Request_for_Information_Ukraine_PLSO.docx.pdf

REQUEST FOR INFORMATION (RFI)

Subject: RFI No. USAID/Ukraine_RFI_PLSO_2024 Issuance Date: December 14, 2023 Issued by: USAID/Ukraine Response by: January 15, 2024 at 15:00 (Kyiv Local Time).

Reference: Partner Liaison Security Operation (PLSO) Activity, Draft Statement of Work

Purpose:

USAID/Ukraine is in the process of designing the new PLSO Activity for implementation in Ukraine. We are seeking public comments on the draft Statement of Work to inform the design process. Responses to this request for information are not binding on the U.S. Government and do not obligate USAID to issue a solicitation, nor does it commit USAID to pay any cost incurred in the preparation and submission of comments.

Brief Description:

The objective of this contract is to provide USAID/Ukraine’s Implementing Partners (IPs) and their sub-partners resources, security information, and opportunities to reduce their security risk profile with the goal of improving delivery of USG assistance. The purpose of the PLSO is to serve as a liaison to and facilitate communications between the IPs and USAID/Ukraine, and between IPs themselves, to enable the IPs to better use and share publicly available information as a decision support mechanism. The PLSO efforts will assist in the more effective delivery of U.S.

Government (USG) funded assistance, as it will enhance the IPs’ ability to stay abreast of security concerns and better secure their operations so that IPs can more aptly perform and advance development objectives under their respective agreements.

Requested Information:

USAID/Ukraine invites the public to submit constructive feedback and comments on the DRAFT Statement of Work (SOW). This includes, but is not limited to, comments on the comprehensive nature of the proposed activities and the identification of any potential gaps. In addition to general feedback, USAID would like to receive comments related, but not limited, to the questions listed below. These comments will be taken into consideration in the design of the final activity. We have provided the draft SOW and questions in Attachment A.

Comments must be submitted to USAID via email to Jaimy Lewis at jailewis@usaid.gov and Olha Zadorozhna at ozadorozhna@usaid.gov. The subject line must read “USAID/Ukraine RFI PLSO 2024 Response” and comments must be submitted no later than the date and time above.

Only electronic submissions will be accepted. Responses to this RFI must be written in English.

mailto:jailewis@usaid.gov mailto:ozadorozhna@usaid.gov

Cover Page:

Whether responding to the Questions or providing general feedback on the SOW or both, all submissions must include a cover page (one page maximum) that includes the following information:

● Organization name and address;

● Organization point of contact name, DUNS number (if applicable), telephone number, and email address;

● Organization type, i.e. commercial, public sector, educational institution, NGO, etc.

● If applicable, socioeconomic status, e.g., other than small business, small business, woman-owned, veteran-owned, etc;

● Primary field(s) of expertise/work and geographic presence, e.g., countries in which your organization is currently working, also noting the countries in which your organization is legally and formally registered.

In response to the Questions below or providing General Feedback on the SOW, an organization’s response must not exceed five (5) pages in total length.

This RFI is issued solely for planning purposes and is published in accordance with FAR Part 10 and FAR 15.201(e). This RFI is open for comments from any interested US and Non-US Organizations. Responding to this RFI will not give any advantage to any organization in any subsequent procurement. Likewise, organizations that choose not to respond will not be precluded from submitting a proposal in response to a subsequent solicitation, if one is ultimately issued. Any information submitted in response to this notice is voluntary. This is not a solicitation or a call for proposals. Please do not submit proposals, resumes or promotional materials, or proprietary or otherwise sensitive information. USAID may use any information provided without incurring any obligation. USAID reserves the right to, or not to, incorporate any, some, or none of the comments received from this RFI into any subsequent solicitations or design documents. This RFI does not restrict the Government's acquisition approach on a future solicitation, and USAID reserves the right to modify the scope, scale or other details of the planned activities. Similarly, USAID is not obligated to modify its planned approach or otherwise incorporate the input that organizations offer.

Respondents will only receive an electronic confirmation acknowledging receipt of your response but will not receive individualized feedback on any suggestions.

We know that responding to our RFI requires time and effort on your part. We appreciate your assistance and interest in USAID programs.

Sincerely, /s/

Carter Saunders, CPA Contracting Officer USAID/Ukraine

Attachment A : Draft Statement of Work (SOW) and Questions

ATTACHMENT A

RFI QUESTIONS:

1. Is the proposed SOW, including the activity’s objective, responsibilities and activities clear and understandable? What sections should be clarified or elaborated on?

2. Are there key aspects missing from the proposed scope that would be critical to include to achieve its objective and activities? In particular, are there additional critical elements, opportunities, or constraints that need to be accounted for in the proposed approach?

3. Are the proposed purpose and expected results feasible and achievable within the proposed scope, budget, time frame, and ‘country-at-war’ environment?

4. What are the major stakeholders, existing or planned processes and initiatives that need to be taken into account and coordinated with while designing and implementing this activity?

In addition to the specific questions requested above, please outline below any general program recommendations, relevant context, existing capacities, or other information pertinent to the design of the future USAID/Ukraine PLSO Activity.

DRAFT SECTION C – DESCRIPTION/SPECIFICATIONS/STATEMENT OFWORK

(YELLOW HIGHLIGHTS INDICATE PLACEHOLDER INFORMATION)

C.1 BACKGROUND

USAID/Ukraine is responsible for the development, implementation, and oversight of USAID-funded activities operating throughout Ukraine. Currently USAID/Ukraine is the largest and most complex Mission in the Europe and Eurasia region, with over $2 billion of funding appropriated to respond to Russia’s full-scale invasion and over 45 distinct activities with a portfolio value approaching $4 billion. Due to the region’s strategic importance to the U.S.

Government, the Mission receives a high number of senior-level official visitors, works closely with interagency, host government, and civil society actors.

The US Government security rating for Ukraine as of December 2023 is currently on Level 4, “Do Not Travel,” due to armed conflict. The rating depicts the current unpredictable security situation, which directly impacted the security environment in Ukraine and the U.S. Mission as a whole. The U.S. Department of State’s (DOS) Ukraine Travel Warning details the security incidents and threats, which can be found here. Thus, security is a concern for USAID’s Implementing Partners (IPs). While USAID’s relationship with its IPs dictates against providing prescriptive guidance on security or mandatory reporting by the IPs, the Mission is establishing the Partner Liaison Security Operation (PLSO) as a tool to enhance communication between USAID and its IPs regarding security information to help IPs better manage and mitigate their respective security concerns.

C.2 OBJECTIVE

The objective of this contract is to provide USAID/Ukraine IPs and their sub-partners resources, security information, and opportunities to reduce their security risk profile with the goal of https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/traveladvisories/traveladvisories/ukraine-travel-advisory.html#:~:text=Ukraine%20%2D%20Level%204%3A%20Do%20Not%20Travel&text=Do%20not%20travel%20to%20Ukraine,Read%20the%20entire%20Travel%20Advisory.

improving delivery of USG assistance. The purpose of the PLSO is to serve as a liaison to and facilitate communications between the IPs and USAID/Ukraine, and between IPs themselves, to enable the IPs to better use and share publicly available information as a decision support mechanism. The PLSO efforts will assist in the more effective delivery of U.S. Government (USG) funded assistance, as it will enhance the IPs’ ability to stay abreast of security concerns and better secure their operations so that IPs can more aptly perform and advance development objectives under their respective agreements.

USAID is increasingly called upon to implement programs in countries and regions identified by the Department of State as High Threat Posts. In these areas, a consistent and appropriate level of safety and security support for the Agency’s IPs is critical. While IPs are ultimately responsible for the safety and protection of their employees and programs, the PLSO is intended to provide safety and security-related support to USAID’s IPs, regardless of their organization’s country of origin. The PLSO also serves in an information-sharing role helping to disseminate open source information and promote security best practices. The PLSO does not replace IPs’ responsibility to establish their own robust security, staffing, policies, and procedures.

This operation will be located in Ukraine outside the U.S. Embassy Compound. The Contractor will provide security support to USAID/Ukraine’s IPs operating throughout the country.

C.3 RESPONSIBILITIES AND ACTIVITIES

The PLSO serves as the USAID/Ukraine Liaison to the Executive Office (EXO) for IP security matters and serve as the primary security point of contact between USAID and its IPs on issues relating to security. In addition, the PLSO is expected to collaborate with the Mission’s technical teams and other USG agencies in Ukraine.

All contractor activities must complement, rather than duplicate, existing security related support to USAID’s IP community in Ukraine, focusing on the specific needs of USAID IPs and sub-partners and striving for cost efficiency and effectiveness. All work with IPs’ sub-partners must be coordinated and requested through the prime IP. While the activities listed below may appear comprehensive, USAID seeks services to fill gaps, improve the quality of such support, and diversify options for capacity strengthening in security planning, implementation, monitoring, and budgeting. To meet the goals and objectives above, the contractor must perform the following activities, at a minimum:

● The contractor must build strong working relationships with IPs and their sub-partners and tailor services to their needs and capacity.

● The contractor must coordinate with relevant in-country entities such as the United Nations (UN), international NGOs, security forums, and other international donors for the purpose of sharing and aggregating security information among partners working in the same environment. In addition to security advisors who are employees and/or contractors of international and local NGOs, several membership-based organizations in Ukraine provide information and advice to the IP community. Information collected will be shared with relevant USAID offices at the Mission and Washington and well as IPs. Existing security forums include the below:

o International NGO Safety Organization (INSO): INSO opened an office in Ukraine in January 2018. With funding from various donors, its mission is to support the humanitarian community with information, analysis and advice that enhances situational awareness, supports informed decision-making, strengthens operational practice and enables humanitarian access. Services include 1) providing NGOs with credible, reliable and quality safety information, analysis and advice in a timely and appropriate manner; and 2) providing the knowledge and skills to mitigate personal risk and improve organizational safety management.

o Overseas Security Advisory Council's (OSAC): OSAC’s goal is to enhance the exchange of timely and relevant security-related information between the local representatives of U.S. private sector organizations operating abroad and U.S.

embassies and consulates. Country Councils offer security representatives the opportunity to network, share security concerns and best practices, and learn about and take advantage of resources available to them through the U.S. embassy. In Juba, there is a robust Country Council that is convened by the RSO OSAC Steering Committee and meets regularly. The Juba Council discusses threats against personnel, risk, and other topics such as crime, natural disasters, disease outbreak, and crisis management and contingency planning.

● The contractor must stay informed of USAID and Embassy safety and security policies, practices, and notifications, especially as they apply to, or affect, USAID’s IPs.

● At the general and specific direction of the COR, the contractor must meet with, and provide informational briefings to newly arrived international staff of USAID IPs tailored to suit the IPs organizational approach and area of operations. At the request of individual IPs, briefings may also include personal security advice. All briefings must provide a balanced perspective on the realities of operating in Ukraine. Briefings must contain up-to-date security information, including the political, security sector, and economic status, in addition to standard security information.

● The contractor must actively participate as a member of OSAC.

● At the general and specific direction of the COR or the CO, the contractor must assist

IPs in identifying needs and issues relevant to their safety and security.

● The contractor must gather, analyze, and report on the political, security sector, economic, social/humanitarian, and infrastructure issues within Ukraine as they are relevant to IP programs and operations. The contractor must act as a subject matter expert on current events, specifically within the social media space, as relevant to IP programs and operations.

● At the general and specific direction of the COR or the CO, the contractor must identify and recommend existing training programs to IPs that are relevant to the respective IP field operations that develop capacity in security analysis; security planning; and the implementation, monitoring, evaluation and budgeting of such plans. This includes a broad security training curriculum for IPs, online ‘Know-Before-You-Go’ training and new arrival security awareness briefings, and internationally certified training for leaders, staff and drivers [online and in-person].

● At the general and specific direction of the COR, the contractor must research, organize and provide non-prescriptive references and guidelines for effective and cost efficient security-related operating procedures for working in each IPs’ areas of operations in Ukraine.

● The contractor must coordinate with relevant security forums to build the capacity of USAID IPs to use and share security information to help IPs better manage and mitigate their respective security concerns.

● The contractor must assist the IP community and Mission in communicating security issues impacting programs and operations.

● At the general and specific direction of the CO, the contractor must review IP and prospective IP security plans, security upgrades and security-related contract or award modifications, including associated costs, and provide non-prescriptive guidance to the CO. The contractor must share advisory security plan best practices among IPs and provide non-binding, advisory services for activity start-ups and for life-of-project security risk issues.

● At the general and specific direction of the CO, the contractor must support an IP’s development of bespoke security strategies that are aligned to the IP’s respective risk tolerances, available resources, and available capacity to enhance operations.

● Every week, the contractor must draft and distribute to the COR, the CO, and IPs medium and long-term, concise and actionable, contextual analysis as to underlying drivers and possible impacts of security incidents/conditions relevant to IP security, USAID staff, and the RSO. Analysis should derive from information received from IPs, open-source or public domain security databases and systems, and other relevant and reliable sources. These analyses should include trend assessments that complement incident reporting from other security support entities. The contractor must develop and maintain GIS maps and other forms of data visualization to identify trends and patterns that can help IPs better anticipate emerging security threats.

● As directed by the COR, the contractor must provide USAID and other stakeholders as directed by USAID (eg RSO) with site specific security assessments in support of USG site visits utilizing existing information.

● If the contractor becomes aware of a security incident directly affecting a USAID IP or sub- partner, the contractor must provide immediate (within 2 hours) notification to the COR, the CO, the IP’s cognizant COR/AOR, and others as directed by the COR such as RSO. The notification must include the generic source of the reporting (e.g. XXX; IPs;

etc.), the date, time, and location of the incident, if available, as well the type of incident and any other relevant information. The contractor must maintain a record of all incidents throughout the life of the contract. At the end of the contract, the contractor must turn over the records as part of property disposition as the records are USG property.

● The contractor must develop and maintain a database of Ukraine incidents reported by USAID IPs. The database will be able to produce reports for IPs and the Mission/Embassy to inform their decision-making in various regions. The information will be all open source and include reports from IPs, media, and other sources. Contributing USAID/Ukraine offices will be able to access database to track incidents.

● The contractor must develop and maintain a real-time database to track the location of IPs to better respond to emergent security threats.

● The contractor must develop and maintain a bulk SMS text message notification system to contact IPs when/if there is a total blackout of internet connectivity. There must be a differentiation between “emergency” alerts and “useful information.” For example, traffic and bad weather is useful, but not necessarily worthy of an “emergency” text.

● The contractor must develop and maintain a database of contact information for USAID IP Chiefs of Party, their deputies, and Security Managers from the respective IPs operating in Ukraine. This database will include contact information and the location of project sites.

Contributing USAID/Ukraine offices will have access to the database to periodically update IP contact information.

● The contractor must develop subject matter expertise within the team regarding IP programs and operations vis-à-vis the security environment. The contractor must demonstrate an understanding of what programs are and the implications of security-based incidents to the programs, and promote sustainable systems and processes for information sharing on risk, best practices, and other non-PII data amongst and directly between IPs.

C.4 INFORMATION REQUIREMENTS

Type of Security Information

The term “security information” as used in this Contract must mean information related to security that is hostile or threat-related in nature received voluntarily from implementing partners or their subcontractors as well as relevant security forums. It also includes information from security databases, systems, and other relevant and reliable sources that are publicly available. The security information must not be independently verified by the contractor and will not be considered comprehensive of the security environment.

Use of Security Information

The security information is designed to provide IPs, USAID, and the RSO with potentially useful information regarding the security environment in Ukraine. Each IP will decide how it utilizes or does not utilize the information to effectively manage its risk profile. The security information is for informational purposes only.

Disclosure of Security Information Reported by IPs

The source of the security information received from IPs must not be disclosed to anyone other than the COR, CO, and RSO, as appropriate, in order to protect the privacy of the IPs’ locations, business purpose, operations, and other proprietary information. In addition, the information must not be disclosed to anyone within the contracted organization other than relevant project personnel. Further, it must not be used in any way other than in the production of USAID contracted work product. To build the confidence of IPs the contractor may consider developing non-disclosure agreements that outline the caveats above. To further protect the IP privacy, the contractor must not investigate the validity of the security information reported by IPs. Although the source of the security information is protected, the actual underlying security information is unclassified and open-source information.

Method of Collecting Security Information

IPs will not be required to report security incidents and the contractor must not actively monitor IP movements or activities in order to obtain information.

Disclaimer on all Security Information and Communications

The following disclaimer must be used and prominently displayed for all communications under the contract:

This USAID/Ukraine communication is designed to provide Implementing Partners with information received regarding security or of a hostile threat-related nature. If derived from implementing partners or their subcontractors the source of the information may not be disclosed in order to protect the privacy of implementing partners. USAID/Ukraine and U.S. Embassy’s RSO does not investigate the validity of the report and relies on implementing partners to validate the details of reported incidents. The public nature of the report requires that the content be limited to unclassified information; as such the information may be disseminated freely. The

USAID/Ukraine communications are provided for information purposes only and any decisions made by the IPs regarding security of facilities, personnel and travel should be based on Department of State travel advisories, OSAC advisories or other authorities' guidance.

Disclosure of Procurement Sensitive Information

The contractor must not disclose any information deemed procurement sensitive, such as IP cost information related to security plans, to any person other than the CO.

C.5 TRAVEL

The contractor must be available to travel to IP and USAID program sites throughout Ukraine as needed and requested for briefings, site visits, and trainings and for effective relationship building.

C.6 LOGISTICAL INFORMATION

The contractor is responsible for furnishing all logistical support and obtaining all permits to meet the terms and conditions of the contract. These must include, but are not limited to, all support for database and systems, security, personnel requirements, travel arrangements, communications, appointment scheduling, administrative services, report preparation services, printing, and duplicating. The contractor must obtain legal registration within 30 days of contract award and maintain the registration throughout the period of performance.

C.7 NO CONCURRENT SECURITY ACTIVITIES

To avoid a conflict of interest with the advice/guidance provided to IPs, the contractor or its affiliates may not provide security/protection services (e.g. guard or facility strengthening services, security related hardware or software, etc..) to any entity in Ukraine at any time during the performance of this contract.

C.8 DATA CLASSIFICATION

All work under this contract must be unclassified, and thus no special information security requirements are applicable.

C.9 MONITORING, EVALUATION, AND LEARNING (MEL)

The contractor must integrate monitoring, evaluation, and learning throughout the implementation of all activities in the contract. MEL will focus largely at the activity level and inform day-to-day programming and implementation decisions.

The contractor may conduct pre-activity/pre-training surveys and/or focus groups with stakeholders as necessary. Well-constructed quantitative and qualitative baseline data collection exercises will be critically important for establishing indices of service delivery quality and systems sustainability. A MEL plan must be submitted to the COR for approval within 45 days after award of the contract. At a minimum, the contractor must utilize the following three indicators:

● Level of IP utilization and satisfaction with the contractor’s services.

● Number of reports submitted.

● Number of revisions before a report is considered final and approved by USAID.

USAID/Ukraine may fund both the external mid-term and/or final evaluation of the PLSO separately from this contract. USAID/Ukraine may use the midterm results and recommendations to inform critical programmatic decisions.

[END OF SECTION C]

DRAFT (YELLOW HIGHLIGHTS INDICATE PLACEHOLDER INFORMATION)