Justification for Exception to Fair Opportunity_Redacted.pdf

CUI

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Justification for an Exception to Fair Opportunity National Background Investigation Services System Training

1. Identification of the agency and contracting activity.

The Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency (DCSA) Contracting and Procurement Office (CPO) located at

, proposes to award a sole-source task order under the General Services Administration (GSA), One Acquisition Solution for Integrated Services (OASIS), Multiple Agency Contract (MAC), Unrestricted - Pool 1 on the basis of an exception to fair opportunity to provide National Background Investigation Services (NBIS) and Defense Information System for Security (DISS) system training in support of the DCSA NBIS Program Management Office (PMO), Planning and Deployment Office (PDO). This document is a justification for an exception to fair opportunity.

2. The nature and/or description of the action being approved.

The purpose of this document is to obtain necessary approvals to award a new task order under GSA OASIS MAC contract- Unrestricted Pool 1, to Huntington Ingalls Industries, Inc (HII) on a firm-fixed-price (FFP) basis.

The required period of performance is two (2) years, composed of a 12-month base period, and one 12-month option period.

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

The required services will enable NBIS PDO to operate and assess the NBIS training program, while providing targeted training to NBIS and DISS system users within the investigation, adjudication, continuous vetting, subject management, and appeals domains to ensure they can operate proficiently and independently within the systems. The estimated cost of the two-year period of performance (PoP) (including options) is $

This requirement will support NBIS PDO through training program management;

asynchronous training development; planning, development, and delivery of synchronous training; training product governance; learning platform administration; training reports and analytics; communications, engagement, and event support; strategic initiative assessments; and learner assessments.

The NBIS system contains a suite of cross-cutting capabilities and features that are configured to meet personnel security requirements. To date, NBIS has developed and delivered production capabilities that support case initiation, adjudication, and subject management. As such, over 95% of all new cases submitted by the Federal Government and 100% of cases from Cleared Industry are submitted through NBIS, and three agencies have been configured to use the

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Adjudication Shared Service in anticipation of near-term production use. NBIS also delivered capabilities and features that are actively being configured for DCSA Background Investigation (BI) requirements, and the program continues to iteratively develop and deliver capabilities to DCSA BI and other customers with each subsequent release.

The NBIS Training program develops and delivers NBIS and DISS system training for approximately 100,000 personnel security professionals from the Federal Government (DoD and non-DoD), Cleared Industry, and DCSA personnel security mission areas. System training is delivered to personnel security professionals within the investigation, adjudication, continuous vetting, subject management, and appeals domains. The NBIS Training program assesses the diverse training needs of system users then builds and delivers both asynchronous and synchronous training to meet their training needs. As such, the successful vendor will be required to have a mastery understanding of existing capabilities and features within the NBIS system, align with NBIS Agile development and delivery processes, maintain the current training library of over 170 artifacts, learn new or updated system capabilities and features, and develop and deliver new training in alignment with the incremental development and delivery of the system. Last, the successful vendor will need deliver live weekly webinar trainings across at least 12 topic areas beginning immediately upon contract execution.

The successful vendor is required to staff the contract with personnel who have current and expert domain knowledge and experience with all the following:

a) Configuring and using the NBIS system to support the many diverse personnel security use cases and processes.

b) All personnel security domains of Investigations, Adjudications, Continuous Vetting, Subject Management, and Appeals.

c) Designing innovative and comprehensive training using the modern learning theory and instructional design best practices.

d) Developing, delivering, sustaining, and maturing a diverse training portfolio in alignment and on pace with fast-paced Agile system development and customer deployments – all at enterprise scale.

This blend of knowledge and experience is necessary to develop, deliver, and sustain training at the scale needed to support the training needs across the Personnel Security enterprise of approximately 100,000 diverse end users across the Federal Government, Cleared Industry, and the Personnel Security missions within DCSA.

4. Identification of the exception to fair opportunity.

DCSA executes this exception to fair opportunity in accordance with the authority of FAR 16.505(b)(2)(G)—for DoD, NASA, and the Coast Guard, the order satisfies one

CUI Page 3 of 8 of the exceptions permitting the use of other than full and open competition listed in FAR 6.302 (10.U.S.C. 3406(c)(5))). The specific FAR 6.302 exception is FAR 6.302- 1(a)(2)(iii)—for DoD, NASA, and the Coast Guard, services may be deemed to be available only from the original source in the case of follow-on contracts for the continued provision of highly specialized services when it is likely that award to any other source would result in- (A) Substantial duplication of cost to the Government that is not expected to be recovered through competition; or (B) Unacceptable delays in fulfilling the agency’s requirements.

As a threshold matter, this is a follow-on contract action for highly specialized services. The Government Contracts Reference Book (4th Ed.) defines “follow-on contract” as “[a] type of sole source award made to a contractor that has previously .

. . performed the services being procured.” This is a requirement for a follow-on contract because HII is the current contractor performing these services, and HII is the contractor to which DCSA seeks to make award. The FAR does not define “highly specialized services,” but DCSA considers this work to be such because the training subject matter is on the use of NBIS, a system unique to DCSA and for which user access is limited to those with official purposes. While many contractors provide training services, and some of those contractors may have knowledge of and experience with personnel security domains, modern learning theory and instructional design best practices, and Agile, only those that have access to the NBIS platform can have the requisite level of knowledge and experience to perform these services (reference Section 3, above). For these reasons, this requirement meets the threshold criteria of being a follow-on contract for specialized services.

Regarding the reason that DCSA must make award to HII, awarding to any other GSA OASIS source would result in a substantial duplication of cost to DCSA that it would not expect to recover through competition. Historically, new NBIS training staff (both Government and contractor) have required approximately one year to gain the level of user-facing system knowledge necessary to develop, deliver, and sustain many concurrent and complex training lines of effort. Some of the activities that a new contractor would need to conduct during this period to prepare for full performance include onboarding to DCSA and all required systems, learning and demonstrating fluency with all aspects of NBIS (capabilities and feature supporting investigations, adjudications, continuous vetting, subject management, and appeals), learn and demonstrate understanding of the activities and corresponding training needs across all personnel security domains, learn to configure the NBIS system pursuant to customers’ process requirements, learn and utilize the governance processes for product and knowledge management, learn and integrate Government quality assurance and quality control tools and processes, and apply all knowledge learned to set up the NBIS Training Environment for synchronous and asynchronous training purposes. (Even though a training environment exists today, each training product or session requires the contractor to set up unique organizational configurations within the Training Environment and prepopulate the organizational structures with personnel security scenarios. Doing so requires

CUI Page 5 of 8 the incumbent contractor vs. partial performance and start-up activities for the new contractor), the Government believes that the overall levels of effort and labor categories would be comparable.

Savings From Competition: To establish the range of potential savings against the estimated contract price, the Government utilized both a very pessimistic assumption (0%) (e.g., if the technically superior offeror did not propose the lowest price) and a very optimistic assumption (20%).

Procurement Costs: The Government estimated a conservative $ in administrative costs to solicit a new contract on a competitive basis. This figure assumes that a streamlined solicitation and source selection process utilizing a multiple-agency contract vehicle would take 40 hours of the contract specialist’s time at $37.66 per hour (DC locality/GG-11), 24 hours of the contracting officer’s time at $63.43 per hour (DC/GG-14), and 24 hours of program time multiplied by three employees at $74.60 (DC/GG-15), $63.43 (DC/GG-14), and $48.76 (Pitt./GG-13).2

Program Costs: Finally, the Government Training Team would be required to spend approximately one third of its time educating the new vendor in the established training processes and procedures while also closely reviewing newly created products to ensure that they adhere to DCSA standards. This cost is estimated at a conservative $ for approximately hours of program time (1/3 of normal program time to oversee the second corresponding contract) multiplied by nine government employees at an average rate of $ .

Based on the foregoing analysis, DCSA must make award to HII on a sole-source basis to avoid a substantial duplication of costs that could not be recovered through competition.

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

DCSA anticipates fulfilling this requirement as a task order against HII’s GSA OASIS contract. Because GSA has already determined these rates to be fair and reasonable, the contracting officer anticipates that DCSA will pay a fair and reasonable price for this work. In addition, the contracting officer will seek further price reductions.

6. Any other facts supporting the justification.

Not applicable.

2 In reality, the procurement costs would almost certainly be higher, as this calculation assumes all employees are at Step 1 on the pay scale and does not consider extended review times for a competitive acquisition.

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7. A statement of the actions, if any, the agency may take to remove or overcome any barriers that led to the exception to fair opportunity before any subsequent acquisition for the supplies or services is made.

NBIS PMO fully expects to award the next contract for this work on a competitive basis for the following reasons:

(a) The NBIS Training Program will be in a sustainment phase in approximately two years; the training library will be mostly complete and future training needs will be well-defined and scheduled. This contrasts with today's Agile environment within NBIS where rapid adaptation and adjustments are commonly required of the incumbent training vendor. The impact will be that the ramp-up time for a new contractor will be reduced.

(b) The NBIS Training Program will be able to assimilate and leverage existing NBIS Government staff who are currently conducting other NBIS-related tasks like onboarding, scaling, and providing direct support to Federal Agencies and Cleared Industry. This insourcing should result in less dependence on the contractor’s Day One knowledge and experience.

(c) DCSA will require HII to meet aggressive subcontracting goals for this work, helping other businesses to gain knowledge and expertise in the NBIS training program. This will help to further reduce the time to full performance for these contractors.

(d) Current NBIS support vendors such as Copper River, iWorks, Accelerate, and RBR Technologies are gaining knowledge of the system and user needs through their current customer-facing taskings. As such, these and other contractors with substantial NBIS experience and knowledge should be well-positioned to compete for future NBIS training work. (While these contractors do not currently hold OASIS contracts, it is possible they will in the future or that DCSA will select a different acquisition strategy in the future.)