ETT_QA.pdf

# Question Answer

Can the government explain what is required in this section and how it relates to Factor 3, Past Performance? The

Factor 2 instructions say that “NIAID will evaluate the offeror's corporate experience examples submitted”. The

Sub‐factor 1 instruction says offerors should demonstrate 5 years’ experience performing similar work. For Factor 2 should we describe overall corporate experience that supplements the citations in Factor 3?

Factor 3: Past performance, who have you worked for, dollar amounts, etc.; Factor 2/subfactor 1, what work/what projects have you completed to gain experience, qualifications in regards to solicitation requirements. Examples.

The government has asked for licenses allowing for 500 concurrent users and 600 named users. Most COTS products offer licenses one way or the other, not both. Are vendors free to quote solutions with either licensing model depending upon the product recommended?

Yes.

The government has asked vendors to propose a web‐ based application either hosted at NIH or in a FedRAMP‐ approved cloud environment. How will the government evaluate pricing responses that propose a hosting cost compared to proposals that recommend on‐premise hosting with presumably no added cost?

Hosting costs will be evaluated based on type of proposed solutions.

For the requirement to “Provide interface with Microsoft

Outlook to support auto‐generation of emails for past due notices,”, is it acceptable for this and all other emails to be sent by the system from a single customer email account?

Mails could potentially be sent from a single account, but auto‐ generated messages would need to have the ability to include a

"respond to" link with the email address of a designated NIH contact.

Can the government confirm that the vendor can invoice on a monthly basis once work has commenced?

Please see Eval & Instructions attachment.

Will PIV card authentication be required for internal users of the system?

PIV card authentication is required for Domain login. Federated login can be utilized for application log in.

A streamlined acquisition strategy is only appropriate for commercial items. The scope indicates that the software is to be customized, rendering it no longer a commercial item. Evaluation

Factor 1, Subfactor 2, amongst the most important technical factors, requests the offeror to demonstrate their ability to customize the software. Since the Government is stating that it desires a custom software, how do you justify a simplified procurement strategy?

Please see FAR 201.1. Commercial items include any item of a type customarily used by the general public, or by nongovernmental entities, for purposes other than governmental purposes that has been sold, leased, or licensed, or offered for sale, lease, or license to the general public.

We question whether a fixed price quote is suitable given the lack of requirements for the entire scope of work. We request that the pricing model be reconsidered to accommodate the lack of requirements.

Please see previous Q&A.

NIAID‐RFQ18‐20180622 ‐ Question and Answer 3

Is it the intention of the Government to award additional follow‐ on procurements for customizations over the five‐year term of this contract and use a sole source justification since only one vendor can customize the selected product? If so, is this consistent with normal Government procurement guidelines for using simplified acquisition procedures? If you know these customizations are going to be needed, can you state them now as part of the SOW of this project or do you agree that this reality makes a simplified acquisition untenable?

Please see Eval & Instructions attachment.

If this activity continues as a simplified procurement of commercial items, can you clarify and state that only customization specifically called for in the SOW can be performed under this contract and no other customizations not called for in the SOW will be performed under this award?

Please see Eval & Instructions attachment (first page, third paragraph. "Offerors shall provide an explanation of the degree to which future needs could be addressed by changing configuration settings within the system rather than by custom software development."

The Instructions section mentions that data from ten legacy systems that will need to be migrated into the enterprise system and asks offerors to propose methodologies and capabilities to support data migration. It provides insufficient information to provide a cost associated with the requested support and no line item for such is in the pricing sheet provided. This could presumably be a significant cost that would impact the

Government’s best value evaluation. Is it the Government’s intention to issue a modification to this contract for a service they know today will be needed? Given that this is a significant activity that will impact the lifecycle cost of the project, is this consistent with the lowest price technically acceptable (LPTA) evaluation of a simplified procurement for a COTS product?

Please read solicitation and Q&As.

The Period of Performance is a one‐year base with four one year options. Can you clarify and state that this contract will be re‐ competed or cannot continue past the termination date of this contract, the end of the fourth option year? Is it the intention of the Government to purchase a COTS product, customize it, and then attempt to continue using it on a sole source basis? If so, is this consistent with guidelines of a simplified procurement of commercial items?

Purchase Order will be awarded In Accordance With (IAW) FAR 13.5;

Options will be evaluated and exercised IAW FAR 17.2, if in the best interest of the Government.

We are concerned that the NIH ensure that the evaluation is carried out impartially and is based on the proposals. If there are personnel on the evaluation team who are users of only one of the products offered, we are concerned that other products will not be given equal consideration. We request that you pay particular attention to this issue in selecting evaluators.

Quotations or offers will be evaluated IAW FAR 13.106‐2.

There are two precursor activities to this procurement action.

NIH performed an evaluation of the COTS products requested under this procurement activity in 2015‐2016 for task order

HHSN316201200178W. Vendors provided detailed technical information, pricing information, sandbox access for hands on evaluation and other information as requested. Can you please provide us with any findings or a report from this activity? With the same people involved in both activities, how do you mitigate the impact of this precursor activity on this procurement activity?

In June of 2017, NIH issued award HHSN276201500007B in response to Blanket Purchase Agreement solicitation

NIHOD2017147. Is it correct that base period year 1 of that agreement has been completed and this RFQ is in part a result of that activity? If so, can you please provide the findings or report from that activity? The description of the tasks in the BPA in the base and option year give tremendous insight into NIH’s approach that has not been shared in this procurement activity solicitation documents. Can you provide offerors with the insight of vendor role in project management, data migration, business process harmonization, business process requirement definition, and other activities related to this procurement? This information sharing will help all offerors better respond to NIH’s needs and provide more accurate technical responses and pricing information.

Information can be requested via Freedom of Information Act request through the Issuing Contracting Office.

Please explain the preferred mechanism to access these files (ex:

link to documents, integration with shared drives)

Whatever method would work best for the type of usage.

Is the expectation that an email template would be generated from the system to alert parties?

Email templates can be used to alert parties.

Would this be created within the license agreement? Is "this" referring to email alerts (from the previous question?) If so, then the answer is no ‐‐ email alerts would be generated from multiple places within the system. If not, then we would need to know the antecedent of "this."

Would you like us to offer pricing for both onsite and offsite hosting?

Not prohibited. Offerors option.

Is it acceptable to provide information on additional functionality not documented as part of the requirements?

Yes. Please list as optional functionality.

Under Volume 1: Technical, Factor 2‐Corporate Experience, what is the preferred method to demonstrate at least five years of experience?

Offerors should follow the standard format.

The selected system must meet all Federal security guidelines.

Could you please provide the list of Federal Security Guidelines that the proposed system will be checked against?

Offerors should follow the standard format.

We assume the solution to be deployed must be compatible with modern browsers. What is the oldest browser version we need to be able to support?

IE version 11.x and later

MS Edge version 40.x and later

Firefox version 52.x and later

Google chrome version 60.x and later

Safari (for Mac OS) v11.x and later

Is any of the functionality envisioned for use on a mobile phone, and if so is a separate mobile design required?

Mobile design is not currently required.

The introduction to the SOW states that there will be 20 different user roles using the solution. Could you elaborate on the known user types? Failing that, could you enumerate or list the categories of external users specifically (or the most important ones)?

Please see previous Q&A.

Regarding the requirement to search network and local computer files, can you provide more context on the usage scenarios/use cases which require this capability? Most COTS programs on the market will not be able to easily reach into secure networks and secured local computers and do a generic en masse search. That kind of capability might be feasible if NIH were using an online file storage and sharing solution such as SharePoint, Dropbox, etc. Is such a solution in use currently? If not, there are other possible solutions, but in order to make the best‐fit suggestion, a bit more clarity on the need here would be helpful.

Network file storage and SharePoint is currently utilized and will be searched.

Is there a maximum file size you can anticipate needing to attach within the system?

No.

Approximately how many files would you envision being attached to database records on a monthly, or yearly basis? A ranged estimate is fine.

Based on historical activity, NIH estimates that 30,000‐40,000 files will be attached annually.

What versions of MS Outlook must be supported? MS Outlook 2013 and later. (Note: Outlook 2010 has extended support until October 2020, but it is unlikely that any NIH personnel will still be running Outlook 2010 by the time the new system is live in the second half of next year.)

What technology is the NIH Employee Directory (NED) built upon? Is it an Active Directory solution, or built upon some other technology? If the latter, does an API exist?

AD.

Does the requirement to automatically update information related to NIH personnel relate to a need to manage system user data and authentication information (usernames, passwords), etc., or is it more about people who will need to be kept as database Contacts for the purposes of interaction (updating phone numbers, e ‐mail addresses, etc.)

Both.

Will the system need to accommodate the use of PIV or CAC cards for user authentication?

PIV card authentication is required for Domain login. Federated login can be utilized for application log in.

Can you describe what internal and external parties are collaborating on that the requests for collaboration would facilitate? It appears to suggest what is sought is a way for one user to request assistance or action from another user – is this envisioned as a simple request and assignment mechanism? Or is a more sophisticated feature required?

Both.

What level of sophistication is being sought with regards to marketing activities? Is simple e‐mail sending envisioned, or is a level of marketing automation capability

(whereby potential partner interactions with various websites, click‐throughs and open rates of e‐mails, etc. can be reported on, analyzed, and used to influence future marketing efforts) sought here?

All levels.

How many and what types of users would be able to generate agreements? Would it be a small subset or would any user (internal or external) be able to draft an agreement?

Generation of agreements would require a certain role, which would be a subset of users.

Can you give us a sense of approximately how many types of agreements exist today?

There is some variability in the tracking mechanisms used across different organizations. We estimate 30‐40 different categorizations are currently in use across NIH.

Could you provide a ranged estimate of how many agreements might be generated by this system in one year?

800 ‐ 1,000 new agreement records are created per year.

Is there an expectation for this application to process credit card and/or ACH payments directly, or will payments be processed externally to the system and manually recorded by users?

Payments will be processed externally.

Would royalties be entered manually by NIH staff or would they flow into the system via some kind of integration?

This could be done either way.

Does information about the calculated royalties to be disbursed need to be automatically updated to any external system that will actually generate the royalty payments?

If so, what technology (with version number if possible) is that system built on?

This could depend upon the design.

Is there any expectation of integration with an accounting system? If so, what technology is utilized for this system and what version are you using?

No, the system will not be linked to any accounting system.

Can you clarify the requirement to have auto‐generated e‐mails for past due notices? Would it address the requirement if our system could auto‐generate the past due e‐ mail notices and cause a copy to be stored in the sender’s Microsoft Outlook account?

Auto‐generated emails should be part of the system by default.

Would progress / financial reports be one of the file types automatically received into the system, or would someone be manually recording receipt of those reports?

This could be done either way.

There isn’t any wording on CLIN usage on both the evaluation & instruction document and the SOW, however, this information does appear on the sample table provided. Will this bid, more particularly the price proposal, require any breakdown by CLIN levels? If so, will this information be provided?”

Please see Eval & Instructions attachment, Page 4. Please format accordingly. Contractor may add additional lines if needed. Please pay particular attention to statement at top of page 4.

Within the base year can the government define expectations for the 6‐month working concept, such as one or two systems replaced? How much legacy data is expected to be migrated within the first 6 months?

This will depend upon the design functionality of the COTS product.

Within the base year can the government define expectations for end of the period, such as one or two systems replaced, and X number systems integrated?

This will depend upon the design functionality of the COTS product.

If the COTS product allows all functions with concurrent licensing, is just current licensing allowed? Some products do not require expensive named user licensing.

This is speaking to the concurrent users vs. named users question raised (and answered) for item #2.

Will a VPAT format be provided or is it acceptable to submit one from another Federal Agency?

Vendor responsibility to provide VPAT information

Will there be any extra consideration to 8(a), HUBZone or ANC companies?

Please see solicitation.

The instructions for past performance requires contact information for both a “point of contact” as well as the

Contracting officer. Given the page restrictions, will the

Government accept a single POC for each reference?

Information can be placed on one line, must be readable.

How large (# of TBs or PBs) is the data expected to be migrated from the legacy systems to the new enterprise system?

Legacy databases average more than 200 GB in size ‐‐ however, it should be noted that there is significant data duplication across all of the legacy systems. Attached files total almost 600 GB in size.

Is NIAID currently a user of any COTS system? If so which one (S)? NIAID uses multiple COTS systems.

52 What formats will the documents be ingested in. Multiple formats.

What legacy data sources will we be migrating from. Multiple data sources, but will depend upon the design functionality of the COTS product.

How much data exists in each data source i.e. size in Mb and number of tables.

Legacy databases contain up to 200 tables, and average more than

200 GB in size. Attached documents total almost 600 GB in size.

Are the legacy systems active? Will they continue to run during development.

Many systems are active and will continue during development.

Record Notes about Collaboration Opportunities, can you elaborate.

No.

Record descriptive information about individual technologies regarding which NIH is seeking partners. Can you elaborate

No.

Can NIH provide sample or screen shot of the 10 legacy

Databases.

No.

The NED Directory, what type of repository is it. The back end of NED is Oracle DB and it can be accessed via Web

Services, or the data (depending on what you need).