NOAA NESDIS DISCOS MA-IDIQ - Questions and Answers.pdf

Question Answer To thoroughly respond to the requested information, develop pricing and have approval meetings, we would benefit from additional time. We are requesting a submittal extension from August 20, 2026, to September 3, 2026. Please let us know if you have any questions.

The RFI deadline is extended to 11:00am ET, Friday, August 28th, 2026.

The following two bullets are listed in the “Google Interest Form” section but do not appear to have related boxes to enter on the form; should these be addressed in the “B: Statement of Capabilities”?

a.In order to support a Government request for proposal, what additional technical information would industry benefit from in satisfying assumptions?

b.What evaluation factors or criteria would you recommend the Government consider when assessing vendor responses to a future solicitation for these requirements? What factors would most effectively distinguish between competing offers and support of best value determination?

These two bullets should be addressed in the B: Statement of Capabilities section. Please review the updated attachment to this posting which shows the change from addressing this in the Google Form to the Statement of Capabilities.

Will supporting any of the functional area services/task orders (e.g., architecture & systems engineering) create OCI situations for a provider that prevent them from providing other services/task orders?

This will depend on the task order and functional areas. When an OCI situation is discovered, it should immediately be addressed and resolved in accordance with FAR part

3. NOAA recognizes that the potential for OCI issues may arise in the performance of tasks under the overall IDIQ. Vendors should consider potential OCI impacts when determining which functional areas and task orders to pursue

Will the Government RFP include awardable Day 1 services and/or task orders to propose instead of sample services and/or task orders?

Yes, the Government intends to include at least one Day 1 Task Order in the Request for Proposals.

Can the Government provide an acquisition schedule with additional RFIs, Industry Day, draft & final RFP, and award dates?

The Government will provide all relevant and pertinent information to all offerors at the appropriate time.

Can the Government describe the NESDIS organizational structure that will manage and acquire DISCOS tasks, or let industry know when this will be communicated?

The Government will provide all relevant and pertinent information to all offerors at the appropriate time.

Is DISCOS intended to eventually replace current IT and support services MA IDIQ contracts such as NMITS and/or ProTech?

No, DISCOS is not intended to eventually replace current IT and support services. This is a new requirement.

Will the Government provide the NGE and NCCF target architectures, interface definitions and other related documentation as part of the bidders library as part of the draft RFP (i.e., in advance of the final RFP)?

The Government will provide all relevant and pertinent information to all offerors at the appropriate time.

Does the Government anticipate reserving any functional areas, or a portion of task orders, for small business set-asides? Will the vehicle include both unrestricted and small-business tracks?

The Government does not currently have enough information to make a determination for small business set-asides at this time.

Can the government share information on the envisioned format and content of the 1:1 sessions? The Government envisions an informal format for the 1:1 sessions.

Will NOAA provide an inventory of active and forecasted applications, data flows, storage volumes, criticality levels, authorization boundaries, and current cloud/on-premises hosting environments?

The Government will provide all relevant and pertinent information to all offerors at the appropriate time.

Does the 12-month onboarding target require full modernization of every system, or may systems be onboarded through interim rehosting/containerization followed by later refactoring?

The Government is interested in multiple approaches to optimizing NESDIS data operations. Vendors should balance realism and risk in their proposed approach.

Will NOAA provide historical cloud consumption, storage-tier distribution, egress, ingest, compute, and data-retention information to support comparable lifecycle pricing?

The Government will not be providing this information at this time. However, the Government anticipates providing this information at the solicitation stage.

What software and technical-data rights does NOAA currently hold for incumbent systems, and which applications contain third-party or restricted intellectual property?

This depends on the terms and conditions of the contract associated with the system.

However, the Government encourages interested parties to provide input on this topic with their RFI responses.

Does NOAA anticipate a single enterprise data-operations task order or multiple task orders separated by platform operations, application modernization, science processing, archival stewardship, and data dissemination?

The Government does not currently have enough information to make a determination for task order strategies at this time. However, the Government encourages interested parties to provide input on this topic with their RFI responses.

How does NOAA intend to allocate responsibility for Federal Information Security Modernization Act control ownership, continuous monitoring, incident response, and technical remediation across the Cybersecurity and Enterprise Infrastructure functional areas?

FISMA control ownership and technical remediation will depend on the type of tasks awarded with fully commercial services having more responsibility. Oversight will be retained by NOAA and will require a level of visibility into security posture through assessments, continuous monitoring, and incident response. Incident response will be the primary responsibility of NOAA and will require coordination with the contractor regardless of the type of tasks. The Government welcomes recommendations on ways to create efficiencies in the cybersecurity oversight of future Government-owned and commercial solutions for NESDIS systems and services.

Does NOAA envision contractor responsibility for underlying commercial cloud agreements, or will cloud infrastructure be provided through Government enterprise agreements?

The Government does not currently have enough information to make a determination for this at this time. However, the Government encourages interested parties to provide input on this topic with their RFI responses.

What recovery-time objectives, recovery-point objectives, availability targets, ingest-latency thresholds, and dissemination service levels should respondents use for architectural and pricing assumptions?

Respondents should provide any assumptions used in their recommended architectural approach and/or pricing as a part of their response.

Will NOAA identify systems that must remain on-premises because of latency, connectivity, licensing, security, or mission-operational constraints?

The Government is not including any limitations or constraints at this time and encourages respondents to provide input on this topic.

May respondents provide ROM ranges and unit-pricing frameworks rather than a single ten-year estimate where the Government has not provided system inventory and consumption baselines?

Yes

RFI page 2 DISCOS Background Are administrative Information Technology systems and services, currently supported via NESDIS's NIIS-2 contract part of this RFI's scope?

No. DISCOS is a new requirement and separate from any previous and/or current contract.

RFI p9, Option 1 Under a fully Commercial solution option, will NOAA provide draft SLA criteria?

The Government is not providing this information at this time. However, the Government encourages respondents to provide recommendations for this criteria in their RFI response.

RFI p10, Transition Approach To meet the aggressive 12-month transition timeline for all active and forecasted cloud/on-prem data processing systems, will NOAA provide legacy codebase, documentation, dependency maps, and technical debt assessments during the task order solicitation?

The Government anticipates providing all pertinent information for task orders during the task order solicitation process. Respondents are encourage to include recommendations for task order requirement information in their RFI responses.

RFI p10, Transition Approach Is the 12-month migration timeframe a strict threshold across all operational systems simultaneously or does NOAA anticipate a phased/prioritized onboarding roadmap per mission?

The Government is seeking information regarding the 12-month timeframe. However, respondents are encouraged to provide recommendations and alternatives on the approach in their RFI responses.

RFI p10, Pricing Structure For 10-year FFP or FFUP pricing framework for Data Operations, is the vendor expected to assume financial risk for fluctuating hyperscaler (ie., AWS, Azure, GCP) billing over a 10-year period?

In addition, what baseline quantities and pricing units does NOAA anticipate providing for storage, compute, data ingest, data processing, egress, applications, missions, products, interfaces, users, transactions, service levels, and new-mission onboarding?

The Government is seeking information regarding the FFP or FFUP approach. However, respondents are encouraged to provide recommendations for this approach and include risks for consideration in their RFI responses.

RFI p9, Intellectual Property (IP) Approaches For Fully Commercial Solution and Managed Commercial Solution, if a vendor brings pre-existing commercial IP or open source frameworks for ingest, AI/ML or other technologies, what specific IP rights does NOAA expect to maintain over algorithms vs. core vendor platform platforms?

The Government recommends respondents include information regarding IP rights with pros and cons of multiple approaches.

RFI p10, Transition Approach Does the 12-month full transition/onboarding assumption apply per task order or across the entire NGE portfolio at once.

The Government does not currently have enough information to make a determination for this at this time. However, the Government encourages interested parties to provide input on this topic with their RFI responses.

RFI pages 2 and 6-7 Will an offeror be required to demonstrate capability across all eight DISCOS functional areas to receive an MA-IDIQ award, or may an offeror qualify for selected functional areas?

If qualification is functional-area specific, will task-order competitions be limited to IDIQ holders qualified for the applicable functional area or combination of functional areas?

The Government does not anticipate requiring offerors to demonstrates capability across all functional areas. However, the Government does anticipate allowing offerors to qualify for selected functional areas. The Government does not have enough information at this time to make a determination for task order strategies.

RFI pp 4, 7, 10 What availability, ingest timeliness, processing latency, dissemination timeliness, recovery time objective, recovery point objective, data-loss tolerance, incident response, and disaster-recovery requirements should respondents assume when developing their technical approaches and rough-order-of-magnitude estimates?

Respondents should provide any assumptions used in the development of their technical approach and ROM as a part of their response.

RFI p10, Transition Approach The RFI references transitioning legacy systems within 12 months of “contract award” and elsewhere assumes completion within 12 months of “task order award.” Please confirm whether the 12-month period begins at MA-IDIQ award, the applicable Data Operations task-order award, notice to proceed, or another milestone.

12 months refers to the period of performance for the transition approach, which is anticipated to be applicable at the relevant task order level.

RFI p10, Transition Approach For purposes of the 12-month target, does NOAA define completion as:

• Technical migration or onboarding;

• Operational acceptance;

• Completion of security authorization;

• Completion of data validation;

• User acceptance;

• Completion of parallel operations; and

• Decommissioning of the legacy environment?

Please also identify whether phased initial operating capability and final operating capability milestones will be permitted.

The Government does not have a defined completion criteria at this time and is requesting feedback and recommendations for the 12 month transition approach.

RFI p3, 5, 6, Command and Control and Specialized Reachback.

Will offerors be required to establish agreements with spacecraft and instrument manufacturers at the IDIQ proposal stage, or may those relationships be established for individual task orders? May an original equipment manufacturer provide reachback support to multiple IDIQ holders?

The Government does not currently have enough information to make a determination for this at this time. However, the Government encourages interested parties to provide input on this topic with their RFI responses.

RFI p 3, 5, 6, Command and Control and Specialized Reachback What Government-owned or Government-licensed spacecraft and instrument technical data, anomaly histories, simulators, emulators, engineering tools, source code, and software rights will be furnished to the selected contractor?

The Government anticipates providing all pertinent information for task orders during the task order solicitation process. Respondents are encourage to include recommendations for task order requirement information in their RFI responses.

P10, Period of Performance Please confirm the end date for the PoP would be December 31, 2037.

The POP for this effort has not been defined or established. Respondents should review the RFI assumptiosn and note any additional assumptions required for their approach.

P11, Responses Should we present ROM data at the level shown in Acquisition and Operations Pathways on page 8?

Respondents should present any data necessary to support their proposed approach at a level sufficient for Government understanding of the approach and its resource implications.

In order to support a Government request for proposal, what additional technical information would industry benefit from in satisfying assumptions?

What evaluation factors or criteria would you recommend the Government consider when assessing vendor responses to a future solicitation for these requirements? What factors would most effectively distinguish between competing offers and support of best value determination?

These two bullets should be addressed in the B: Statement of Capabilities section. Please review the updated attachment to this posting which shows the change from addressing this in the Google Form to the Statement of Capabilities.

How does the Government anticipate balancing operational risk and continuity of mission-critical services against its modernization objectives during the transition to the future DISCOS environment?

Respondents are encourage to provide input and recommendations on this topic in their RFI responses.

Does the Government anticipate that the DISCOS MA-IDIQ will consolidate requirements currently performed under small business contract vehicles (e.g., ProTech-Satellite and NMITS)? If so, does the Government anticipate establishing small business set-asides or other small business participation opportunities under DISCOS, and how might those opportunities be structured relative to Full and Open competition?

DISCOS is a new requirement and separate from any previous and/or current contract. The Government does not currently have enough information to make a determination for small business set-asides at this time.

Does the Government anticipate transitioning existing requirements to DISCOS as current contracts expire or are recompeted, or does it envision consolidating existing requirements onto the DISCOS vehicle prior to their currently scheduled recompetes?

The Government does not currently have enough information to make a determination for this at this time. However, the Government encourages interested parties to provide input on this topic with their RFI responses.

Does the Government anticipate that follow-on requirements for work currently performed under existing NESDIS contracts will be competed under the DISCOS vehicle?

DISCOS is a new requirement and separate from any previous and/or current contract. The Government is currently collecting market research information.

Does the Government anticipate using this DISCOS vehicle primarily to award TOs supporting the transition and implementation of the future enterprise environment, or will follow-on work supporting the operational, maintenance and sustainment of the enterprise systems be awarded on DISCOS as well?

The Government does not currently have enough information to make a determination for this at this time. However, the Government encourages interested parties to provide input on this topic with their RFI responses.

Does the Government have an anticipated timeline for release of a draft solicitation and/or final RFP for the DISCOS procurement? No.

Are administrative Information Technology systems and services, currently supported via NESDIS's NIIS-2 contract part of this RFI's scope? No. DISCOS is a new requirement and separate from any previous and/or current contract.

Does government intend to make separate awards for each of the 8 functional areas or are some functional areas going to be combined/consolidated? For example, data operations, enterprise infrastructure and science operations combined for a single award.

It is the intent of the Government to award multiple contracts for each functional area.

Does NOAA anticipate establishing separate Small Business and Large Business tracks or pools across the IDIQ functional areas, or setting aside specific Functional Areas exclusively for small businesses?

The Government is currently collecting market research information. The Government does not currently have enough information to make a determination for small business set-asides at this time.

Will bidding on or winning a task order in Functional Area 2 (Cybersecurity Compliance & Oversight) create an Organizational Conflict of Interest (OCI) that prevents a vendor from bidding on Enterprise Infrastructure or Data Operations task orders?

This will depend on the task order and functional areas. When an OCI situation is discovered, it should immediately be addressed and resolved in accordance with FAR part

3. NOAA recognizes that the potential for OCI issues may arise in the performance of tasks under the overall IDIQ. Vendors should consider potential OCI impacts when determining which functional areas and task orders to pursue

Under a fully Commercial solution option, will NOAA provide draft SLA criteria? The Government is not providing this information at this time. However, the Government encourages respondents to provide recommendations for this criteria in their RFI response.

To meet the aggressive 12-month transition timeline for all active and forecasted cloud/on-prem data processing systems, will NOAA provide legacy codebase, documentation, dependency maps, and technical debt assessments during the task order solicitation?

The Government anticipates providing all pertinent information for task orders during the task order solicitation process. Respondents are encourage to include recommendations for task order requirement information in their RFI responses.

Is the 12-month migration timeframe a strict threshold across all operational systems simultaneously or does NOAA anticipate a phased/prioritized onboarding roadmap per mission?

The Government is seeking information regarding the 12-month timeframe. However, respondents are encouraged to provide recommendations and alternatives on the approach in their RFI responses.

For 10-year FFP or FFUP pricing framework for Data Operations, is the vendor expected to assume financial risk for fluctuating hyperscaler (ie., AWS, Azure, GCP) billing over a 10-year period?

The Government is seeking information regarding the FFP or FFUP approach. However, respondents are encouraged to provide recommendations for this approach and include risks for consideration in their RFI responses.

For Fully Commercial Solution and Managed Commercial Solution, if a vendor brings pre-existing commercial IP or open source frameworks for ingest, AI/ML or other technologies, what specific IP rights does NOAA expect to maintain over algorithms vs. core vendor platform platforms?

The Government recommends respondents include information regarding IP rights with pros and cons of multiple approaches.

Does NOAA / NESDIS envision the Data Operations solution being executed through a single task order/single award approach, or should industry assume multiple awards? The task order structure and associated timelines remain to be determined.

Would NOAA / NESDIS consider extending the due date for Part 2, the 30-page RFI about a week to allow industry to provide a more robust enterprise roadmap and acquisition strategy?

The RFI deadline is extended to 11:00am ET, Friday, August 28th, 2026.

The SSN/RFI (p.3) defines FA2 cybersecurity responsibilities as governance, risk, and compliance functions and assigns technical control implementation to FA5 (Enterprise Infrastructure). Please clarify the intended boundary between DISCOS contractor cybersecurity responsibilities and NOAA's existing cybersecurity infrastructure including the NOAA Cyber Security Center (NCSC). Specifically: are Security Operations Center functions, continuous monitoring, and SIEM operations expected to be performed by the DISCOS contractor or are those functions retained by the Government and supported through a defined interface with the DISCOS contractor?

Security Operations Center functions will be led from the NOAA Cyber Security Center (NCSC) including SIEM, incident response, and overall oversight. Additional SOC function needs for continuous monitoring, operations, or incident response will be addressed at the task order level.

Would the government please consider allowing a minimum of 10 point Times New Roman font be used in tables?

Yes, the Government will allow a minimum of 10 point Times New Roman font to be used in tables and figures.

Would the government please consider excluding the cover page and table of contents from the page limits for each deliverable?

Yes, the Government will not include the Cover Page or Table of Contents in the identified page limits .

Would the government please consider offering a 1-week extension? The RFI deadline is extended to 11:00am ET, Friday, August 28th, 2026.

How many awards are anticipated? Will functional areas be competed separately or bundled?

The Government does not currently have enough information to make a determination for this at this time. The Government anticipates Functional Areas to be competed separately.

What is the expected mix of large enterprise-wide task orders vs. smaller functional-area-specific orders?

The Government does not currently have enough information to make a determination for this at this time.

What are your key decision criteria for choosing between Government-Owned/Contractor- Operated vs. Contractor-Owned/Contractor-Operated models?

Respondents are encourage to provide input and recommendations on this topic in their RFI responses.

Option 2 (Managed Commercial), what specific IP must Government own? Is commercial COTS software acceptable with usage rights?

NOAA relies on licensed commercial/COTS solutions in a variety of situations.

Respondents should describe the basis of their approach and any reliance on various types of licensed/developed/open source software solutions.

How many people can we bring to the one on one? The Government does not have any constraints or limitations regarding the number of participants for the one-on-one at this time.

Does the Government anticipate reserving awards or entire functional areas for small businesses, and specifically for HUBZone or other socioeconomic categories? Will there be separate small business pools within the MA-IDIQ?

The Government does not currently have enough information to make a determination for small business set-asides at this time.

NAICS 541330 carries a $15M size standard, which is restrictive for firms performing IT-centric work in these functional areas. Would the Government consider assigning NAICS at the functional area or task order level (for example 541512 or 541519 for Enterprise Infrastructure and Data Operations, or 541611 for A&SE governance support), where size standards better reflect the labor mix?

Please provide recommendations such as these in your capability statement submission.

How many awards does the Government anticipate per functional area, and can an offeror compete for and hold awards in multiple functional areas?

The Government does not currently have enough information to make a determination for this at this time. However, it is the intent of the Government to award multiple contracts for each functional area.

Does the Government anticipate specifying an agile delivery framework (for example SAFe or a NESDIS-tailored equivalent) in task order PWSs, or will offerors propose their own delivery methodology?

NOAA does not anticipate requiring a specific agile methodology. NOAA is open to industry recommendations on proposed approaches, as specifications for a future task order have not been defined at this time.

Will the Government consider past performance performed as a subcontractor, and past performance from non-NOAA federal agencies of comparable scale and complexity, as fully relevant?

Evaluation criteria will be determined at a later time.

Please clarify the intended boundary between C2 capabilities provided under DISCOS and mission-specific ground/C2 systems developed or acquired by future individual satellite programs.

The scope of future task orders has not been defined at this time. It is anticipated that the overall IDIQ will contain broad C2 scope to support both existing mission operations systems and future mission operations, if NOAA requires such support.

Does NOAA envision DISCOS contractors developing and sustaining mission-specific C2 capabilities, or primarily providing the enterprise infrastructure, common services, interfaces, and integration environment for C2 capabilities developed by mission providers?

The scope of future task orders has not been defined at this time. It is anticipated that the overall IDIQ will contain broad C2 scope to support both existing mission operations systems and future mission operations, if NOAA requires such support. Such support may include mission-specific C2 capabilities.

Could future DISCOS task orders include development or modernization of mission-specific ground/C2 capabilities, or should respondents assume such development will remain outside the DISCOS scope?

The scope of future task orders has not been defined at this time. It is anticipated that the overall IDIQ will contain broad C2 scope to support both existing mission operations systems and system modernization efforts, if NOAA requires such support.

Could you please also provide clarification on one slight discrepancy noted in the RFI document? In the Summary Section on page 1, the Government notes the potential for “future NESDIS Multi-Award, Indefinite Delivery/Indefinite Quantity (MA-IDIQ) contract vehicle to provide DISCOS”; however, in the DISCOS Background Section on page 2, the Government also notes that “requirements will be addressed through a NESDIS-wide multi-award indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity (MA-IDIQ) set of contracts and task orders”.

Can the Government please clarify if the intent is for one (1) MA-IDIQ to be awarded to support all functional areas listed, or if the intent is for multiple MA-IDIQs for each functional area, i.e. an MA-IDIQ for only Architecture and Systems Engineering (A&SE), another MA-IDIQ only for Cybersecurity, etc.?

It is the intent of the Government to award multiple contracts for each functional area.