RFI 36C10B26Q0537- AI Governance - FINAL.docx

RFI - Enterprise Artificial Intelligence Governance, Management, and Implementation Support (VA-26-00070202)

REQUEST FOR INFORMATION

Department of Veterans Affairs Enterprise Artificial Intelligence Governance, Management, and Implementation Support

VA-26-00070202

Introduction:

This is a Request for Information (RFI) only issued for conducting market research. Accordingly, this RFI constitutes neither a Request for Quote (RFQ), Request for Proposal (RFP), nor a guarantee that one will be issued by the Government in the future; furthermore, it does not commit the Government to contract for any services described herein. The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is not, at this time, seeking proposals or quotes, and therefore, will not accept, review, or evaluate unsolicited proposals or quotes received in response hereto. This notice is not to be construed as a commitment on the part of the Government to award a contract, nor does the Government intend to pay for any information submitted because of this request. The Government does not reimburse respondents for any costs associated with submission of the information being requested or reimburse expenses incurred for responses to this RFI. The information provided may be used by VA in developing its acquisition strategy and Performance Work Statement (PWS) or Product Description (PD). Any information submitted by respondents to this RFI is strictly voluntary; however, any information received shall become the property of the Government and will not be returned to the respondent. Interested parties are responsible for adequately marking proprietary, restricted, or competition sensitive information contained in their response. This is a request for information and does not obligate the Government in any way, nor does it commit the Government to any specific course of action. Product information, brochures, part numbers, and/or other description information may be included with the submission.

Responses:

f

1) Include the following identification information:

a. Name of Company

b. Address

c. Point of Contact

d. Phone Number

e. Fax Number

f. Email address

g. Company Business Size

h. NAICS code(s)

i. Any Schedules held on General Services Administration (GSA), Government-Wide Acquisition Contracts (GWAC) held on the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Solutions for Enterprise Wide Procurement (SEWP) V, or any other schedule not mentioned above to assist in determining acquisition strategy if you are included in one or more. Please also include Contract Number, expiration date, etc.

j. Socioeconomic data:

· If a small business, what type of small business are you?

· Are you able to comply with VAAR 852.219-10, VA Notice of Total Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned Small Business Set-Aside and with subcontracting limitations in 13 CFR 125.6 in execution of this effort?

· The ability to comply with VAAR 852.219-75 - Notice of Limitations on Subcontracting—Certificate of Compliance for Services and Construction (Jan 2023) (Deviation

2) Is your company currently providing similar services to any government agency or other non-government customers? If so, please identify the agency or non-government customer. If you are unwilling to share your customers' identity, please address whether your company offers the same or similar services, commercially (outside the federal government).

3) Please address the following questions in your capability statement:

· What is VA missing in this draft requirement? What should we be on the lookout for?

· What are the risks associated with AI-supported governance and how would you mitigate them?

· How can VA AI governance manage rapidly increasing scale and scope of AI across the enterprise?

· How would you approach assessing VA's current AI capabilities and prioritizing investments?

· Describe your experience designing and scaling AI across a large organization including strategy development, tooling selection, workflow redesign, and scaled deployment. What did you do, what changed, and how did you measure success?

4) Additionally, VA is requesting assistance in obtaining estimated pricing based on the services as identified. The results of the estimated pricing and technical capabilities shall be used to finalize the VAs requirements prior to issuing a solicitation. Please provide a Rough Order of Magnitude (ROM) for the product/solution being proposed if possible. The ROM is not part of the 10-page limit.

NO MARKETING MATERIALS ARE ALLOWED AS PART OF THIS RFI. GENERIC CAPABILITY STATEMENTS WILL NOT BE REVIEWED.

OFFERORS ARE ADVISED THAT THIS REQUIREMENT MAY BE DELAYED, CANCELED, OR REVISED AT ANY TIME.

Draft Requirement

Enterprise Artificial Intelligence Governance, Management, and Implementation Support

1. Purpose The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Chief AI Officer (CAIO) and associated offices requires contractor support to facilitate enterprise-level artificial intelligence (AI) management, standards, and strategic implementation. The Contractor shall provide a multidisciplinary team capable of managing the full lifecycle of AI use case review, regulatory compliance tracking, stakeholder engagement, data pipeline management, and governance product development – as well as a dedicated capability to assess VA’s enterprise AI landscape, prioritize investments, and drive scalable AI adoption across VA. This support will enable the VA to responsibly adopt, scale, and oversee AI technologies in a manner consistent with federal law, policy, and the best interests of Veterans and VA personnel. VA requires contractor support to meet these obligations across the workforce with widely varying degrees of AI familiarity and across program offices with distinct missions, cultures, and risk tolerances.

2. Background VA is one of the largest federal agencies in the United States, serving millions of Veterans across hundreds of facilities and digital touchpoints. As AI technologies become increasingly embedded in VA operations from clinical decision support to benefits adjudication and workforce tools the need for structured, enterprise-wide AI governance has grown significantly.

Federal mandates have established clear expectations for responsible AI use in government. OMB Memorandum M-25-21 (Accelerating Federal Use of AI through Governance, Innovation, and Leadership) requires agencies to implement governance frameworks that enable AI adoption while managing risk, promoting transparency, and protecting civil liberties. Compliance with this memo and related Executive Orders requires dedicated expertise, robust tooling, active stakeholder management, and a continuous feedback loop between policy, technology, and operations.

3. Scope / Mission The Contractor shall support the VA's enterprise AI governance mission through two functional tracks:

Track 1 – AI Management and Standards: AI use case review and inventory management; AI and large language model (LLM)-enabled governance tooling; AI-augmented response quality improvement; data pipeline and validation management; human-centered design and user experience (UX) testing for governance products; strategic communications and enterprise solutioning; and transition support for a federated AI governance model.

Track 2 – AI Strategy and Enterprise Execution: Enterprise AI and agentic AI landscape assessment and platform evaluation; AI investment prioritization and roadmap development; and implementation coordination.

4. Period and Place of Performance

The Period of Performance consists of one 12-month base period with four 12-month option periods for continued support.

5. Place of Performance:

Work shall be performed primarily at Contractor facilities. Contractor personnel may be required to support on-site activities at VA Central Office (Washington, D.C.) or other VA facilities as mission needs dictate. Travel requirements, if any, shall be coordinated in advance and reimbursed in accordance with the Federal Travel Regulation (FTR).

5. Performance Objectives (Required Results) The Contractor shall provide and sustain a single, integrated team capable of achieving all of the following required results concurrently:

Track 1 – AI Management and Standards

AI Use Case Review & Inventory Management: The Contractor shall conduct structured intake, review, and risk tiering of all VA AI use cases in accordance with applicable federal policy and VA governance frameworks. The Contractor shall baseline workload assumptions, including estimated monthly use case volume, anticipated number of stakeholder engagements, expected number of technical assessments and reporting cadence. The Contractor shall maintain a current, accurate, and auditable enterprise AI use case inventory and produce regular summary reports on use case pipeline status, risk distribution, and review outcomes for VA leadership. The Contractor shall deliver a Monthly Enterprise AI Use Case Inventory and Pipeline Report, including status, risk tier, owner, review stage, aging, pending decisions, and required federal reporting fields.

AI/LLM-Enabled Governance Tooling: The Contractor shall design, develop, implement, and maintain LLM- and AI-enabled technical solutions that automate or augment use case tracking, documentation management, and compliance status monitoring. All AI/LLM-enabled tooling must operate only within VA-approved environments and must be interoperable with VA-approved systems, repositories, identity/access controls, and reporting environments. Solutions shall be scalable, interoperable with existing VA systems, and aligned with VA security and privacy requirements. Contractor-developed workflows, prompts, configurations, data schemas, dashboards, documentation, and technical artifacts shall be reusable by VA and transferable at contract closeout. The Contractor shall continuously improve tooling based on user feedback and evolving policy requirements.

AI-Augmented Response Quality: The Contractor shall apply AI and LLM capabilities to review, improve, and quality-assurance governance guidance, policy responses, use case decisions, and stakeholder-facing communications. AI-generated outputs must be subject to documented human review before being used for high-impact, rights-impacting, clinical, benefits, privacy, safety, or compliance-sensitive decisions. The Contractor shall establish and maintain, in collaboration with VA, quality standards and feedback mechanisms that ensure consistent, accurate, and policy-aligned outputs while reducing turnaround time across the enterprise.

Data Pipeline & Validation Management: The Contractor shall build and manage data pipelines supporting AI governance workflows, including use case intake, compliance tracking, and reporting dashboards. The Contractor shall perform ongoing data validation, cleansing, and integrity checks to ensure governance decisions are informed by accurate and complete data, and shall maintain documentation for all data flows, schemas, and validation rules. The contractor shall deliver a Monthly Data Governance and Validation Report documenting data sources, validation results, error rates, remediation actions, and unresolved data quality issues.

Design & UX Testing for Governance Products: The Contractor shall apply human-centered design principles to develop and iteratively improve governance-facing products, portals, and tools. The Contractor shall conduct UX research and usability testing with representative VA user populations — including staff with limited AI familiarity — and shall ensure all governance products meet federal accessibility standards (Section 508). Prior to development of governance-facing products, portals and tools, though, the contractor and VA will establish the minimum expectations for user research, usability testing, accessibility testing, representative VA user groups and Section 508 validation.

Strategic Communications & Enterprise Solutioning: The Contractor shall develop and execute communications strategies that effectively convey AI governance requirements, processes, and decisions to a large, diverse enterprise audience. This includes a recurring Strategic Communications and Stakeholder Engagement deliverable covering completed communications, planned outreach, training materials, stakeholder feedback, risks, and adoption barriers. The Contractor shall produce plain-language content, briefings, training materials, and change management support tailored to stakeholders with varied levels of AI literacy, from frontline staff to senior leaders. The Contractor shall identify and solution for cross-cutting governance challenges spanning multiple VA components, facilitating stakeholder engagement sessions, working groups, and feedback mechanisms to ensure governance processes remain inclusive and responsive.

Federated Governance Model Transition: The Contractor shall support the VA's transition from a centralized to a federated AI governance model, enabling distributed governance responsibilities across VA administrations, staff offices, and program offices while maintaining enterprise-wide consistency and accountability. This includes developing and implementing a federated governance framework and a Federated AI Governance Transition Plan that defines roles, responsibilities, decision rights, escalation paths, readiness criteria, training needs and component-level governance expectations. The framework should identify and support component-level AI governance leads, establishing clear roles, responsibilities, and decision rights at each tier of the governance structure, and designing scalable processes and tools that empower distributed teams to execute governance activities within VA-wide standards. The Contractor shall provide training and training deliverables, including training schedule, materials, attendance tracking, stakeholder feedback and updates based on policy or process changes. The Contractor shall provide change management support and ongoing advisory services to federated governance stakeholders to ensure a smooth and sustainable transition that does not create compliance gaps or inconsistencies across the enterprise.

Regulatory Compliance: The Contractor shall support VA’s compliance by maintaining a Federal AI Compliance Tracking Report that identifies applicable requirements, compliance status, open actions, risks and upcoming reporting deadlines. The Contractor shall continuously monitor the federal regulatory landscape for new or amended AI requirements, proactively advise VA of compliance obligations and recommended actions, and maintain compliance tracking documentation suitable for audit and reporting to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), Congress, or other oversight bodies. A written impact assessment will be delivered when new federal AI guidance, OMB memoranda, Executive Orders, National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) guidance, or VA policy changes affect the scope of the PWS. The contractor will be required to support VA compliance by maintaining a Federal AI Compliance Tracking Report that identifies applicable requirements, compliance status, open actions, risks, and upcoming reporting deadlines.

Track 2 – AI Strategy and Enterprise Execution

Enterprise AI Landscape Assessment: The Contractor shall deliver an Enterprise AI Landscape Assessment that identifies known AI tools, pilots, platforms, use cases, duplicative capabilities, gaps, risks, dependencies, and high-value opportunities. The Contractor shall conduct a comprehensive, ongoing assessment of VA's current AI capabilities, tools, and deployments across all major enterprise platforms, including but not limited to clinical systems, benefits adjudication platforms, administrative and workforce tools, and enterprise data infrastructure. The assessment shall identify gaps, redundancies, and high-value opportunities for AI integration, and shall be updated semiannually or upon significant changes to the VA technology environment or in the event of emerging risks, new platforms or significant policy shifts.

AI Investment Prioritization & Roadmap Development: The Contractor shall develop and maintain a VA enterprise AI investment roadmap that aligns AI adoption priorities with VA strategic goals, resource constraints, and governance readiness. The roadmap shall include prioritization criteria such as mission impact, Veteran impact, implementation feasibility, risk level, data readiness, cybersecurity posture, cost, governance maturity, and expected return on investment. The roadmap shall sequence investments by expected impact, implementation feasibility, and risk level, and shall provide VA leadership with a decision-ready framework for allocating AI-related resources across administrations and program offices. The roadmap shall identify near-term, mid-term, and long-term opportunities, dependencies, decision points, estimated resource needs, and risks requiring leadership action. The Contractor shall facilitate prioritization reviews with senior VA stakeholders on a regular cadence.

6. Operating Constraints

· Security & Privacy: All contractor personnel shall comply with VA security, privacy, and data handling requirements, including obtaining and maintaining required background investigations and completing mandatory VA training. No sensitive VA data shall be processed through non-approved AI tools or platforms and any/all VA data, prompts, outputs, embeddings, fine-tuning data, systems instructions, evaluation results, and derived artifacts shall not be used to train, improve, or commercialize non-VA models without explicit written Government authorization.

· Policy Alignment: All AI tools and LLM solutions used must be approved for use within the VA environment and must comply with VA Handbook policies, NIST AI Risk Management Framework guidance, and applicable OMB directives. The contractor shall maintain a current inventory of all AI tools, models, Application Programming Interfaces, platforms, plug-ins, datasets, and third-party services used to perform the work, subject to Government review and approval.

· Staffing Continuity: The Contractor shall maintain sufficient staffing levels and succession plans to prevent lapses in governance coverage. Key personnel changes require VA Contracting Officer Representative (COR) notification and approval.

· Reporting: The Contractor shall provide monthly status reports, quarterly compliance assessments, and ad hoc reporting as required by the COR.

· Stakeholder Sensitivity: Contractor personnel must demonstrate the ability to engage VA stakeholders including clinical, administrative, technical, and executive staff with professionalism, cultural competency, and communication approaches appropriate to the audience's level of AI literacy.

· Scalability: Solutions and processes developed shall be designed for enterprise scale, accommodating VA's size, geographic distribution, and organizational complexity.

· Section 508 Compliance: All contractor-developed products, tools, and digital content shall comply with Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act and applicable VA accessibility standards. The contractor shall provide Section 508 compliance documentation, testing results, and remediation plans for any identified accessibility defects.