P06- JA Redacted.pdf

United States Department of Agriculture Justification for Exception-Brand Name

FAR 16.505(a)(4)

1. Identification of the agency and the contracting activity.

The requiring activity is the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), Farm Production and Conservation Business Center (FPAC-BC), HQ- Information Systems Division in support of USDA’s mission partners; Farm Service Agency (FSA); Natural Resources Conservation Center (NRCS); and Risk Management Agency (RMA). The contracting organization responsible for this action is the FPAC-BC, Operations Branch, Acquisition Division, Section 2.

2. The nature and/or description of the action being approved.

USDA/FPAC proposes to issue a brand name firm-fixed price delivery order for Atlassian Software Suite, utilizing the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Solutions for Enterprise-Wide Procurement (SEWP) Government- Wide Acquisition Contract (GWAC).

3. A description of the supplies or services required to meet the agency’s needs (including estimated value).

Atlassian is an FPAC-wide platform that is used within the Business Center and Mission Areas. The Atlassian platform enables better delivery of Mission capabilities through automation of workflows, integration of technologies and consolidation of processes, work streams and documentation. Atlassian is used by FPAC Project Managers, Software Development teams, Business Stakeholders, and a variety of other teams to plan, develop, and deliver products. The following are the core base Atlassian tools used by these teams (along with the table of plug-ins listed below):

• Jira supports backlogs for work management and enables agile development teams to track bugs, stories, epics, and other tasks.

• Confluence is a remote-friendly team workspace (wiki) used by teams to conveniently share knowledge, document, and capture requirements, and collaborate.

• Bitbucket provides a central place to manage git repositories, collaborate on source code, and guide users through the development flow.

• Crowd is Atlassian’s single sign-on identity management tool, providing control of application permissions in one single location.

• All Atlassian products integrate seamlessly with one another.

FPAC’s Atlassian suite of tools is currently the home of a variety of processes, including:

• 12 Years of historical data in Jira & Confluence

• 1900+ Active Users

• 500 Jira Projects (i.e., Development Teams) – Used to manage backlogs, track and report work progress, and to deploy software changes.

• 700,000 Tickets total

• More than 11,000 new tickets/month

• 200 Confluence Spaces – Wiki Knowledge bases used for collaboration and documentation.

• 1300 Bitbucket code repositories

The period of performance will be for a 12-month base.

4. Identification of the exception to fair opportunity and supporting rationale.

The following circumstance justifies the exception to fair opportunity/brand name under FAR 16.505:

FAR 16.505(a)(4) - Brand Name.

5. A statement demonstrating the unique qualifications of the proposed contractor or the nature of the action requiring the use of the authority.

This solution includes brand name software which must be compatible with and deployed on a Certified FedRAMP Moderate or FPAC Authority to Operate (ATO) cloud/hosting environment. The Atlassian software eliminates excess applications used for similar tasks. The software functions as the enterprise software system of engagement for end users and customers. The software platform provided by Atlassian provides multifunctional uses within FPAC. Use of a different provider for this procurement request would cause multi-vendor implementation problems. Other product providers require custom development and additional costs by the manufacturer for application integration. Therefore, the Atlassian solution is essential to meet the government’s requirements, and market research indicates that other similar products do not meet or cannot be modified to meet the agency’s need for IT software development and maintenance/support. Atlassian is being migrated to our FPAC AWS ATO’d cloud environment.

6. A determination by the Contracting Officer that the anticipated cost to the Government will be fair and reasonable.

Price reasonableness will be based on competitive pricing from multiple vendors under NASA SEWP. The awarded delivery order prices are based off the pre-negotiated prices that were determined to be fair and reasonable at the conception of the award through price analysis conducted in accordance with FAR 15.305(a)(1).

7. Any other facts to support the justification.

NA

8. A statement of actions, if any, the agency may take to remove or overcome any barriers to competition if subsequent acquisitions are anticipated.

Market research was conducted once more via NASASEWP Sources Sough Brand Name or Equal to Notice # 303946, to determine if there is feasibility in migrating the USDA to another platform other than Atlassian. While other vendors could provide “like” pieces of the Atlassian Platform, no single vendor was able to meet all the application requirements on a single platform such that Atlassian can provide. The Atlassian system was determined to be a single platform cross enterprise solution designed to run a centralized and integrated data model which makes the upgrade from the existing system seamless and much more cost effective with minimal configuration. It was determined that there is no way to port the existing workflows/tickets already in production to another system without costly outside services, integration efforts and re-training of FPAC staff. For these reasons, the feasibility of converting from the Atlassian platform to another vendor’s platform is prohibitive from both a cost and functionality perspective.

Certifications & Approval

Supporting data that form the basis for and included in this justification is certified accurate and complete.

The information contained in this justification is certified accurate and complete to the best of my knowledge and belief.