RFI Digital Preservation System Word Doc.docx

SUBJECT*

RFI –Digital Preservation System

Request For Information (RFI) Request For Information (RFI)

DESCRIPTION

RFI: 36C10B26Q0316

RFI: 36C10X24Q0024

Department of Veterans Affairs History Office (VAHO) Request for Information (RFI)

I. INTRODUCTION:

This RFI is issued by the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), Technology Acquisition Center (TAC), for information and planning purposes only and does not constitute a solicitation no does it restrict the Government as to the ultimate acquisition approach. In accordance with Revolutionary FAR Overhaul 15.101(c), responses to this notice are not offers and cannot be accepted by the Government to form a binding contract.

The purpose of this RFI is to identify qualified vendors, who are able to meet VA requirements for a Digital Preservation System. This RFI is to obtain market information on capable sources of supply, industry best practices, and input specific to the information provided. The Government is not responsible for any cost incurred by industry in furnishing this information. All costs associated with responding to this RFI will be solely at the interested vendor's expense. Not responding to this RFI does not preclude participation in any future Request for Quote (RFQ), if any is issued. Any information submitted by respondents to this RFI is strictly voluntary. All submissions will become Government property and will not be returned. Interested vendors are responsible for adequately marking proprietary, restricted or competition sensitive information contained in their response.

VA intends to award a sole source contract to Preservica, 50 Milk St, FL 16, Boston, MA 02109-5002. The North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) for this requirement is NAICS 513210 Software Publishers.

II. RFI RESPONSE INSTRUCTIONS

NOTE: The capability package must be clear, concise, and complete. VA is not under any obligation to provide feedback to the company, or to contact the company for clarification of any information submitted in response to this RFI.

RFI responses must include:

A. Company Information:

1. Company Name;

2. Company Address;

3. Point of contact name;

4. Telephone number

5. Email address

6. CAGE/SAM UEI under which the company is registered in the System for Award Management (SAM).

7. Socio-Economic Type/Business Size

8. Small Business Administration (SBA) VetCert certification (if applicable).

B. Provide a summary of your capability to meet the requirements outlined within RFI Section III Requirement Description.

C. Provide responses to questions.

Responses to this RFI shall be submitted electronically by 12:00 PM ET, April 17, 2026 via email to the Technology Acquisition Center (TAC) point of contacts Contract Specialists, Chanté Frith, Chante.Frith@va.gov, Keith Long, Keith.Long2@va.gov and Contracting Officer, Matthew Truex, Matthew.Truex1@va.gov. Please note “Response to RFI –Digital Preservation System” in the subject line of your response. The email file size shall not exceed 5 MB.

Questions and Answers (Q&A) cut-off date: April 8, 2026 by 12:00 PM ET

All responsible sources may submit a response in accordance with the following:

All proprietary/company confidential material shall be clearly marked on every page that contains such.

Please keep your response to no more than 03 pages. Responses should be submitted as either a Microsoft Word (.docx) or an Acrobat (PDF) format with Arial or Times New Roman font, 12 pt. minimum that addresses all information. Tables and illustrations may use a reduced font size not less than 8-point and may be landscape. Interested parties should exclude marketing material in order to allow sufficient space for adequately, directly, and substantively responding with the information of most interest to the Government. NO MARKETING MATERIALS ARE ALLOWED AS PART OF THIS RFI.

III. REQUIREMENT DESCRIPTION:

The VA established VAHO on April 10, 2020, to formally collect, preserve and provide access to VA’s relevant historical records and artifacts to tell a comprehensive story of VA and its predecessor organizations.

Per VA Directive 7777, VAHO is directed to:

· Facilitate the collection of historical artifacts and archival materials for preservation related to the response to national emergencies by VA.

· Prepare, catalogue, and preserve textual and digital (video, audio, and other electronic formats), histories of major Departmental actions, including the history of VA predecessor agencies. Prepare pamphlets, books, monographs, articles, catalogues, chronologies, bibliographies, and special studies of importance to the Department for public and stakeholder benefit.

· Identify, collect, accession, preserve and organize digital and textual archives. This effort supports established VA records management schedules.

· Create and maintain historic data and records searchable to researchers, writers, historians, and the public.

In order to meet the directives outlined above, VAHO requires the acquisition of a FEDRAMP certified digital preservation system (DPS) that will facilitate bit level and active digital preservation, manage backend cataloging workflow with Two Factor Authentication, and enable public access in one cloud-based Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) that is not owned or hosted by VA. Staff must be able to log into the Contractor’s environment where all functionality is made available and the Contractor shall be responsible for software, hardware, data security, help desk, and other functions. Further, the Contractor shall be responsible for management or control of the underlying cloud infrastructure including network, servers, security updates, operating systems, remediation, appropriate escalation of issues, and storage. The DPS will facilitate preservation activity, staff workflow, and public access. These are three separate functions that come together as follows.

Preservation VAHO requires a single, scalable active system that provides both bit level preservation and active preservation in an integrated, workflow-based application that supports the current version of International Organization for Standardization (ISO) 14721. Requirements for the entire digital preservation process include, but are not limited to, ingest, fixity, virus checking, metadata management, format migration and the creation and management of cloud storage environment. These functions are necessary to ensure the security of VA data while enabling reliable, high-quality access to Veterans, family members, service providers, employees, and researchers. It also must view, render, and reformat legacy information without the original software.

Workflow VAHO requires a single, scalable, active system that provides bulk drag and drop file upload of multiple file types, large file upload using standard tools, a secure, pre-ingest content preparation site, robust search, file arrangement before deployment, post-deployment rearrangement, bulk metadata application, refined metadata editing, optical character recognition (OCR), synchronization with industry-standard cataloging systems and schema, application program interface (API) synchronization, duplicate file detection, spellcheck, configurable dashboards and reporting with file export, required publishing decision, role-based access, and full records provenance and authentication. Other requirements include secure single-sign on, editable hierarchy, two stage delete function, and deep folder structure management.

Public Access VAHO requires a single, scalable, active system that provides public access to the records in VAHO holdings. Users include but are not limited to school children, the academic community, Veterans and family members, and historians. Access must provide a robust search, maintain archival hierarchy, streaming of audio-visual (AV) files, detailed image viewing with pan and zoom, file download, search result extraction, and both faceted and field searching. There is no cart function, public log in, or file saving within the system required.

Functional Requirements:

A fully realized software package must be delivered in a single option that will allow VAHO to do three things:

1. Perform digital remediation and preservation tasks from obsolete media. This includes:

· Integrity checking with self-healing

· Conversion of files to preservation and access formats with on-going automated conversion

2. Allow public access

3. Allow archival tasks that integrate with first two requirements. The following are necessary:

· OAIS Reference Model – based (ISO 14721)

· API integration

· Archives standards-controlled vocabulary

· Backup regularly scheduled and restorable if catastrophic loss

· Bulk file import

· Bulk metadata application management

· Conform to common and legal usability standards

· Conform to VA’s 2FA requirements

· Data and reporting export

· Digital preservation with version control

· Duplicate file detection

· Email preservation

· Fast storage of frequently accessed records

· Intuitive hierarchy

· Metadata held in Relational Database Service (RDS)

· Multiple file type acceptance, including disk imaging and PST

· Native checksum operations

· Native format identification and migration tools (DROID)

· Out of the box content acquisition of files

· Policy-driven action

· Process auditability

· Provenance trust maintenance reporting

· Public access portal

· Range of API options

· Robust native search

· Safe storage with active and passive migration

· Scalable cloud solution

· Secure, immediate, role-based access

· Spellcheck of both workflow and infrastructure

· Training provided as part of startup

· Trusted and living archive

· Usability-User Interface Requirements

· Vendor cloud with commensurate FEDRAMP rating

· Virus detection and isolation

· WARC decoding

· 508 Compliant

Custom development, web content development, and simple Content Management such as Box, DropBox, and SharePoint are all out of scope. This is a digital preservation system, enabling the backside work of archivists.

Performance, Capacity, and Availability Requirement

· This is not a system modification.

· A small transaction would be a single PDF at approximately 2 MB. A large transaction would be 10 TB of video.

· Each collection will have multiple transactions. Large collections are usually very complex with multiple file types with both related and individual metadata.

· 100% availability, with 99.5% up time.

· Desirable interfaces include SharePoint and other Microsoft365 products, and WordPress. These interfaces are primarily for records transfer purposes rather than working in them natively.

IV. RFI QUESTIONS:

Questions:

1. What contract vehicle(s) do you recommend for this requirement?

2. Does your organization have an existing GSA, or other Federal schedule available for this type of requirement?

3. What NAICS codes would your company recommend for this action?

4. Is your product only a Digital Asset Management System/Electronic Content Management System, or does it also do digital preservation at the binary level?

5. In the event the contract ceases or is not renewed, what happens to the records that are stored in your system? While VA has options to export, what happens to the materials that reside on the vendor’s server(s)? How is VA assured of removal/deletion/destruction?

6. What are your standard hours and processes for technical support after the initial standup and training?

RFI: 36C10B26Q0316