SureTrak_JA_Rev__29_Jan_13_FINAL_2.26.13_REDACTED.doc

J&A_12_22675

JUSTIFICATION AND APPROVAL

FOR USE OF OTHER THAN FULL AND OPEN COMPETITION

1. Contracting Activity.

Naval Air Warfare Center Aircraft Division (NAWC-AD) Patuxent River, MD

2. Description of the Action Being Approved.

This Justification and Approval (J&A) authorizes, on a sole source basis, a single four (4) year award Indefinite Delivery, Indefinite Quantity (IDIQ) contract with Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC) for the development, testing and installation of the SureTrak surveillance system. This requirement is a follow-on to contract N00421-06-D-0014 which was awarded 24 May 2006 to CSC Applied Technologies, LLC on a sole source basis. The four year ordering period will provide coverage to allow the Government enough time to update and properly document the SureTrak software which will allow the US Navy to compete the next procurement for this requirement. The estimated award value for this requirement is $47,300,000.

3. Description of Supplies/Services.

The Naval Air Warfare Center Division, Patuxent River, MD, AIR 5.2 – SureTrak Program Office has a requirement to develop, test, and install the SureTrak surveillance system. The SureTrak system is a state-of-the-art, fully integrated, multi-sensor, data acquisition and display system used to perform airspace surveillance, waterway clearance, shoreline surveillance, and environmental monitoring functions at several Army, Navy, Air Force and National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) facilities around the nation, as well as, foreign Governments located around the world. SureTrak is currently deployed in several African nations as part of the Regional Maritime Awareness Capability (RMAC) funded under the Security Assistance Program (Section 1206 Program). This counter terrorism program supports the National Defense Strategy operational priority of “Shaping the choices of countries at strategic crossroads” by enabling the coalition partners to establish maritime dominance on their national waters. Expansion of the SureTrak system has transformed the SureTrak program mission from simple maritime domain awareness to multi-domain awareness and provides additional focus on aspects of security. It contains numerous operational and operator services such as a decision support module that provides 2D and 3D alert capabilities. Additionally, as a real-time operational system, the functions that are performed within SureTrak call for real time tracking of aircraft, vessels, and displaying this data in user friendly graphical interfaces.

See Appendix A for Estimated Dollar Value

4. Statutory Authority Permitting Other Than Full and Open Competition.

10 U.S.C. 2304(c)(1), Only one responsible source and no other supplies or services will satisfy agency requirements.

5. Rationale Justifying Use of Cited Statutory Authority.

A sole source contract with CSC Applied Technologies, LLC is anticipated based on CSC’s corporate knowledge as the sole designer, developer, and maintainer of the SureTrak system. CSC’s personnel have the knowledge, experience, and expertise required to develop and maintain the large complex software code set included in the Suretrak systems and to provide support for existing systems as well as the development of new systems which are configured differently depending on the required capabilities of the requiring activity or foreign military sales customer. The SureTrak system is not a commercial-off-the-shelf system. SureTrak is a highly specialized capability that began development as a Coast Guard Vessel Traffic Service in 1990, and has continued to expand its capabilities over the ensuing 22+ years. Only CSC has the knowledge required to maintain operability of the existing unique system currently deployed in a timely manner so as not to endanger range testing requirements. The SureTrak system is an integral part of NAWCAD range safety operations. Without the support of CSC's trained personnel, range safety would be critically impaired. The Government does not have personnel with the requisite expertise to support the existing SureTrak installations, many of which are located in Africa, or to design and develop new systems for new locations. The current contractor is the only entity with the knowledge to modify/write program code based on the current software configuration of each of the SureTrak systems. The software source code used in the Suretrak system, which was developed by a team of Government and CSC programmers, has been incrementally modified and funded over 20 years, resulting in piece meal modifications to the software with limited documentation. Anyone not familiar with the existing code would not be able to understand the code thoroughly enough to make modifications to or enhance the functionality of the software. If the code were to be replaced, the duplication of effort would exceed the cost of re-writing the code from the start. The base code was developed under a 3-year, $25 million program as the Coast Guard Vessel Traffic Service under Atlantic Test Range contracts N00421-96-C-1390 and N00421-02-C-3052. Since then, the capabilities and the complexities of that code have increased multiple times. There have been at least $1.5 million worth of improvements and bug fixes that have been incorporated within other project related task orders under the current SureTrak contract N00421-06-D-0014. The best estimate for duplication of effort would exceed the original total development cost of $25 million and the cost of improvements to date of $1.5 million and would take at least three years to be fully functional at the same level of capability and reliability as the existing code. This estimate is considered conservative and would result in unacceptable duplication of costs that would not be recovered through competition. The concept of re-writing the code is sufficient for identifying an estimate, but would not be suitable as an actual system replacement. The current versions of SureTrak have been tested and accepted by end users and cannot simply be replaced due to their own information assurance constraints at the multiple facilities where SureTrak is installed in both domestic and overseas locations. There is no guarantee that anyone without experience working on the existing code could actually repair or enhance existing code without significant risk that would be unacceptable to end users, which include several FMS customers.

6. Description of Efforts Made to Solicit Offers from as Many Offerors as Practicable.

A synopsis was issued on 18 October 2012 notifying industry of the intent to issue the sole source contract to CSC Applied Technologies, LLC. The synopsis closed on 01 November 2012 and no questions or inquiries were received. In addition, no companies responded as being capable of providing the immediate support required. No additional market research was conducted for this requirement because it is not practicable, for the reasons discussed in paragraph 5 above, for any company other than CSC Applied Technologies, LLC to provide the immediate support required for continued operations. If a new company were to develop new software code for the SureTrak systems, it would take at least 3 years and cost over $26.5 million to come in and learn/understand the SureTrak requirement and design, write, test, and replace the existing fully functional code.

The program has taken every effort to encourage subcontractor involvement in an effort to foster a future competitive environment. Although successful in some areas, this experience is further justification that a complete contractor substitute would be detrimental to the program. In two of the four major international efforts, some of the tasks associated with the SureTrak program were awarded to a different contractor under a Broad Agency Agreement (BAA) N68335-09-C-0391. This attempt at increasing commercial participation has not had the desired results. This has greatly impacted the cost of these existing programs and has resulted in several unnecessary delays. Problems and mistakes that had been made in the past, that should have already been learned and not repeated, became commonplace (i.e. failure to understand local electrical problems such as tremendous voltage spikes and inadequately grounded existing systems; failure to understand the impact of the extreme environment such as very high temperatures, heavy winds with dirt/dust accumulation; and the impact of local behavior such as leaving windows open and turning off air conditioning units) which resulted in poor installation decisions and unnecessary/premature equipment failure. The requesting programs and SureTrak customers lost valuable time and money and are just now beginning to recover. The attempt to increase commercial participation was done as a subset of the entire program; if this was a complete substitution of the entire contractor team, the mistakes would have been unrecoverable and would have resulted in a failure of the mission. The value of historical knowledge in these environments is very significant.

7. Determination of Fair and Reasonable Cost.

In accordance with FAR 15.402, the Contracting Officer shall ensure that all supplies and services provided under this contract are procured at a fair and reasonable price. The Contractor will submit a formal price proposal with certified cost or pricing data and sufficient information to support the accuracy and reliability of the estimate. The contractor's proposal will be reviewed by experienced technical analysts, cost analysts, and contract specialists with the aid of necessary field pricing support. The Contracting Officer will utilize historical data, the Independent Government Estimate, and cost and price analysis as the basis for negotiating a fair and reasonable price.

8. Actions to Remove Barriers to Future Competition.

The program is taking several steps to remove future barriers to competition. The following initiatives will be established in an effort to foster a competitive environment in the future:

a. Update and document the software code in such a way that it is possible for a third party to review and modify. This step is already underway and should be complete following a one to three year effort. This is a three phase process that requires modification of the display, the database, and the core. The display and the database are complete and the process to update the core is beginning. The work involved in updating the core is estimated to take between one year and three years depending on the size of the team that is assigned to the project and whether or not the team can be dedicated solely to this project. Unfortunately, there isn’t a single funding source for code development and the Suretrak program had to break the project into multiple steps and have updated the code as funds became available. At the current rate, this one year project could take up to three years to complete based on currently projected funding that does allow for software modifications. This does not replace historical knowledge for in-country international work, but could certainly allow software subcontracting and possibly a full and open software competition in the future.

b. Move toward a “trusted” open source environment. Under this model, U.S. Government customers will eventually be able to obtain a copy of the source code. This will allow end users to either modify the code themselves or conduct their own local competition to modify code. Customers who want to benefit from continued OEM level support will be asked to submit source code modifications back to the program office for configuration control and architecture compliance. Then, this upgrade becomes a part of the new source code and all users who are active members in the user group will benefit by receiving the updated code. This reduces the reliance on the current contractor and will encourage a tremendous level of competition and code development. In the short run, the contractor will still be required to maintain configuration control and architecture compliance; however, a much greater amount of code work could be contracted out. The management of the source code, under the Configuration Control Board, could eventually be able to be competed.

c. There is a major effort to establish a Government SSA (Software Support Activity). The purpose of this software development environment is to provide the Government with the resources to effectively and efficiently run the configuration control process for Government owned code and to have a team of software coders available to write code. This will minimize the requirement for contractor software development, but more importantly when contractor support is necessary, it will be to respond to very specific code requirements and will be structured in such a way to promote competition. No contractor will have a need to maintain the entire code. Contractors will only write or modify the modules necessary to meet Government requirements. This eliminates the greatest barrier to competition on Government owned software programs.

d. The program has also decided to change its overall approach toward system architecture. The current direction of the program is to maintain a single core Government owned capability and enhance that with a “system of systems” approach to become a full capability solution provider. This means there will be more flexibility in selecting systems that support the Government owned code and enhance the overall program. In the past, components of the system were “hard coded” into the software. For example, when cameras were introduced into the system, command and control of the camera was embedded in the software. This made it very difficult to switch cameras once a particular model was selected for the system. This minimized, if not eliminated, all competition for cameras after the initial selection. Now, the majority of sensor/periphery systems are “loosely integrated”. This means that the camera is independent of the source code and that the only code work necessary is the communication between the camera and the system. This makes it very easy to switch from one camera system or other periphery device to another. This encourages a tremendous level of competition and ensures that the Government system stays at the cutting edge of sensor capabilities and ensures end user satisfaction.

PAGE