NNG15SD38B-073.pdf

Control Number VA-20-00027371

JUSTIFICATION

FOR AN EXCEPTION TO FAIR OPPORTUNITY

1. Contracting Activity: Department of Veterans Affairs (VA)

Office of Procurement, Acquisition, and Logistics Technology Acquisition Center 23 Christopher Way Eatontown, NJ 07724

2. Description of Action: The proposed action is for a firm-fixed price delivery order issued under the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Solutions for Enterprise Wide Procurement (SEWP) V Governmentwide Acquisition Contract (GWAC) for brand name Veritas Electronic Discovery (eDiscovery) software maintenance and support.

3. Description of the Supplies or Services: The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Office of Information and Technology (OI&T), Information Technology Operations and Services, Infrastructure Operations, Austin Information Technology Center (AITC) has a requirement to procure software maintenance and support for its existing perpetual Veritas eDiscovery software licenses, including eDiscovery Platform (OnPrem) 1 Terabyte (2 each), eDiscovery Platform PPAR (OnPrem) 2 Terabytes (8 each), Business Critical Services Remote Product Specialist eDiscovery (1 each), and Business Critical Services Premier for eDiscovery (1 each), hosted at AITC for use by VA's Office of General Counsel (OGC). The required software maintenance and support includes security patches, software updates and standard 24 hours per day, seven (7) days per week, 365 days per year, commercial telephone and web technical support. The software allows users to perform preservation, processing (such as decryption and de-duplication), searching, review, analysis, and production of electronically stored information including email.

This assists attorneys, custodians of relevant information, and other Ol&T personnel in accomplishing their required discovery and auditing tasks more efficiently. Ol&T personnel use Veritas eDiscovery in the event they need to assist in litigation and criminal cases where email users attempt to circumvent controls and try to prevent VA investigators and OGC from accessing their email and associated document archives.

The required maintenance ensures the software remains operational. The proposed action is for services only. No hardware or software will be renewed or procured under this proposed action. The period of performance shall consist of a 12-month base period and two (2) 12-month option periods for continued renewal of the software maintenance and support described above.

4. Statutory Authority: Pursuant to Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) 16.505(a)(4), the following brand name requirement is being justified and approved as an exception to fair opportunity under the statutory authority of Section 41 U.S.C. 4106(c)(2) as implemented by FAR 16.505(b)(2)(i)(B), entitled “Only one awardee is capable of providing the supplies or services required at the level of quality required because the supplies or services ordered are unique or highly specialized.”

Control Number:VA-20-00027523

5. Rationale Supporting Use of Authority Cited Above: Based on market research, as described in section eight of this document, the Government has determined that limited competition is available for this action among resellers for the required brand name Veritas eDiscovery software maintenance and support. No other source is capable of providing the required software maintenance and support as only Veritas or its resellers have access to the proprietary source code necessary to provide the required software updates, security patches and technical support. Since the software is proprietary, a legal restriction is placed on access to the software code that is required in order to develop updates and patches to the software. Without this access it is impossible to modify the software code as necessary to provide the required patches and updates.

Access to this code is also required to ensure the patches and updates provided to the software are properly configured. Failure to acquire this maintenance support would put VA at risk of not being able to resolve application and architectural problems. As a result, VA OGC and Office of Accountability and Whistleblower Protection would not have the ability to effectively preserve, collect, process, review and produce VA Electronically Stored Information, as mandated by Federal Law, Congress, and Presidential Executive Order 13793.

6. Efforts to Obtain Competition: Market research was conducted, details of which are in section eight of this document. This effort did not yield any additional sources for the required software maintenance and support that can meet the Government's requirements. Although the Government is limiting competition as a result of specifying brand name software maintenance, it was determined that limited competition is viable among resellers of the required brand name software maintenance that are NASA SEWP V GWAC holders. In accordance with FAR 5.301, 16.505(b)(2)(ii)(D), and 16.505(a)(4)(iii), the award notice for this action will be synopsized within 14 days of award on the Federal Business Opportunities Page (FBO) and this justification will be made publicly available. Additionally, in accordance with FAR 16.505(a)(4)(iii)(A)(1), this justification shall be posted with the solicitation on the NASA SEWP V GWAC website to notify prospective offerors.

7. Actions to Increase Competition: The Government will continue to conduct market research to ascertain if there are changes in the marketplace that would enable future actions to be competed.

8. Market Research: The Government’s technical experts conducted market research in January 2020 by reviewing other similar brand name eDiscovery software applications, specifically products from International Business Machines (IBM) eDiscovery Solutions and AccessData, to determine whether any other sources can provide software maintenance and support on the existing Veritas eDiscovery System software. Based on this review, it was determined that no other source could provide software maintenance support for the Veritas eDiscovery System software as they lacked access to the proprietary source code necessary to provide the required support as discussed above. Only Veritas or its resellers can provide the required software maintenance and support for the existing licenses as only those sources have the ability to access the proprietary code.

Control Number:VA-20-00027523

On January 22, 2020, additional market research was conducted using the Provider Lookup Tool on the NASA SEWP V GWAC website. It was determined that there are numerous NASA SEWP V GWAC holders that are resellers of brand name Veritas software products that can provide the required software maintenance and support under North American Industry Classification System code 541519.

Therefore, limited competition is anticipated under the NASA SEWP V GWAC for the requirements described herein.

9. Other Facts: None.