NTPR JA_Redacted.pdf

DEFENSE THREAT REDUCTION AGENCY

8725 JOHN J.KINGMAN ROAD, STOP 6201

FORT BELVOIR, VA 22060-6201

JUSTIFICATION AND APPROVAL

FOR OTHER THAN FULL AND OPEN COMPETITION

1. Nature and/or Description of Action

The Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) contracting activity proposes to procure, without using full and open competition, a support contract for the Nuclear Test Personnel Review (NTPR) Program.

2. Description of the Supplies/Services Required

DTRA is the Department of Defense (DoD) executive agent for the NTPR Program, which serves 500,000 atomic veterans and DoD civilian employees (and/or their spouses, children, and elected representatives) who participated in U.S. atmospheric nuclear testing (1945-1962), with the occupation forces of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, or were prisoners of war in Japan at the conclusion of World War II. The program similarly supports an analogous 50,000 DoD personnel associated with U.S. underground nuclear weapon testing (1951-1992), and 6,000 DoD personnel associated with the radiological clean-up of the Pacific Proving Ground. It interacts directly with the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), Department of Justice (DOJ), and the Department of Labor (DOL) to provide DoD's input for veteran radiogenic disease medical assistance and claims for financial compensation. It awards Atomic Veterans Service Certificates for the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD). NTPR also serves as DoD's subject matter expert for personnel radiation dose assessment, and provides this support at the request of the OSD, Combatant Commanders, and the military services. Finally, Congressional actions directly impact NTPR. As per the National Defense Authorization Act of 2022 (PL 117- 81), NTPR expects to begin awarding atomic veteran commemorative service medals in 2022/2023. There are currently nine bills in the 117th Congress (2021-2022) that directly impact DTRA's NTPR Program.

This is a follow-on requirement to the existing NTPR Program under contract HDTRAl-15-C- 0002. The scope of this follow-on effort will require the contractor to perform veteran participation verification, radiation dose assessment, quality assurance, information management, process improvement and special studies, and customer service.

The proposed acquisition strategy for this requirement is to award a sole-source contract to CACI International, Inc. CACI personnel have been supporting the NTPR Program for over 40 years.

The projected period of performance is from 09 November 2022 through 08 November 2027.

The estimated cost of the contract is $15,000,000 (inclusive of all options and a 7% cushion in order to provide flexibility for any unanticipated costs). It is anticipated that the contract will contain both Operations and Maintenance (O&M) and Research and Development (R&D) Contract Line Item Numbers (CLINs) for support, each with a base year and four option years, along with O&M and R&D surge options for increased level of effort to support unanticipated tasks.

3. Statutory Authority

The statutory authority for this non-competitive action is 10 United States Code (U.S.C.)

3204(a)(l), as implemented by FAR 6.302-1, Only One Responsible Source, and no other services will satisfy agency requirements.

4. Applicability of Authority

CACI is the only responsible source capable of providing this unique and specialized service without unacceptable interruption and degradation of service resulting in a significant backlog of pending cases and a significant increase in Congressional inquiries. The following items detail the basis for this statement.

a. Obtaining and Maintaining NTPR IT System Accreditation:

CACI and DTRA RD-NTS staff obtained and maintain the "Authorization to Operate (ATO)" for the DTRA-furnished, contractor-operated Nuclear Test and Radiological Review (NTRR) information technology system. As described in DoDI 8510.01, "Risk Management Framework (RMF) for DoD Information Technology (IT)," an ATO is granted by a DoD-designated approval authority for full operation approval with a typical duration of three years. It involves over 100 separate security controls as detailed in the Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency (DCSA)'s Enterprise Mission Assurance Support Service (eMASS)�s software application, DoD�s comprehensive cybersecurity management tool that supports assessment and authorization of DTRA's IT systems. It took hundreds of CACI staff hours over a two-year period to achieve this ATO accreditation. And once achieved, this ATO is not transferrable from one contractor to another contractor. Therefore, if a new contractor were to assume operation of this IT system, the new contractor would have to re-qualify for the ATO and many of the security controls would have to be readdressed in the process. Although a new contractor would benefit from reviewing CACI�s ATO documentation, they would still require four months or more to achieve a new ATO, due in part to time for DoD cybersecurity officials to initially review the new contractor�s proposed security controls, and then subsequent control revision iterations by the contractor until DoD determines the ATO is finally achieved. Loss of this accreditation would result in a functional moratorium of the NTPR's IT system, and a subsequent suspension of processing NTPR veteran case files.

b. Learning Curve Impact on Productivity and Quality:

The knowledge, experience, training, and individual accreditation for NTPR Program information assurance, as required by DoD 8570.01-M, "Information Assurance Workforce Improvement Program," takes time to acquire due to the unique design of NTPR's one-of-a-kind relational database software Nuclear Test Review and Information System web application (NuTRIS-Web1). NuTRIS-web is an in-house, DTRA-developed software application. DTRA�s NTPR Program uses NuTRIS-Web to record participant data including radiation dose information and to perform NTPR case management activities tracking the veteran�s claim for filing radiogenic disease compensation claims with the VA and DOJ.

There is a six month learning curve for contract staff performing veteran participation verification, dose assessment, quality assurance, process improvement, and program management. Experience is gained by processing cases, and a drop in quality of the NTPR work-

1 DTRA-TR-19-039, �Design Aspects of DTRA�s NuTRIS-Web Software Application� product would occur for non-incumbents during this learning period. At present, contract historical analysts have many years of experience, and a number of them have become the subject matter expert (SME) for individual military services (e.g. an Army SME for veteran participation verification and Navy SME for veteran participation verification).

c. Impact on Veterans, VA, and DOJ:

NTPR services affect the atomic veterans and the Departments of Veterans Affairs and Justice.

DTRA's principal concern is the impact on the unique NTPR-handled veteran compensation claims. NTPR's average incoming caseload in recent years was 51 cases/month. Any delay in processing of NTPR cases is unacceptable to veterans who are elderly and sick, since they may pass-on while action on their compensation claims is delayed. Similarly, the Congressional Veterans Affairs Committees also find these delays unacceptable, and have recently introduced bills in both the House and Senate to address these backlogs2. The VA Secretary has stated that the VA will process all claims within 125 days, with a 98% accuracy (Ref: VA Strategic Plan FY2014-2020). Additionally, DOJ has related to the NTPR team that all DOJ atomic veteran cases not processed in one year due to an unacceptable delay in processing, may result in default payment to the requester [Ref: DOJ comments during NTPR Program review on September 23, 2021]. Processing atomic veteran radiogenic disease compensation claims has two distinct components: a DoD component and a VA or DOJ component. If the processing time of DoD's component is not timely, VA or DOJ cannot achieve their stated goals. Assuring the uninterrupted and timely processing of veterans' claims under the NTPR Program is of paramount importance to DoD, VA, DOJ, Congress, atomic veterans, and their dependents.

5. Effort to Solicit Potential Sources

On May 4, 2021, a Request for Information (RFI) was posted on SAM.gov for purposes of performing market research for the NTPR Program support. The purpose of the announcement was to identify firms capable of supporting the NTPR requirement.

A synopsis of the proposed action will be published on SAM.gov as required by FAR 5.2. Fair and Reasonable Costs.

The anticipated cost/price of this contract action to the Government will be determined to be fair and reasonable based on inputs and evaluations from the DTRA Program Office, analysis of cost and pricing data, field pricing support from the Defense Contract Audit Agency (DCAA) and/or Defense Contract Management Agency (DCMA), and historical data.

6. Market Research

Market research concluded that CACI is the only responsible source that can meet all of the requirements of this effort. The DTRA NTPR Program Manager used the following techniques to conduct market research:

� Historical acquisition information: review of the history of the NTPR Program that depicts the evolution of previous companies were merged and acquired resulting in CACI personnel supporting NTPR for over 40 years;

� Publication of a Request for Information on SAM.gov on May 4, 2021. Two capability responses were received. One was from the incumbent (CACI) and another from

2: 117th Congress, H.R. 5944, �Veterans Administration Backlog Accountability Act of 2021� and S.3388, �Veterans Benefits Improvement Act of 2021.�

Follow-up questions were sent to both interested parties.

CACI's overall response addressed all capabilities to fulfill the requirement.11111 capabilities include two team members, and one of which they would not disclose, citing existing proprietary business relationships. They further stated they would only disclose this entity's name in response to a DTRA solicitation. Even in the follow-up question from the Government requesting for the name of the third team member, - refused to disclose. As a result, without- disclosing the unnamed third entity, DTRA is unable to verify through market research ifthe team possesses all required capabilities. Additionally, althoughllllcommented on all six major task areas, they only provided sufficient detailed information for the: (1) radiation dose assessment and (2) process improvement and special studies tasks. With regard to the other four major task areas, - discussion was conclusory and did not provide specifics to adequately demonstrate that the unnamed source possesses the necessa1y capabilities. For example, - made generalized statements such as -was determined that the team was not qualified to perform these tasks based on the information provided;

• An extensive broad internet search for atomic veteran support, veteran records research and information management, and radiation dose assessment, as well as a search on specific companies known to have some capabilities relating to the NTPR Program. The NTPR support is a very small fraction of CACI's business and therefore was not mentioned on their website. Note that withlllll team,. was found to only have capabilities in radiation dose assessment and process improvement and special snidies.

-only disclosed team member, 11111 was found to only have capabilities in the same two areas as 1111

• Personal knowledge of both the senior DoD/DTRA health physicist and NTPR Program Manager, who has been associated with this effort for the last sixteen years, and the physicists agreed that each agency's program has technical complexities that differ from the other program. The- program covers more radiological sites and has a larger variety of radiation exposure scenarios. The DTRA program has differing technical complexities in their supp01t of VA & DOJ compensation cases and Secreta1y of Defense awards requirements, and the associated administrative procedures and computer codes developed and maintained for that support. This is clearly seen in the uniqueness of DTRA's NuTRIS-web application, since there is no comparable- software application. Both health physicists agreed that- could possibly possess capabilities in radiation dose assessment and process improvement and special studies but does not possess capabilities to fulfill NTPR' s entire requirement;

• Reviewed existing DTRA's Combatting Weapons of Mass Destruction Indefinite Delivery/Indefinite Quantity (ID/IQ) contracts which was found to be not viable as the NTPR requirement does not fall within the ID/IQ scope and would exclude the incumbent from participating as a prime contractor.

9. Subsequent Actions

DTRA's NTPR Program is winding down. By November 2027 (the end of the proposed contract) the average age of surviving atmospheric atomic veterans will be 93 years, with approximately 15,000 (or 3%), of atomic veterans still surviving. Although many inquiries now originate from spouses, since most veterans are deceased, the need for a follow-on contract to support post- November 2027 may not exist. However, market surveys will be completed in order to assess emerging market conditions and determine whether or not viable contractors have entered the market place for potential competition. As this is a small industry niche, small businesses in this field rapidly change, however, because of this small depth, these changes in industry are often readily visible to DTRA and others in the DoD who heavily rely on their immediate services and expertise.