RFI-ACT-SACT-18-11_TIDE_HACKATHON.pdf

HQ Supreme Allied Commander Transformation

RFI-ACT-SACT-18-11

Headquarters Supreme Allied Commander Transformation

Norfolk Virginia

REQUEST FOR INFORMATION

This document contains a Request for Information (RFI) Call for Industry and Academia contribution on Cloud Services, Mobile Applications and Distributed File Sharing at the TIDE Hackathon that will take place in Podgorica, Macedonia, from 19 to 23 March 2018.

Suppliers wishing to respond to this RFI should read this document carefully and follow the guidance for responding.

General Information

Request For Information No. RFI-ACT-SACT-18-11

Project Title Call for Industry and Academia contribution on Cloud Services, Mobile Applications and Distributed File Sharing at the TIDE Hackathon that will take place in Podgorica, Macedonia, from 19 to 23 March 2018.

Contracting Office Address NATO, HQ Supreme Allied Commander Transformation (SACT) Purchasing & Contracting Suite 100 7857 Blandy Rd, Norfolk, VA, 23511-2490

Contracting Points of Contact

1. Ms Tonya Bonilla e-mail : tonya.bonilla@act.nato.int Tel : +1 757 747 3575

2. Ms Catherine Giglio e-mail : catherine.giglio@act.nato.int Tel :+1 757 747 3856

Technical Points of Contact Krzysztof Skurzak, TIDE Hackathon Coordinator e-mail : krzysztof.skurzak@act.nato.int Tel : +1 757 747 3206 mailto:tonya.bonilla@act.nato.int mailto:catherine.giglio@act.nato.int mailto:krzysztof.skurzak@act.nato.int

1 - INTRODUCTION

1.1 Summary. HQ Supreme Allied Commander Transformation (HQ SACT) is issuing this Request for Information (RFI) announcement to invite industry/academia to the 2018 TIDE1 Hackathon, the third such event run since 2016 building upon the successes of the Enterprise Architecture (EA) Hackathons run in Warsaw and London.

The aim of the 2018 TIDE Hackathon is to create the environment for experts and novices who are involved, or interested, in innovation and transformation to competitively work on pressing problems identified within the NATO Enterprise that are difficult to solve by traditional means.

The 2018 TIDE Hackathon will build on a proven business model to stimulate transformation and innovation within NATO, and differs from traditional hackathon formats by providing emphasis not only on software development and coding, but also on the application of modeling and enterprise architecture disciplines.

This event will contribute to spiral specifications for Federated Mission Networking (FMN) by de-risking problematic areas and by providing innovative solutions to improve interoperability. The following challenges were selected from the Fall 2017 TIDE Sprint2:

Deployment of Coalition Cloud;

Mobile Chat and Situational Awareness Applications;

FMN Distributed File Sharing.

The 2018 TIDE Hackathon will take place in Podgorica, Macedonia from 19-23 Mar 2017. The Calling Notice is available on the ACT website3.

1.2 Disclaimer. This request for information does not constitutes a commitment to issue a future request for proposal (RFP). The purpose of this RFI is to involve industry/academia in the 2018 TIDE Hackathon. HQ SACT has not made a commitment to procure any of the items described herein, and release of this RFI shall not be construed as such a commitment, nor as authorization to incur cost for which reimbursement will be required or sought. Further, respondents are advised that HQ SACT will not pay for any information or administrative costs incurred in responding to this RFI. The costs for responding to this RFI shall be borne solely by the responding party. Not responding to this RFI does not preclude participation in any subsequent RFP if issued in the future.

RFI respondents who would like to contribute must be willing to comply with the TIDE Hackathon process, rules and regulations as described in the 2018 TIDE Hackathon Handbook4.

1 Think-Tank for Information Decision and Execution Superiority 2 http://www.act.nato.int/tide-sprint-federating-interoperability-by-design 3 http://www.act.nato.int/images/stories/events/2018/tide-hackathon/2018_hackathon_calling_notice.pdf 4 http://www.act.nato.int/images/stories/events/2018/tide-hackathon/2018-tide-hackathon-handbook.pdf

2 – GENERAL BACKGROUND: ACT Framework for Collaborative Interaction

(FFCI)

2.1 ACT has implemented a Framework for Collaborative Interaction (FFCI) to increase opportunities for industry and academia to contribute to ACT capability development efforts through collaborative work. Such collaboration enables HQ SACT, and NATO as a whole, to benefit from industry/academia models, advice, capabilities and experience in the course of this work. In addition to the benefits ACT gains from such projects, this collaborative effort will provide industry/academia with an improved understanding of NATO’s capability requirements, and the associated issues and development challenges to be addressed by ACT. Potential collaborative projects are on specific topics that are of mutual interest to both parties but shall be restricted to collaborations in non- procurement areas. Several mechanisms have already been developed to support the initiation of collaborative projects between industry/academia and ACT ranging from informal information exchanges, workshops, studies or more extensive collaboration on research and experimentation.

2.2 Depending on the level and type of interaction needed for a collaborative project, a specific agreement may be needed between parties. The FFCI agreement for any specific project, if required by either party for the project to proceed, will range from “Non-disclosure Agreements” (NDA) for projects involving exchange of specific information to more extensive “Declaration of Mutual Collaboration” (DOMC) to address intellectual property and other issues. For the topics listed below, it is not envisaged that the level of contribution will be such that RFI respondents will wish to sign a NDA before entering into any significant collaborative work.

2.3 More extensive information on the ACT FFCI initiative can be found on the ACT web site being developed to support FFCI projects at http://www.act.nato.int/ffci.

3 - DESCRIPTION OF THE PROJECT

3.1 Background.

To support change in the NATO Enterprise the North Atlantic Council (NAC) issued the C3 Alliance Strategy5 with a call to “establish a Enterprise Architecture discipline”. This new discipline is guided by NATOs Enterprise Architecture (EA) Policy6, with the objective to “… translate NATO’s vision and strategy into effective change of the current business and IT environments …”

EA practice within NATO is now well established and the number of architectural products and use cases constantly increases. Nevertheless, the delivery of Enterprise Change is often delayed due to organizational inertia.

ACT, driven by its transformational mission, have developed the concept of the TIDE Hackathon as a means of enabling rapid transformation and innovation to support improvements to the NATO Enterprise, and to promote the idea of “Interoperability

5 Alliance Consultation, Command and Control (C3) Strategy, C-M(2014)0016 6 Alliance C3 Policy, C-M(2015)0041-REV1, APPENDIX 9 http://www.act.nato.int/ffci by Design” amongst the NATO Alliance and Federation partners. The TIDE Hackathon addresses current business needs by applying an industry proven format, engaging with groups made up of both of experts and novices “parachuted” into high intensity work environment for a time limited period to develop innovative solution for specific challenges.

The 2018 TIDE Hackathon will address the following challenges:

Modelling Challenge - Participants will be tasked to develop a reference architecture for future C4ISR7 that will allow federated cloud hosting services to mission partners in a deployed coalition.

Coding Challenge - Participants will be tasked to develop mobile applications and services to enable near real time coordination and situational awareness between tactical forces, and between tactical forces and higher headquarters.

Joint Challenge - Participants will be tasked to develop models and/or prototypes of applications that significantly improve access to unstructured information (“files”/”documents”) in a federated environment.

A more detailed description of each challenge, including example of products, can be found in the 2018 TIDE Hackathon Handbook available on ACT website8.

3.3 Intent/Objectives.

The intent of this RFI is to disseminate information about the 2018 TIDE Hackathon to the industry and academic partners that might be interested in participating in this event.

3.4 Expected benefits to respondents

This collaboration with ACT is an opportunity to demonstrate the products and benefits that industry and academia can deliver to Alliance and Partner forces deployed in a NATO mission. It is expected that respondents will gain an insight to specific challenge areas and knowledge of current military thinking on these topics.

3.5 Industry Engagement. Industry is invited to send mentors to help participants with their work and/or team members to compete in the challenges. Promotional materials such as shirts, pens, stickers, etc. may be distributed. Other than personal expenses, there is no cost to participants for taking part in the 2018 TIDE Hackathon.

However, Companies or organizations wishing to support and promote the 2018 TIDE Hackathon are welcome to discuss options and ideas with the TIDE Hackathon

4 - REQUESTED INFORMATION

4.1 Answers to the RFI. In the response to this RFI industry and academia wishing to take part should complete the registration process as described in the 2018 TIDE Hackathon Handbook.

4.2 Follow-on. Following registration, RFI respondents may be contacted to provide more detailed information about their intended participation.

4.3 Handling of Proprietary information. Solutions that are developed during the 2018

7 Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance 8 http://www.act.nato.int/images/stories/events/2018/tide-hackathon/2018-tide-hackathon-handbook.pdf

TIDE Hackathon will be kept in the open source domain to enable future development and collaboration. The winning solutions may be deployed within NATO Enterprise to address urgent business needs. Consult the 2018 TIDE Hackathon Handbook for further guidance.

4.4 Questions. Questions of a technical nature about this RFI announcement shall be submitted by e-mail solely to the above-mentioned POCs. Accordingly, questions in an e-mail should not contain proprietary and/or classified information.

4.5 Summary. This is a RFI only. The purpose of this RFI is to invite industry and academia to the 2018 TIDE Hackathon. HQ SACT has not made a commitment to procure any of the items described herein, and release of this RFI shall not be construed as such a commitment, nor as authorization to incur cost for which reimbursement will be required or sought. It is emphasized that this is a RFI, and not a RFP of any kind.

Tonya Bonilla

ACT Contracting Officer - Allied Command Transformation (ACT) NATO/HQ SACT Tel:

(757) 747-3575, E-mail: tonya.bonilla@act.nato.int mailto:tonya.bonilla@act.nato.int