2.04 JA 24-027_Redacted.pdf

SOLE SOURCE TRAPWIRE SUSPICIOUS ACTIVITY REPORTING SYSTEM JUSTIFICATION

1. Identification of Agency and Contracting Activity.

Requiring Activity: Commanding Officer Naval District Washington (NDW) 1411 Parsons Avenue, S.E.

Bldg. 101, Suite 226 Washington, D.C. 20374-5004

Contracting Activity: Commanding Officer NAVSUP Fleet Logistics Center Norfolk (FLCN) Contracting Department, Code 200 Norfolk, Virginia 23511-3392

2. Description of the Action Being Approved.

This is a sole source action to be awarded as a new contract to TrapWire, Inc. This procurement action supports US Naval District Washington’s (NDW) provision of TrapWire software licenses that are currently provided under Contract N0018919P0634. Contract N0018919P0634 was awarded on 31 July 2019 a competitive basis to TrapWire, a small business, in accordance with (IAW) FAR Subpart 13.5 – Simplified Acquisition Procedures for Certain Commercial Items and FAR 16.202 – Firm-Fixed-Price Contracts. It consists of a base year, 3 options, and includes the six (6) month option period IAW FAR 52.217-8. The existing contract expires on 31 January 2024.

3. Description of Supplies/Services.

The TrapWire Suspicious Activity Reporting System is a unique, software-based technology platform that collects and analyzes suspicious incident data for coordination and information sharing between licensed agencies within the National Capital Region (NCR) and across the globe. TrapWire builds a community reporting portal to collect the observations of thousands of members assigned to and living on Navy Installations within the Naval District Washington Area of Responsibility. TrapWire includes mobile applications for real-time, reliable information sharing.

TrapWire provides training to law enforcement, Navy Security Force, and non-security personnel for security awareness, introducing members to terrorist and criminal pre-attack surveillance and intelligence collection operations. The annual system license authorizes trusted agents (designated by Naval District Washington Operations Director) to gain access into TrapWire for suspicious activity collection, tracking and reporting.

Once installed and activated, TrapWire software provides a tactical information sharing capability unmatched by any other (i.e. eGuardian) information collection and/or fusion application. TrapWire fuses suspicious activity reporting at the ground level between a wide variety of DoD and civilian (i.e. Military District Washington, Air Force District Washington, Pentagon Force Protection Agency, Marine Corps District Washington, District of Columbia Metropolitan Police Department) law enforcement agencies.

The table below details the periods of performance, options and estimated value of the acquisition based on a courtesy quote and a guaranteed pricing e-mail from Dan Botsch, the President of TrapWire Inc.

Period Dates Price Base Year 1 February 2024 – 31 January 2025

Option Year I 1 February 2025 – 31 January 2026 Option Year 2 1 February 2026 – 31 January 2027 Option Year 3 1 February 2027 – 31 January 2028 Option Year 4 1 February 2028 – 31 January 2029

SUBTOTAL

FAR 52.217-8 1 February 2029 – 31 July 2029

#24-027

TOTAL $1,664,498.04

Options will be funded utilizing appropriations (OM&N) of the fiscal year in which the option year is exercised.

4. Statutory Authority Permitting Sole Source.

The statutory authority permitting other than full and open competition is 10 U.S.C. 3204(a)(1) - the supplies or services needed by the agency are available from only one responsible source and no other type of supplies or services will satisfy agency requirements, as implemented by FAR 6.302-1.

5. Rationale Justifying Use of Cited Statutory Authority.

This requirement is required by NDW in order to have access to an existing software system utilized cross organizationally. Law enforcement, military and intelligence agencies throughout the Washington metropolitan area collectively utilize TrapWire. NDW has been building a suspicious incident report (SIR) database within the TRAPWIRE network since 2017. If this requirement was not awarded to TrapWire, NDW would lose their ability to easily communicate suspicious activity and access incident reports with other organizations within the DC area that utilize TrapWire. NDW would have to retrain over 900 law enforcement workers, recreate over 500 suspicious activity reports, and link those reports to reports received from outside agencies throughout the National Capitol Region if this requirement was awarded to another company. This would place a significant operational burden on NDW/the Government. Therefore, it is in the best interest of the Government to award this contract on a sole-source basis.

Additionally, interoperability of the surveillance efforts between NDW and these agencies is the core of this requirement. Competitors’ products are unable to interact with TrapWire, and, therefore, do not meet the interoperability requirement.

6. Description of Efforts Made to Solicit Offers from as Many Venders as Practicable, including a Description of Market Research, if applicable, and a List of Interested Sources, if any.

A sources sought notice was published on Navy Electronic Commerce Online (NECO) webpage on 20 December 2023 requesting information by 26 December 2023 regarding potential sources’ capability to perform the required services. One response was received from Priority 5 Holdings, Inc.

The capability statement was sent to the Technical POC for review. The Technical POC determined that Priority 5 Holdings, Inc. was not capable of fulfilling the requirement due to their software not being able to interface with outside DOD agencies, civilian Law Enforcement, and other federal agencies (DOJ, DOS) in real time. Priority 5’s software also does no allow for “one-click” exporting of SIRs to NCIS and FBI via eGuardian.

Additionally, testing was done by Navy Recruiting Command, Millington, TN on other possible mass warning and notifications systems. The results, found on SAM.gov, as documented on the limited source justification (LSJ) #23- 127 posted on 19 September 2023 under contract award N0018923QZ382 were as follows:

FedRAMP approval is also required for the instant required services pursuant to the Department of Defense Cloud Computing Security Requirements Guide, & DFARS 252.239-7010, Cloud Computing Services.

A review of the FedRAMP marketplace identified three (3) potential sources that could meet the requirement of Navy Recruiting Command (NRC): TrapWire, Inc., DataMinr and Blackberry. Through testing by NRC, it was determined that the Blackberry’s & DataMinr’s softwares were unable to meet the performance specifications that are necessary for meeting NRC’s minimum need. Below is a summary of the analysis conducted by NRC:

Navy Recruiting Command utilized existing licenses held by various NRC offices to complete their review of the following software. Dataminr licenses are provided by Commander, Navy Installation Command (CNIC) where the system has operated as a supplemental threat notifications tool since 2016. Blackberry

AtHoc was also made available through CNIC. Lastly, TrapWire access was gained through the Navy Talent Actuation Group (NTAG) Richmond office where it is utilized. Further, the Marine Corp Recruiting Command utilizes TrapWire across their enterprise and provided a demonstration at the Joint Recruiting AT Working Group in March of 2023.

- DataMinr’s First Watch The software’s capabilities were reviewed by NRC’s Force Protection Office. This software automatically reviews numerous open source and law enforcement data streams and issues automated alerts based on user-defined criteria. This application relies on a static, user-defined location for alerts. This creates a risk that Recruiters will not receive critical alerts as their mobile duties take them away from their duty stations often. This could be remedied by increasing the coverage area by radius of the home location, or an entire city or state. This was determined to be unacceptable though as it would result in either the omission of potential alerts or an overwhelming number of alerts. Further, the service does not allow for users to input threat information for distribution to other users and the “real-time” alerts could between two and twenty minutes to populated and be dispersed by the system. This could prevent critical information from being delivered to recruiters in time. Lastly, DataMinr only offers the ability to send auto-alerts. Units cannot use the system to establish command-distribution lists for either users or administrators to send messages to other users or preset user groups.

The NRC analysis found that Dataminr’s First Watch software could provide notifications to users but the parameters necessary to provide alerts creates a risk in overwhelming users with unnecessary alerts or potentially missing critical incidents. The service did not allow for the user to input incident alerts into the system and the potential lag between an incident and the alert was outside of an acceptable amount of time.

Lastly, the service did not allow for follow up alerts. Based on this analysis, Dataminr’s First Watch software was determined to be unable to meet the requirement of NRC.

- Blackberry AtHoc The software’s capabilities were reviewed by NRC’s Force Protection Office. This mass notification system is used across the Navy by Installations. The location is tied primarily to users’ NMCI server location and alerts are distributed by a centralized administrator. Messages are normally submitted through the NMCI network to all NMCI machines, although users can update their own profile via NMCI access to receive text alerts as well. In the installation environment, AtHoc alerts are based on assigned NMCI users.

In the non-installation environment, these alerts would be based on unit rosters maintained by the command. As a result, all personnel within the command, or within various distribution lists, would receive any alerts sent. Similar to the Dataminr service, this would result in either the omission of potential alerts or an overwhelming number of alerts for recruiters. While AtHoc does allow for a central administrator to enter alerts, end-users do not have this capability. The service does allow for the submission and distribution of follow-up alerts as necessary.

Because AtHoc alerts are submitted from a centralized administrator, the time necessary to disseminate an alert is dependent on internal reporting from the affected user in the field up to the command watch, then to the centralized user for dissemination. The ability to receive and disseminate internally reported events within 2 minutes would therefore be tied directly to command reporting procedures and training. For external events (e.g. active shooter at a local high school), there is no mechanism in place to notify the centralized administrator of the incident and prompt them to release an alert.

The NRC analysis found that Blackberry AtHoc would not meet the requirement for notifying any users within the area affected by the incident as distribution would be based on NMCI users’ assigned base location or generalized user rosters rather than geographic location. Further, AtHoc does not allow for user-initiated alerts. This means users would need to communicate incidents to the central administrator who would then need to input them into the system for notifications to be published. This would hinder the timeliness of alerts. Based on this analysis, Blackberry’s AtHoc software was determined to be unable to meet the requirement of NRC.

- TrapWire The TrapWire software automatically reviews numerous open source and law enforcement data streams to issue automated alerts based on a user’s current location and proximity to the incident. User-defined settings for incident/notification include thresholds for types of incidents and proximity/range to those incidents. The system also enables users to input incidents directly into TrapWire for immediate notification to both other TrapWire users and unit-specific notification trees. The system also allows for Unit administrators to send notifications to pre-built distribution lists as needed. TrapWire provides alerts based on individual users location and proximity to an incident. The system will also utilize unit distribution lists for users assigned to a specific geographic area. The TrapWire system allows for users to can initiate an incident report, with immediate notifications disseminated to all other TrapWire users within the affected area and to the user’s chain of command or unit distribution list. This along with the system pulling data from law enforcement and media sources allows for near immediate alert to be provided to users. Lastly, the system does allow for NRC to send follow up notifications after the initial alerts are provided.

Based on this analysis, TrapWire’s software was determined to be capable of meeting the requirement of NRC. As NRC’s analysis of the Dataminr and Blackberry softwares had eliminated them as potential sources, the only FedRAMP-approved software that can fulfill the requirement of NRC for mass notification/alert services has been determined to be TrapWire’s software.

A pre-solicitation notice will be publicized as required by FAR Subpart 5.2. All sources who submit a capability statement shall be considered.

7. Determination of Fair and Reasonable Cost.

The Contracting Officer has determined the anticipated cost to the Government of the supplies/services covered by this J&A will be fair and reasonable based on historical comparison to the same items, comparison to commercial invoices and/or comparison to a published price list in accordance with FAR 13.106-3(a).

8. Actions to Remove Barriers to Future Competition.

For the reasons set forth in Paragraph 5, NAVSUP FLC Norfolk has no plans at this time to compete future contacts for the types of supplies/services covered by this document. If another potential source emerges, NAVSUP FLC Norfolk will assess whether competition for future requirements is feasible.

The contract specialist will continue market research to determine if potential competition exists.

9. Contracting Point of Contract.

The point of contact NAVSUP Fleet Logistics Center Norfolk is Victoria Bergstrom, Code 245.4, at 757-443-1437 or by e-mail at victoria.e.bergstrom.civ@us.navy.mil.

CERTIFICATIONS AND APPROVAL

TECHNICAL/REQUIREMENTS CERTIFICATION

I certify that the facts and representations under my cognizance which are included in this Justification and its supporting acquisition planning documents, except as noted herein, are complete and accurate to the best of my knowledge and belief.

Technical Cognizance:

Signature Name (Printed) Date Phone No.

Requirements Cognizance:

LEGAL SUFFICIENCY REVIEW

I have determined this Justification is legally sufficient.

CONTRACTING OFFICER CERTIFICATION

I certify that this Justification is accurate and complete to the best of my knowledge and belief. To the extent that the Justification value is >$250K and <$750K, the Contracting Officer’s signature below also represents approval of the document.

CONTRACTING ACTIVITY COMPETITION ADVOCATE REVIEW

To the extent that the Justification value is greater than $750K and <$15M, the Competition Advocate’s signature below also represents approval of the document.

CERTIFICATIONS AND APPROVAL

TECHNICAL/REQUIREMENTS CERTIFICATION

I certify that the facts and representations under my cognizance which are included in this Justification and its supporting acquisition planning documents, except as noted herein, are complete and accurate to the best of my knowledge and belief.

Signature Name (Printed) Date Phone No.

Signature Name (Printed) Date Phone No.

LEGAL SUFFICIENCY REVIEW

Signature Name (Printed) Date Phone No.

CONTRACTING OFFICER CERTIFICATION

I certify that this Justification is accurate and complete to the best of my knowledge and belief. To the extent that the Justification value is >$250K and <$750K, the Contracting Officer’s signature below also represents approval of the document.

Signature Name (Printed) Date Phone No.

CONTRACTING ACTIVITY COMPETITION ADVOCATE REVIEW

To the extent that the Justification value is greater than $750K and <$15M, the Competition Advocate’s signature below also represents approval of the document.