RFI for eDiscovery Solution.pdf

Request For Information

The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) is issuing this RFI as a means of conducting market research to identify parties having an interest in and the resources to support this requirement for eDiscovery Document Review Services. The result of this market research will contribute to determining the method of procurement. The Product Service Code is DC10, and the applicable North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) code assigned to this procurement is NAICS 518210. The size standard is $40M.

There is no solicitation at this time. This request for capability information does not constitute a request for proposals; submission of any information in response to this market survey is purely voluntary; the government assumes no financial responsibility for any costs incurred.

If your organization has the potential capacity to perform these contract services, please provide the following information: 1) organization name, address, email address, website address, telephone number, and size and type of ownership for the organization; GSA Schedule Number, if applicable; and 2) tailored capability statements addressing the particulars of this effort, with appropriate documentation supporting claims of organizational and staff capability. If significant subcontracting or teaming is anticipated in order to deliver technical capability, organizations should address the administrative and management structure of such arrangements.

The government will evaluate market information to ascertain potential market capacity to 1) provide services consistent in scope and scale with those described in this notice and otherwise anticipated; 2) secure and apply the full range of corporate financial, human capital, and technical resources required to successfully perform similar requirements; 3) implement a successful project management plan that includes: compliance with program schedules; cost containment; meeting and tracking performance; hiring and retention of personnel and risk mitigation; and 4) provide services under a performance based service acquisition contract.

Based on the responses to this RFI/market research, this requirement may be set-aside for small businesses or procured through full and open competition, and multiple awards may be made.

Telephone inquiries will not be accepted or acknowledged, and no feedback or evaluations will be provided to companies regarding their submissions.

Submission Instructions: Interested parties who consider themselves qualified to perform the below-listed services are invited to submit a response to this RFI by 15 April 2024 at 12:00pm EST. All responses under this RFI must be emailed to Maureen Cameron, maureen.v.cameron@hud.gov. Additional information on the required services is listed below.

If you have any questions concerning this opportunity, please contact: Maureen Cameron, maureen.v.cameron@hud.gov.

The Office of the Chief Procurement Officer (OCPO) is issuing this RFI on behalf of the Office of Systemic Investigations (OSI). The information obtained as a result of this RFI will be used to create a Market Assessment Report, which may inform budget and acquisition decisions for the mailto:maureen.v.cameron@hud.gov mailto:maureen.v.cameron@hud.gov agency.

Background:

The Office of Systemic Investigations (OSI) has a business need for an eDiscovery tool with document review, and search capabilities to address growing litigation and other legal demands.

OSI is looking for a robust cloud-based tool with premium security features, high performance, excellent user experience, and forward-looking functionalities to address new data types and technologies.

Purpose:

This is a request for information (RFI) to identify sources that can provide an eDiscovery solution in as a Service (SaaS) model on a subscription basis in an environment certified to host Federal data and records. OSI seeks information from parties that currently offer this service and are FedRamp certified.

Technical Requirements:

Proposed solutions shall have the capability to:

General

Provide built-in fault tolerance to prevent data loss and processing time loss due to partial or full system failures.

Limit/grant access to certain functionality by Role Based Access Controls (RBAC).

Allow assignment of documents to reviewers and allow reviewers to see the progress of the review.

Allow the user to use all aspects of the system over a VPN connection.

Protect data from change or deletion during the collection and storage processes.

Document Collection and Processing

Import the from the following document sources:

o On-Premises Exchange servers o On-Premises file servers o End-user enterprise connected devices (laptops/desktops) o Cloud storage locations o Office 365 o Microsoft One Drive o Microsoft Teams o Microsoft SharePoint Online

Import the following document types:

o Loose emails in .msg format o Microsoft Office documents o PDF files o SharePoint o WordPerfect documents o Web Pages o Pictures o Social media posts o EML o DBX o Text messages o Tweets o Chats (MS Teams) o Audio files (e.g., voicemail, .wav, .mp3) o Video files o CSV

Load native files, including email stores, loose files, PDF files, and compressed archive files (e.g., RAR and ZIP), and shall have the ability to extract all files from compound files and create a separate record for each extracted file (e.g., RAR, ZIP). The application shall not include the original compound file as a document.

Identify any not processable files in a log file during the data loading process with the reason why the file could not be processed. Examples of reasons are: corrupted, password protected, unsupported file type, and path too long.

Uniquely number native files, email messages, and attachments during the data loading process and store the unique number in a field.

Load native files from all levels in a folder structure.

Determine the extent of similarity between files (parent emails, attachments, and loose files) and assign a percentage of similarity.

Allow administrators to set a threshold for considering documents near duplicates, such as 85% or 90% similar.

Store statistics upon data load, such as document types, number of documents, number of pages, number of emails, number of attachments, date loaded, request/production identifier, unsupported files, exception files in the repository, and shall have the capability to generate a report on those statistics.

Document Searches

Support at a minimum keyword, proximity, Boolean, and wildcard searches.

Search metadata and tags (including custom tags and metadata), such as date, folder, matter, custodian, Bates, production date, UUID, sender (or creator), recipient, copied recipients, and blind copied recipients. Tool shall be able to concurrently search multiple search parameters.

Save both private and shared search results, including ability to further refine a search.

Sort search results by one or more metadata fields, including by family and relevance.

Automatically highlight terms in the document that met the search criteria (hit highlighting). Users should not have to manually apply hit highlighting.

Identify near duplicates during review and also have the capability to include near duplicates as a search criterion.

The eDiscovery system shall provide the ability to identify documents that failed to

OCR (i.e., filters, system generated tags).

Execute a follow-up query that will present more documents like the selected ones using artificial intelligence.

Identify concepts - words, patterns (example: social security numbers, phone numbers, dates) and phrases with similar meanings in context - across all documents for a matter and present the most frequently occurring concepts to users as search options.

Search keywords within a document in review mode.

Search automatically on variations of search terms (tense, inflection, plurals, etc.) and provide the user with the capability to turn this function on or off. This functionality shall be available with all searches.

Save searches, including both the query and results.

Document Review

Utilize artificial intelligence.

Allow a user to create, assign, and track batch files for review.

Allow the user to create tags and enable searches by created tags to identify documents of similar content. The eDiscovery system shall have the capability to place tags on multiple documents (bulk tagging).

Identify what tag(s) are assigned to a document without having to open the document.

Perform redactions as well as perform manual redactions where the user draws a box around information they want redacted.

Search text (including pattern match - i.e., searching for SSNs) and automatically apply redactions or otherwise identify the found text and mark the text for redaction.

Redact both text and graphics.

Apply a redaction caption describing the reason for redaction. This requirement applies to manual redactions and redactions as a result of a “search and redact” above.

Redact PII from audio recordings (e.g., redact hearings recorded by JAVS software used for administrative hearings)" Display the sequence of an email conversation or the entire thread of related emails, text messages, MS Teams chats/conversations.

Group and associate similar documents and present them graphically (e.g., clustering).

Provide domain analysis, i.e., filtering, and display the results of the analysis in an email collection (e.g., select a domain name, "SSA.gov," and view all of the documents within).

Allow redactions to be removed once placed on a document, including removing all bulk redactions from a bulk redaction job.

Search for redacted and/or annotated documents.

Zoom in on an image or document and print as it is viewed on the screen.

Alternative methods to view document lists and the ability to switch between views (e.g., text, native, image (including redaction and production).

Present all supported native file formats in a near-native or native view, including MS Teams chats/conversations (e.g., emojis, edited messages).

Download and open files in native application (if the native application is available).

Display thumbnail views of documents.

Create batches based on discussion threads and near duplicates, including the ability to batch discussion threads and near duplicates within a certain folder (rather than across all folders).

Allow users to create and select from multiple tagging panes within a matter (e.g., tagging pane for first-level review, QC review).

Redact Excel files in a native viewer.

Reporting Create a privilege log report for items/documents identified as “privileged”.

Produce statistical reports on eDiscovery search content such as number of documents, scope of search, method of search, parameters used for the search, privileged information, and time of the search.

Report on all data in the eDiscovery system (not limited to a single matter).

Create custom reports based on provided data fields.

Generate a system health audit report. This report will detail system availability, system process status, storage used/available, indexes, error status, problems, etc.

Export a report containing selected information for a group of documents to Microsoft

Excel.

IT

Have appropriate FedRAMP authorization for any components that are run in a cloud-based solution.

Use encrypted communication (e.g., SSL, LDAPS, Oracle Identity Directory, CA Top

Secret) that meets Federal IT Security standards between all system components.

Be browser agnostic. Vendor must state which browsers and which versions of them are compatible.

Run in a web browser on workstations and laptops running Microsoft Windows 10 and later operating systems. The vendor must define minimum workstation hardware needed to meet HUD’s performance requirements.

The eDiscovery system shall be expandable to hold and maintain a minimum of 200 GB of data (databases, images, native documents) while meeting HUD’s performance requirements. The vendor must provide its application's upper limits.

Support

The vendor or service provider of the eDiscovery system shall provide dedicated technical support to HUD’s Office of Systemic Investigations for a minimum of 1 year from when software service and all features are made available for use.

The vendor or service provider of the eDiscovery system shall provide technical support available 24/7 to answer general questions about the functionality of the software (e.g., helpline, online chat sessions, training, troubleshooting).

Contemplated performance metrics:

General

The eDiscovery system shall meet all performance requirements with a minimum of 15 concurrent users ingesting, reviewing, searching, using predictive coding, or generating productions in the system.

The capability for the eDiscovery system shall be configurable for high availability with 99.9% uptime. The system shall have high availability/failover capability with an average failover time of 120 seconds outside of scheduled downtime.

Data Collection and Processing

The eDiscovery system shall have at a minimum the capability to import and retain the following unprocessed data capacities of 250 GB.

The eDiscovery system shall ingest at least 10 GB of imaged documents, native files, email, and delimited text files in a 24-hour period. The eDiscovery system shall directly ingest native file and email collections. Pre-processing delimited text files (CSV, DAT, etc.) with scripts or to normalize data fields is acceptable. The error rate shall not exceed .01 percent of eligible documents (1).

Document Searches

The eDiscovery system shall search for text using Boolean logical functions (e.g., AND, OR, NOT); literal (e.g., "quotes"); and parentheses (e.g., denoting order of operations) in less than 10 seconds across a matter containing 1 million documents.

The eDiscovery system shall search documents using conceptual/natural language in less than 15 seconds across a matter containing 1 million documents.

The eDiscovery system shall provide for persistent hit highlighting. The system will be able to run persistent hit highlighting on hundreds of terms in a single case without impacting performance.

The eDiscovery system shall consistently search a dataset. Running the same search against the same documents more than once shall return the same results.

Document Review The eDiscovery system shall have the capacity for a minimum of 15 licensed reviewers.

The eDiscovery system shall support the capability to navigate between pages within a document and between documents in less than 2 seconds.

Contemplated place of performance:

Cloud-based solution

Vendor Responses:

Interested firms with the capability of providing the requirement shall submit capability statements that reflect their expertise in the above-described areas in sufficient detail, including any other specific and relevant information, so the Government can determine the firm’s experience and capability to provide the requirements. Failure to reflect the capability of providing the requirement in response to this market survey may affect the Government’s review of the industry’s ability to perform or provide these requirements.

All capability statements shall include answers to the questions below:

What are the minimum hardware requirements for this solution?

What operating systems and/or platforms does this solution support?

Describe the licensing/pricing model for the proposed solution (enterprise license, per device, etc).

If customization of this solution is required, will it be completed by the manufacturer, the vendor, or another source? If there is another source, describe the source and its relationship to the vendor.

Will implementation of this solution be completed by the vendor, or another source? If another source, describe the source and its relationship to the vendor.

Are you able to provide on-line support for setup, training and, for use of your product?

Please explain how Section 508 conformant you think your solution is?

Have you successfully implemented your solution? If so, please provide details on the number of subscriptions for similar solutions you currently have. Indicate if the solution is currently in production or in a testing environment.

Can you provide a demo of your potential solution?

Do you have any small business designations? Please list if yes.

Do you have this solution on a GSA Schedule or other GWAC? If so, please provide GSA

Schedule or GWAC number as well as GSA/GWAC and/or OEM part numbers.

Respondents must submit capability statements, published pricing list, and information describing the general approach/solution to addressing the listed requirements. General marketing information or reference to vendor web sites will not be considered responsive to this notice.

Vendors must identify any proprietary information submitted in response to this Request for Information. The proprietary information must be clearly marked as proprietary. The government will not treat any other information as proprietary.

The Government reserves the right to contact, or not contact, any party responding to this notice to obtain further information for market research purposes. The government will not notify respondents of the results of the assessment of the information received and will not return submittals to the sender. All interested sources must respond to any potential future solicitation announcements separately from responses to this Request for Information. This is not a solicitation announcement for proposals and the government will not award a contract resulting directly from this announcement.