Redacted JA_Redacted.pdf

Limited Sources/Sole Source Rationale For all Requirements under $250K

1. REQUIRING AGENCY AND CONTRACTING OFFICE:

Requesting Agency:

Defense Media Activity (DMA) Media Production 6700 Taylor Road Fort Meade, MD 20755

Contracting Activity:

DMA

6700 Taylor Road Fort Meade, MD 20755

2. Procurement Title: Digital Asset Management Tool

Funding Document Number: HQ0516119757 Purchase Request Number: HQ0516119757 Contract Number: TBD Task/Delivery Order Number: N/A Estimated Value:

3. Statutory Authority and Regulatory Authority: 41 U.S.C. 152(3); 13.106-1(b)(1)

4. Description of Action: DMA is seeking a Digital Asset Management (DAM)

System which will enhance the storage, cataloging, categorizing, and retrieval and sharing of digital assets across the enterprise. The integration of a DAM solution will improve the ability of Media Production producers to properly catalog and find locally stored content using the latest technology like Artificial Intelligence, facial recognition and voice-to-text and image-to-text transcription. This will result in greater efficiency with regards to DMA’s assets enterprise wide and reduce man hours required to find media that isn’t searchable. It will reduce the need to re-acquire content and allow for content to be shared across the DMA production enterprise.

There were other alternatives considered in addition to working with the in-house Media Management solutions. Merlin Digital Asset Management Solution (MerlinOne) provides the best opportunity to reduce the time producers are searching for content. Merlin One has new technology that doesn’t appear to exist in the other solutions. Other alternatives did not have some of the capabilities of the Merlin One solution, they were not cost effective, higher risk, less beneficial, difficult to define, or were not suitably aligned with current corporate strategy and/or objectives.

The existing production asset management (PAM) system is designed for our Studio production playback and BORG long form recording requirements using airspeeds with file output format control by utilizing the current capture system.

The PAM was designed to work video and audio files at ingest, capture, editing and for playback purposes amongst a shared enterprise wide environment. The PAM interfaces with the shared Network Storage device, iNews newsroom functionality as well as archive and command for studio playback operation.

The procurement of a Digital Asset management (DAM) system would not eliminate the need for the existing PAM system. The media generated by the PAM would augment the new Digital Asset Management system by providing additional content and would make those media assets more easily used with the functionality of DAM software. To meet the Government’s requirement, a solution must be compatible with the existing infrastructure for DAM and PAM.

This support will be procured as a firm-fixed price purchase order. The brand name is ‘Merlin Digital Asset Management Solution’.

Merlin Digital Asset Management Solution meets the Government’s requirement in providing searchable voice-to-text and image-to-text transcription for video editors, graphics artists and writers. The Government’s benefit will be realized from the following man-hour cost savings.

-Multiple uses of content (video, photo, graphic, stories) that teams must travel to acquire reduces the cost per piece of content. Currently, the program sends personnel TDY to gather interviews and B-roll that already exist but cannot be found or accessed.

-A single database that is accessible across the production floor will increase sharing, reduce redundant travel and help to better manage the Network Attached Storage by allowing file sharing which would eliminate multiple media file copies across the different service work spaces and members.

-Designers can save, catalog and retrieve files in multiple formats that they currently have to produce from scratch. This saves in several hours and in some instances multiple days of production time.

-Using a Merlin Digital Asset Management Solution to streamline workflows from producers to approving officials reduces download time and reduces potential version control issues.

-User level controls for quality and tagging will reduce the amount of time sifting through the sea of unusable content on DVIDS and other external sources.

-Controlling the metadata fields of cataloged material allows the program to retain information that is relative to the platforms and products provided to clients.

Attaching guidance, communication plans, or approving official contact information is imperative for effectively communicating with clients.

The Government estimates that this solution will save a producer an hour of time searching for content for a product and that producer contributes to 150 products a year. Thousands of hours are expected to be recovered across the enterprise.

Merlin Digital Asset Management Solution has the ability to run locally on the Government’s network thereby eliminating bandwidth and latency issues. Merlin can read many types of text -even in layered file formats like: PowerPoint presentations (PPTX), Word documents (or DOCX), EPS, PDF, PSD, INDD, and AI file types. It includes built-in speech to text search capability with no additional cost, and it is compatible with existing infrastructure.

5. Proposed Sole Source Contractor:

MerlinOne

6. Market Research: The DMA Media Production conducted market research by reviewing existing support for similar or identical supplies/services. The program office also conducted research with knowledgeable persons in Government and industry. The Defense Visual Information Distribution Service (DVIDS) provides a repository of published images and video but is not designed to function as a DAM for unreleased content. DVIDS currently has a transcription service but the files must be made public and this is an issue for content that hasn’t been publicly released. The DVIDS doesn’t allow for version control of products.

The program office contacted several contractors during its market research phase.