redacted eGain Justification and Approval_Redacted.pdf

VA-24-00029239

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, New Jersey 07724

2. Description of Action: The proposed action is for a firm-fixed price delivery order (DO) issued under the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Solution for Enterprise-Wide Procurement (SEWP) V Government wide Acquisition Contract (GWAC) for the renewal of software maintenance and technical support for a single perpetual license of the brand name eGain Enterprise Knowledge Management (KM) software.

3. Description of Supplies or Services: VA’s, Veterans Centered Experience, Veteran Relationship Management (VRM) has a requirement for the renewal of software maintenance and technical support for a single perpetual license of the brand name eGain Enterprise KM, software VA previously acquired. Under this Justification, VA is not renewing licenses nor procuring any additional licenses. VA claim processors use eGain portals to service Veterans’ inquiries at call centers and regional offices across the country and assist Veterans claims adjudicators in processing Veterans claims for benefits. The KM tool allows for a single source and version to support both internal and public facing KM portals with real-time updates performed by VA staff. The Self- Service Web Sessions provide VA claim adjudication manuals and support information access to Veterans and VA stakeholders. The existing perpetual eGain Enterprise KM license includes unlimited agents for eGain Knowledge Agent, unlimited sessions for the external facing portal hits through eGain Web Self Service, and unlimited access through Application Program Interfaces for Customer Chat deflection and the Inquiry Routing and Information System Widgets. Additionally, VA’s eGain Enterprise KM license includes a mobile application for iPhone Operating System and Android devices that shall require a link to KM and Chat and the Virtual Interaction Management Digital Channel Analytic Package.

The required software maintenance support shall include the same periodic version upgrades, updates, enhancements, and corrections to the KM software that are offered commercially. The technical support shall include the same enhanced self-help and search capabilities that are available commercially for the KM software.

The KM Software as a Service (SaaS) shall comply with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act and payment card industry security requirements and shall be accessible through a Site-to-Site Virtual Private Network. Authorizing and analytics is required for compatibility with the eGain Always-On Architecture and Service production environment.

eGain Enterprise Knowledge Management License Software Maintenance and Technical Support

In addition to the maintenance and technical support that is included with the Enterprise KM SaaS, VA also requires Professional Support, eGain Premier Support, and eGain User Guided Help. eGain Professional support shall be provided 24 hours per day, seven (7) days per week, and 365 days per year (24/7/365) and shall include live technical support over phone and email, incident management, and issue analysis and resolution. In the event of latency issues with the KM application due to issues with the software outside of normal business hours, eGain will provide live technical support and analysis to solve any issues. Professional support is over and above the standard technical support that is provided as part of the annual maintenance and support subscription.

eGain Premier Support is also required to augment existing operations and maintenance, Hosting, and eGain Support in the areas of server/system/partition administration, configuration, authoring, and other eGain specific tasks including troubleshooting support for end-to-end system problems including the collection of proprietary log data and performing data analysis on the proprietary log data. Premier Support is over and above the 24x7 eGain Professional software support. Premier support is responsible for tier 2 ticketing support from the VA ticketing system per the Standard Operating Procedure.

Finally, eGain User Guided Help is required for support from eGain or eGain resellers which provides live, guided assistance that can be either externally (Veteran) or internally (agent) facing.

The period of performance (PoP) shall be 12 months from the date of award, with one 12-month option periods.

The total estimated value of the proposed action is , inclusive of all option periods.

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”.

5. Rationale Supporting Use of Authority Cited Above: Based on extensive market research, as further described in Section 8 in this justification, it was determined that limited competition for the annual software maintenance and technical support is available among eGain authorized resellers. Only eGain or eGain resellers are authorized to provide maintenance and support due to proprietary constraints with the existing eGain Enterprise KM perpetual license. Any source providing any of the aforementioned services described above would need access to the eGain proprietary code to ensure all services provided are properly configured to the software. The eGain software described above is vital to VA for implementation of a comprehensive and consistent view of the KM content, such as VA policy and guidelines, operational manuals, call scripts, knowledge articles, and reference materials required by users to conduct VA business processes.

VRM previously purchased an Enterprise License Agreement which provided unlimited access to KM Agent Licenses, KM Web Sessions, and Chat licenses. The current KM repository consists of over 35,151 knowledge articles which are meta-tagged within eGain’s proprietary software. Due to proprietary constraints, utilization of any other brand name software would require a complete re-authoring and reengineering of internal VA statutory manuals and reference materials, a complete re-training of the KM authors across the VA enterprise, a complete redesign of Co-Browse in order to be interoperable with the VRM applications, and system integration of the new KM and Co- Browse interfaces. This would result in extensive delivery delays and duplicated costs of over $8M that would not be recovered through competition. This assessment of extensive duplicated costs is based on similar efforts.

Failure to procure the required brand name eGain Enterprise KM software maintenance and support would negatively impact Veteran care in VHA and impact VBA Veteran support. Specifically, eGain software enables VA claim processors to service Veterans’ inquiries at call centers and regional offices across the country and assist Veterans’ claims adjudicators in processing Veterans’ claims for benefits. Without eGain software being properly maintained, and having access to timely information, each VA organization utilizing the software would need to spend additional time researching needed operational information to assist Veterans, which would create delays in the VA claims for benefits processing as well as Veterans’ inquiries at call centers, thus negatively impacting service provided to Veterans and increase VA costs.

6. Efforts to Obtain Competition: Market research was conducted, details of which are in Section 8 of this justification. This effort did not yield any additional sources that can meet the Government's requirements. It was determined, however, that limited competition is viable among authorized resellers for brand name eGain products and the associated software maintenance and technical support. In accordance with FAR 16.505(a)(4)(iii)(A)(1), this justification will be provided with the solicitation to all appropriate NASA SEWP V GWAC holders. Furthermore, 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 on the Contracting Opportunities website and this justification will be made publicly available within 14 days of award.

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. Specifically, VRM will continue to monitor market trends, new/emerging products, looking for compatible and more advanced technologies to meet VA needs.

8. Market Research: Market research was conducted in December 2023 by VA technical experts through extensive internet research regarding eGain Enterprise KM and other Web Session software to determine if sources other than eGain or eGain authorized resellers can satisfy the requirement. The Government’s technical experts reviewed similar software and services from Salesforce and Microsoft. Based on reviews of these products, the Government’s technical experts determined that while other sources possess general capabilities needed to provide similar services for their respective products, no other source was found that could provide the required software maintenance and technical support without access to eGain’s proprietary code.

Additionally, no other source is compatible with the existing eGain software or could avoid the estimated the duplicative costs and time as outlined in Section 5 of this justification. Based on the market research efforts, the Government’s technical experts have determined that only eGain’s brand name products can meet all of VA’s needs.

Additional market research was conducted in February 2024 utilizing the NASA SEWP V GWAC Provider Lookup Tool to identify NASA SEWP resellers that could provide the brand name eGain products and the associated maintenance and technical support.

The search yielded two eGain resellers capable of providing this requirement that are SDVOSBs and registered and verified in the VetCert database; therefore, limited competition is expected among SDVOSBs for this proposed action. On February 21, 2024, a Request for Information (RFI) was issued on NASA SEWP to determine if any vendors could meet the Government’s needs. On February 26, 2024, the RFI closed with one response received from V3Gate, LLC (SDVOSB) and the response was sent to the technical team for review. On February 27, 2024, the Government’s technical representatives confirmed that it was technically acceptable. The respondent offered only eGain products as solutions to satisfy VA’s requirement. No alternative solutions were proposed. Furthermore, market research was conducted on the VetCert database which found that two or more VetCert verified vendors are capable of meeting the Government’s requirements under North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) code 541519. In addition, NASA SEWP V is a dynamic GWAC in which products can be added on a daily basis to vendor catalogs based on customer requests, as long as the required information technology product is within scope of the NASA

SEWP V GWAC.

9. Other Facts: N/A