency National Counterintelligence Task Force (NCITF), made up of FBI, DoD and Intelligence Community members. NSF provides Carrot Search tool data as part of NSF’s commitment to NCITF and the tools are explicitly integrated into NSF’s System of Record of Notice (SORN). The NSF–77 Data Analytics Application Suite SORN describes how the Carrot Search tools aggregate, link, and analyze information reported by individuals and organizations participating in NSF-supported activities along with published information related to the research enterprise. This project directly supports the Evidence Act, the Federal Data Strategy, Renewing NSF, and Make IT Work for All initiative. It also supports the Innovation Management Group initiatives.

NSF has also spent significant time tuning the existing application and algorithms and data to reduce processing times and providing fast responses to end user queries. These technologies have been optimized to work with NSF’s software architecture, and this has been done without development requiring any direct access to these NSF systems or data-products, and this has significantly improved NSF’s IT and operational data security posture. The introduction of a new vendor would require opening up NSF’s confidential data to a third party, which comes with considerable risks.

The Carrot Search tools allow for both automated and interactive text mining, analysis, and visualization of unstructured NSF proposals, NSF reports, scientific publications and patents. The proposed work involves refinements to existing capabilities, integration with NSF enterprise applications such as Hopper, enhancements to search and clustering framework to incorporate new Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) capabilities. The Carrot Search tool suite is functionally unique in the market as a result of the specialized development and unique knowledge base the Carrot Search team has established.

6. A Description of Efforts Made to Ensure That Offers Are Solicited From As Many Potential Sources As Is Practicable

This requirement is understood to be a unique product, however the NSF will consider statements from responsible, capable offerors in response to the synopsis and this justification.

7. A determination by the Contracting Officer that the anticipated cost to the Government will be fair and reasonable

Based upon known historical pricing that has been determined fair and reasonable, internal government cost estimates, and planned price evaluation, the Contracting Officer anticipates that the proposed prices will be fair and reasonable.

8. Market Research

Pursuant to FAR Part 10, the NSF Research Security Office has conducted ongoing market research for similar products. The NSF Research Security Office was mindful during the requirements gathering process not to be overly restrictive in establishing its minimum specifications and pursued meaningful exchanges with industry and other government entities to address not only federal mandates but regulatory and compliance specifications unique to NSF. Much of this evaluation work was completed at the Top Secret/SCI level with technical experts in the FBI and Intelligence Community.

NSF’s Research Security Office has determined that no other product currently in the marketplace can support the agency’s vision to expand the document clustering and search capabilities, integration with enterprise applications for wider NSF staff use, incorporating new external data sources while being compliant with our enterprise architecture and existing infrastructure, and providing data for law enforcement and Intelligence Community use.

No product currently reviewed appears to include document indexing, clustering and search capabilities at a scale such as the Carrot Search tools, which would result in notably reduced functionality. Any change in tool or technology will require re-tuning of the application data which will cause years of delay and potential performance issues to end users and would impose substantial additional costs to the government. Additionally, a tool change would pose additional program risk to NSF for agency preparedness, and US National Security, as well as compliance to federal mandates such as Foundations for Evidence Based Policymaking (FEBP) Act of 2018.

9. Additional Facts:

There are no other facts supporting this justification to be listed under this item.

10. A listing of the sources, if any, that expressed, in writing, an interest in the acquisition

Currently the NSF is not aware of any equivalent commercial product, and no entity has provided written statements of interest, however the NSF will consider statements as noted in section 6.

11. Removing Barriers to Competition

At all times NSF seeks to remove or overcome any barriers that lead to any restricted consideration before any subsequent acquisition for supplies or services is made when awarding requirements. The lack of full and open competition in this instance does not indicate a deviation from these established policies and procedures. NSF and DACS will continue to monitor industry standards, as well as stay abreast of federal mandates, to determine if other vendors become capable of meeting NSF’s operational requirements.

12. Certifications/Coordination/Approval

REQUESTING OFFICE CERTIFICATION

Program Officer: I hereby certify that the facts, including the technical supporting data, presented in this Justification are current, complete and accurate.

Date

PROCURING OFFICE CERTIFICATION

Contracting Officer: I hereby certify that this Justification is current, complete and accurate to the best of my knowledge and belief.

Jonathan Schmeelk Name

Date:

JONATHAN P

SCHMEELK

Digitally signed by JONATHAN P

SCHMEELK

Date: 2024.06.24 16:50:35 -04'00'

06/26/24