T4NG TO PWS LIPAS II - DRAFT.docx

Life Insurance Policy Administration System (LIPAS) Phase II (VA-23-00022178)

TRANSFORMATION TWENTY-ONE TOTAL TECHNOLOGY NEXT GENERATION (T4NG)

PERFORMANCE WORK STATEMENT (PWS)

DEPARTMENT OF VETERANS AFFAIRS

Office of Information & Technology

Life Insurance Policy Administration System (LIPAS) Phase II

Date: 12/14/2022

VA-23-00022178

Task Order PWS Version Number: 1.0

Contents

BACKGROUND

The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), Office of Information & Technology (OIT), Software Product Management (SPM) Office, Benefits and Memorials Services (BAM) Portfolio mission is to deliver world-class, innovative systems that ensure reliable, secure and seamless delivery of benefits and services directly to Veterans and their families. VA depends on Information Management/Information Technology (IM/IT) systems to meet mission goals. OI&T/SPM/BAM provides a service to the Insurance Office to support them in meeting their goals in improving customer experience.

The Insurance Service is responsible for the administration of seven government life insurance programs serving over half a million Veterans and their beneficiaries.

Insurance Service has recently completed a conversion from its legacy mainframe and client server technologies to a holistic Life Insurance Policy Administration Solution (LIPAS) powered by a suite of software including EXL LifePro, LifePro Digital Suite, and SmartComm. The environments are presently hosted in the VA’s enterprise cloud hosting environments (AWS).

Insurance Service employees currently use the new LIPAS system, including EXL LifePro (Web and Classic), EXL LifePro Digital Suite, and SmartComm software products, to maintain Veteran life insurance policies, perform policy maintenance actions, and generate letters, emails, and SMS Text notifications to communicate with customers about their policies. Prior to the migration from Insurance Service’s legacy VICTARS/mainframe system to the new LIPAS system, many routine policy maintenance actions were executed systematically by custom programming on the Insurance mainframe. For example, incoming payments were processed automatically with logic to post payments to the appropriate policy and determine if the funds should be applied to premium or loan balance; workflow tasks were automatically assigned to employees based on pre-defined rules; letters were automatically generated and sent to Veterans when certain pre-defined conditions or events occurred on their policy. However, as a result of the conversion to LIPAS, many processes which had previously been performed by the system, now require employees to manually review reports, enter clerical transactions, and manually generate correspondences. Insurance Management has had to reassign employees to handle the resulting increase in clerical workload, which is taking away from other high value business operations. Now that the LIPAS system has been implemented and policies have been converted, Insurance Service requires enhancements to automate business processes involving repetitive manual tasks.

In order to continue providing Veterans with the world-class service they deserve, it is crucial that the newly implemented LIPAS system is sustained and further enhanced and configured to integrate with Insurance Service’s existing and planned web self-service features on VA.gov, to automate business processes to improve processing time and reduce employee manual actions, and to modernize interfaces with other VA enterprise financial management and document management systems.

Insurance Service requires a service level agreement to ensure optimal system availability and performance during business hours, prompt resolution of reported help desk incidents and requests, as well as reliable afterhours operations to execute and monitor daily cycle processing, batch processing, and data transmissions with external interface partners to ensure successful overnight processing.

Insurance Service requires an agile development program to collaborate with its business subject matter experts to develop enhancements, improve processing, and integrate with external systems. All changes must be documented, thoroughly tested and approved through a change control board.

The business need for this solution is to meet Insurance Service’s mission, to provide our Nation’s Veterans, Servicemembers, and Military Families insurance products and services, and vision to be the world-class leader for Veteran and Military insurance delivery; where a diverse and caring workforce thrives, online technology advances efficiency, and our performance honors military service by exceeding expectations for value, timeliness, and customer service.

APPLICABLE DOCUMENTS

The Contractor shall comply with the following documents, in addition to the documents in Paragraph 2.0 in the T4NG Basic Performance Work Statement (PWS), in the performance of this effort:

1. 38 U.S.C Legislation and applicable Regulations for administration of VA Life Insurance.

SCOPE OF WORK

The Contractor shall provide enhancement, and sustainment of the overall LIPAS Solution, including license management, integration and enhancements to Insurance Service’s self-service website, automation of business processes, modernization of interfaces with other VA enterprise systems

APPLICABILITY

This Task Order (TO) effort PWS is within the scope of paragraph(s) the T4NG Basic PWS.

ORDER TYPE

The effort shall be proposed on a Firm Fixed Price (FFP) basis.

Travel in support of this contract will be on a Cost Reimbursement (CR) basis.

PERFORMANCE DETAILS

PERFORMANCE PERIOD

The PoP shall be 12 months from date of award with three 12-month option periods.

PLACE OF PERFORMANCE

Efforts under this TO shall be performed at Contractor facilities. The Contractor shall identify the Contractor’s place of performance in their Task Execution Plan submission.

TRAVEL OR SPECIAL REQUIREMENTS

The Government anticipates travel under this effort to perform the tasks associated with the effort, as well as to attend program-related meetings through the PoP.

Travel shall be in accordance with the Federal Travel Regulations (FTR) and requires advanced concurrence and approval by the COR. Travel and per diem shall be reimbursed in accordance with FTR. Each Contractor invoice must include copies of all receipts that support the travel costs claimed in the invoice. Local travel within a 50-mile radius from the Contractor’s normal duty location is considered the cost of doing business and will not be reimbursed. This includes travel, subsistence, and associated labor charges for travel time. Travel performed for personal convenience and daily travel to and from work at the Contractor’s facility will not be reimbursed. Travel, subsistence, and associated labor charges for travel time for travel beyond a 50-mile radius of the Contractor’s facility are authorized on a case-by-case basis and must be pre-approved by the COR.

The total estimated number of trips in support of the program related meetings for this effort is 6. anticipated locations include the following, estimated at 2 < days per trip in duration:

1. Insurance Service Office – Philadelphia, PA

CONTRACT MANAGEMENT

All requirements of Sections 7.0 and 8.0 of the T4NG Basic PWS apply to this effort. This TO shall be addressed in the Contractor’s Progress, Status and Management Report as set forth in the T4NG Basic contract.

GOVERNMENT FURNISHED PROPERTY

The Government has multiple remote access solutions available to include Citrix Access Gateway (CAG), Site-to-Site Virtual Private Network (VPN), and RESCUE VPN.

The Government’s issuance of Government Furnished Equipment (GFE) is limited to Contractor personnel requiring direct access to the network to: development environments; install, configure and run Technical Reference Model (TRM) approved software and tools (e.g., Oracle, Fortify, Eclipse, SoapUI, WebLogic, LoadRunner); upload/download/ manipulate code, run scripts, and apply patches; configure and change system settings; check logs, troubleshoot/debug, and test/QA.

When necessary, the Government will furnish desktops or laptops, for use by the Contractor to access VA networks, systems, or applications to meet the requirements of this PWS. The overarching goal is to determine the most cost-effective approach to providing needed access to the VA environment coupled with the need to ensure proper Change Management principles are followed. Contractor personnel shall adhere to all VA system access requirements for on-site and remote users in accordance with VA standards, local security regulations, policies and rules of behavior. GFE shall be approved by the COR and Program Manager on a case-by-case basis prior to issuance.

Based upon the Government assessment of remote access solutions and requirements of this TO, the Government estimates that the following GFE will be required by this TO:

1. 75 developer grade laptops

The Government will not provide IT accessories including but not limited to Mobile Wi-Fi hotspots/wireless access points, additional or specialized keyboards or mice, laptop bags, extra charging cables, extra Personal Identity Verification card readers, peripheral devices, or additional Random Access Memory (RAM). The Contractor is responsible for providing these types of IT accessories in support of the TO as necessary and any VA installation required for these IT accessories shall be coordinated with the COR.

The Status of Government Furnished Equipment Report under the T4NG Basic Contract requirements is applicable to this TO and shall be delivered to the COR/VA PM as required.

SECURITY AND PRIVACY

All requirements in Section 6.0 of the T4NG Basic PWS apply. Addendum B requirements have been tailored to reflect the security and privacy requirements of this specific TO.

POSITION/TASK RISK DESIGNATION LEVEL(S)

In accordance with VA Handbook 0710, Personnel Security and Suitability Program, the position sensitivity and the level of background investigation commensurate with the required level of access for the following tasks within the PWS are:

Position Sensitivity and Background Investigation Requirements by Task

The Tasks identified above and the resulting Position Sensitivity and Background Investigation requirements identify, in effect, the Background Investigation requirements for Contractor individuals, based upon the tasks the particular Contractor individual will be working. The submitted Contractor Staff Roster must indicate the required Background Investigation Level for each Contractor individual based upon the tasks the Contractor individual will be working, in accordance with their submitted proposal.

SPECIFIC TASKS AND DELIVERABLES

The Contractor shall perform the following:

PROJECT MANAGEMENT

CONTRACTOR PROJECT MANAGEMENT PLAN

The Contractor shall deliver within fourteen (14) days following contract award, a detailed Contractor Project Management Plan (CPMP) that lays out the Contractor’s approach, timeline and tools to be used in execution of this TO effort. The CPMP should take the form of both a narrative and graphic format that displays the schedule, milestones, risks and resource support. The CPMP shall also include how the Contractor shall coordinate and execute planned, routine, and ad hoc data collection reporting requests as identified within the PWS. The initial baseline CPMP and all subsequent updates shall be coordinated with the OI&T PM and approved by the COR and updated in accordance with Section B of the TO. The Contractor shall keep the CPMP updated and maintain the VA Program Manager (PM) approved CPMP throughout the PoP, if no updates are made, the Contractor must provide a response indicating as such. At a minimum, the following items shall be incorporated into the CPMP:

· Change Control Support

· Configuration Management

· Integrated Master Schedule (IMS)

· Quality Management

· Requirements Management

· Risk Management

· Staffing Plan/Organizational Structure

· In-Processing Plan

· Onboarding Plan

· Subcontractor Management Plan

· Technical/Management Plan

· Training Plan

· Work Breakdown Structure (WBS)

Deliverable:

A. Contractor Project Management Plan

REPORTING REQUIREMENTS

The Contractor shall deliver Quarterly Status Reports. These reports shall provide accurate, timely, and complete product/project information. The detail and technical level of this report shall be appropriate for VA management and shall summarize, not replicate, the information contained in an Agile Sprint Review. The Quarterly Status Report shall include, at a minimum, the following data elements for LIPAS:

1. Task Order PWS Support Area

1. Program and Project/Product specific work

1. All work in-progress and completed work during the reporting period and work planned for the subsequent two (2) reporting periods for each project/product.

1. Identification of any TO-related issues uncovered during the month and especially highlight those areas with a high probability of impacting schedule, cost, or performance goals and their likely impact on same.

1. Explanations for any unresolved issues, including practical solutions and any actions required of the Government and/or Contractor to resolve or mitigate any identified issue, including a plan and timeframe for resolution.

1. Status on previous and current identified issues, actions taken to mitigate the situation and/or progress made in rectifying the situation.

1. Track project schedule for products showing any delays or advancement in comparison to the original schedule during the reporting period.

1. Workforce staffing data showing all Contractor personnel performing on the effort during the current reporting period. After the initial labor baseline is provided, each Quarterly Report shall identify any changes in staffing identifying each person who was added to the TO or removed from the TO.

These reports shall not be the only means of communication between the Contractor, COR and VA Program/Project Manager to advise of performance/schedule issues and to develop strategies for addressing the issues.

Deliverable:

1. Quarterly Status Report

TECHNICAL KICKOFF MEETING

A technical kickoff meeting shall be held within 10 days after TO award. The Contractor shall coordinate the date, time, and location (can be virtual) with the:

a. Contracting Officer (CO), as the Post-Award Conference Chairperson,

b. VA PM, as the Co-Chairperson,

c. Contract Specialist (CS), and

d. Contracting Officer’s Representative (COR).

The Contractor shall provide a draft agenda to the CO, COR, and VA PM at least five (5) calendar days prior to the meeting. Upon Government approval of a final agenda, the Contractor shall distribute to all meeting attendees. During the kickoff-meeting, the Contractor shall present, for review and approval by the Government, the details of the intended approach, work plan, and project schedule for each effort via a Microsoft Office PowerPoint presentation.

At the conclusion of the meeting, the Contractor shall update the presentation with a final slide entitled “Summary Report” which shall include notes on any major issues, agreements, or disagreements discussed during the kickoff meeting and the following statement “As the Post-Award Conference Chairperson, I have reviewed the entirety of this presentation and assert that it is an accurate representation and summary of the discussions held during the Technical Kickoff Meeting for the LIPAS Phase II.” The Contractor shall submit the final updated presentation to the CO for review and signature within three (3) calendar days after the meeting.

The Contractor shall also work with the CS, the Government’s designated note taker, to prepare and distribute the meeting minutes of the kickoff meeting to the CO, COR and all attendees within three (3) calendar days after the meeting. The Contractor shall obtain concurrence from the CS on the content of the meeting minutes prior to distribution of the document.

Deliverables:

1. Technical Kick-Off Agenda, Meeting and Presentation

2. Summary Report

WEEKLY STATUS MEETING

The Contractor’s PM shall participate in and facilitate weekly update meetings. Weekly meetings shall be set up after the kickoff meeting and in advance, considering availability of Government Program Management Office (PMO) staff, providing phone dial-in and/or teleconferencing or web conferencing. An agenda shall be provided prior to the meeting. The Contractor shall facilitate the meeting, track action items, describe any risks associated with performance, schedule, or other concerns during this meeting, and deliver meeting minutes following the meeting. Meeting minutes shall include current statuses of all open issues and any upcoming service development and service implementation activities.

The Contractor shall include, at minimum, the following topics:

· Highlight accomplishments

· Quality status

· Production Schedule status

· Staffing status

· Risk Management

· Plans for coming weeks (including performance improvement plan/remediation plan efforts)

· All action items (status (pending, closed, other), duration, and resource assignments)

· Contractor corporate/resource email distribution list with updates monthly

· Deliverable status The Contractor shall capture, track, and report action items and risks weekly. Capturing, tracking, and reporting shall be electronic via a Government approved enterprise change management, risk/issue tracking tool (e.g., Rational Jazz, JIRA, or similar). The Contractor is not required to develop and implement a new tracking tool to satisfy this requirement. Use of an existing solution is acceptable so long as the tool meets the following minimum requirements, and its use is approved by the Government PM:

· Action items and risks are organized and enumerated

· The tool displays the metadata related to each action item/risk Access to the tool shall be granted to the Government PM and any other Government resource(s) or agents of the Government identified by the PM. Access includes the ability for Government resources to run reports as necessary to track action items, risks, defects, etc.

SUSTAINMENT SERVICES (BASE PERIOD)

The Contractor shall provide support to the LIPAS system regarding to the performance and optimization of routine, preventive, predictive, scheduled, and unscheduled actions aimed at preventing system/production failure (i.e., break/fix) and correcting application/system defects with the goal of increasing efficiency and reliability on a continuous basis to optimize performance.

The Contractor shall provide LIPAS system operations support and maintenance of the licenses by working and coordinating with the Government Subject Matter Experts (SME(s)) for timely execution of all license management aspects. The Contractor shall provide licenses, maintenance, subscriptions and professional services paid for under this contract, to include detailed information regarding terms, and pricing. This information shall be provided in the Quarterly Status Report (PWS Section 5.1.3).

The Contractor shall transfer all licenses for the LIPAS Solution (e.g. EXL LifePro, LifePro Digital Suite, and SmartComm) to the Government no later than 60 days prior to the end of the contract period of performance.

In support of these activities, the Contractor shall configure, maintain, test, and deploy maintenance releases for each application, as well as provide help desk support, and training as detailed in PWS 5.2.1, 5.2.2, 5.2.3. Each Contractor team shall be comprised of the appropriate distribution of cross functional roles with the requisite mix of labor categories, experience, skills and expertise to execute Agile DevSecOps services to provide sustainment support Insurance Products across all environments.

The Contractor shall have available to VA four (4) categories of team sizes to perform the sustainment requirements as described in the Section 5.2 for each application/system. LIPAS applications/systems require support from 7:00AM to 6:00PM EST, Monday through Friday except for federal holidays. The required full-time employee (FTE) count for each team size are as follows:

FTEs per Team

For the base and option periods (if exercised), the Contractor shall provide one Large Team to perform the sustainment activities for LIPAS in accordance with section 5.2 and its subsections. Additional Sustainment Teams may be exercised throughout the base and Option Periods at the Government’s discretion per Optional Task 1 at PWS Section 5.6.

APPLICATION SUSTAINMENT SUPPORT

The Contractor shall perform maintenance activities and implement maintenance upgrades to the LIPAS system, but not limited to, testing, deployment, production, and configuration management support.

The Contractor shall comprehensively support the operations, sustainment, maintenance, security, accessibility, performance, core services, technical standards, architectural compliance, operational capability testing, audits and reviews, integration with external systems, triage and resolution support of issues, monitoring, contingency, capacity planning, and recovery for its assigned application/system.

The Contractor shall work in concert with the VA Product Manager to achieve holistic and seamless DevSecOps sustainment support in alignment with the VA Product Line Management (PLM) Playbook and the applicable working principles outlined in Section 2.0.

The Contractor tasks include, but are not limited to:

1. Perform all operation services and activities including performance and dashboard monitoring and inclusive of job scheduling and execution, backup and restore

2. Meet or exceed SLA targets (refer to Appendix B) for mean time to resolve issues and operational incidents

3. Provide support to keep all environments in an operational state

4. Support the uptime of system operations at 99.9%

5. Support software releases during weekends (day and potentially nighttime hours) and monitoring/maintenance activities periodically during weeknights. VA estimates that regularly scheduled releases will occur quarterly or less depending on the application/system’s need. Emergency releases historically occur three (3) times a year.

6. Provide “After-Hours” support for network and external dependency tasks and to support coordinated activities and software releases. “After-Hours” requirements are rare; however, installation weekends are necessary (approximately four (4) to eight (8) times per year) and critical defects resulting in work stoppage may require support up to 24x7 until resolved. When after-hours support is required, the Contractor shall provide the necessary staff to resolve the issue(s) to ensure the appropriate performance metrics are met again. These metrics fluctuate from system to system but generally any downtime is to be avoided.

7. Detect, diagnose, and resolve issues and operational incidents within the time frames as defined in Appendix B

8. Support VA event management processes for critical and high priority incidents (including participation in High Priority Incident (HPI) or Critical Priority Incident (CPI) and publication of After-Action Reports)

9. Maintain incident metrics and supplementary data to detect patterns and trends and facilitate rapid diagnosis of previously observed incidents

10. Deploy and maintain automation to detect and generate alerts for lapses in system availability and material deviations from baseline system performance

11. Provide continuous improvement of monitoring and alerting to detect new failure points

12. Create a Release Plan (refer to Application Release Package below) for each application release based on VA best practices as specified in the VIP Release Process Guide.

13. Test and implement VA generated IT security alerts, mandated security patches, emergency Congressional, Court, or White House mandates as well as maintain existing VA developed code. Software must pass and get approval in all lower-environment testing, including System Integration Testing (SIT) and User Acceptance Testing (UAT), and be installed in Production, and pass post-deployment testing with no Severity 1 or 2 defects to be accepted.

14. Support UAT and perform regression-testing activities, including test case and test script development. The Contractor shall work with the Insurance representative for the application/system to ensure release code is accepted. The Contractor shall ensure deficiency reporting is logically organized and traces the status of each identified deficiency from initial identification through acceptance testing of its correction/resolution. UAT and regression testing are required for each release.

The Contractor Shall deliver a UAT Master Test Plan to include:

a. Develop a Master Test Plan

b. Develop UAT Test Cases, test scripts, test data

c. Provide Test Manager to assist in preparation and execution of UAT

d. Develop UAT Test Schedule

e. Develop a defect management plan

f. Manage defect triage and management

g. Develop and adhere to test readiness checklist

15. Manage system performance and capacity for LIPAS.

The Contractor shall:

1. Establish a baseline for system performance and resource utilization

1. Establish reserve capacity targets to accommodate spikes in real-time demand and organic growth

1. Work with the VA OIT PM to identify “key” business transactions for monitoring / optimization purposes

1. Formulate and execute strategies to maintain desired reserve capacity

1. Conduct periodic reviews of current and forecasted system performance and resource utilization

The Contractor shall follow PAL artifacts templates and develop a LIPAS Release Package for each application release.

The Application Release Package includes:

0. Release Plan

0. System Design Documentation

0. Comprehensive Test Plan

0. Use Cases and Test Cases Documentation

0. Unit, Integration, and Regression Testing Reports

0. User Acceptance Testing Reports

0. Technical Release Notes

0. Release Code and Technical Documentation

0. User Guide

0. Data Dictionary

0. Production Environment Deployment and Rollback Procedures

The Application Release Package shall also detail resolutions of failed data conversion efforts, expected time durations for recovery and any time critical decision points prior to any change being scheduled. The Contractor shall provide updates to the LIPAS Release Packages based on the application/systems’ specific release schedule and communicate any potential changes for each release with the VA PM, COR, Office of Performance Analysis and Integrity (PA&I), and Business Stakeholders. The VA will provide a single authoritative project and product artifact repository 10 days after contract award.

Deliverables:

1. UAT Master Test Plan

1. Application Release Package

PRODUCT COMPLIANCE

In support of LIPAS application/system product compliance, the Contractor shall:

1. Support Field Security Services Information Security Officers and the Office of Cyber Security Control Assessment team as detailed in VA Directive and Handbook 6500 Information Security Program, VA Handbook 6500.3 Certification and Accreditation of VA Information Systems.

1. Conduct cybersecurity software code quality testing and validation of all software code and provide certified scan reports validating the required code quality to the maximum extent possible.

1. Conduct and participate in vulnerability scans and tests as detailed in National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Special Publication (SP) 800-53 Rev 4 Recommended Security Controls for Federal Information Systems and Organizations, if/when requested by the COR or System Owner.

1. Create, verify, and upload required documents to the VA approved Risk Management tool ( e.g. Enterprise Mission Assurance Support Service [eMASS])

1. Manage and ensure vulnerability remediation status and perform tracking with a VA-provided tool (e.g.,.Information Central Analytics and Metrics Platform [ICAMP])

1. Provide eMASS support, applicable documentation, and coordinate with data center partners to ensure consistency with all VA Authority to Operate (ATO) requirements for certification to ensure the Product Line meets VA’s information security policies and standards to ensure the successful completion of the Assessment and Authorization (A&A) process and obtain an ATO.

1. Perform security scanning by multiple methods, multiple times throughout the course of a project utilizing methods such as infiltration testing (WASA, Penetration Tests), code analysis tools (Fortify), etc.

1. Perform Web Accessibility (Web Application Security Assessment [WASA]) scans in compliance with the top Open Web Application Security Project [OWASP]

1. Perform Vector Penetration (Pen-Tests)

1. Remediate critical and high vulnerabilities within required time frames based on severity (critical=30 days, high=60 days, medium=90 days) after identification in government scans or quality checks or reviews/audits.

1. Provide vulnerability scanning reports and assessments as detailed in NIST SP 800-30 Rev 1 Guide for Conducting Risk Assessments.

1. Create Plan of Actions and Milestones (POAM) for any finding or vulnerability that cannot be addressed or remediated within required time frames based on Severity.

1. Identify, document, review, and maintain the A&A Artifacts as needed to support an ATO request in accordance with VA policy and Federal Law and guidelines, as detailed in NIST SP 800-37 Rev 1 Guide for Applying the Risk Management Framework to Federal Information Systems: A Security Life Cycle Approach. Additionally, the Contractor shall update Product documentation based on comments from the A&A review process conducted.

The Contractor shall provide an Updated A&A Package for LIPAS which consists of, but is not limited to, the following A&A artifacts:

0. System Security Plan (SSP)

0. Security Configuration Plan (SCP)

0. Security Configuration Management Plan (CMP)

0. Information System Contingency Plan (ISCP) to include Business Impact Assessment (BIA)

0. Incident Response Plan (IRP) and Test

0. Privacy Impact Assessment (PIA)

0. Privacy Threshold Analysis (PTA)

0. Risk Assessment (RA)

0. Security Configuration Checklist (SCC)

0. Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) and Interconnection Security Agreement (ISA)

0. Signatory Authority (SA)

0. Disaster Recovery Plan (DRP)

0. Database Scan Vulnerability Remediation Plan

0. Plan of Action and Milestones (POAMs)

0. Section 508 Compliance

The Contractor shall also provide continued security Plan of Action and Milestones (POAM) support. Any COR/PM directed vulnerability scans, remediation and reports shall be completed prior to the conduct of the PM/COR acceptance testing.

Deliverables:

1. Updated Assessment and Authorization (A&A) Package

HELP DESK SUPPORT

The Contractor shall provide Tier Two and Tier Three help desk support for the Insurance application. The VA National Service Desk (NSD) will provide Tier One support. Tier Two and Tier Three support shall be provided by the Contractor after tickets are issued from the NSD. The Contractor resolve Tier Two and Tier Three trouble tickets and shall close each ticket in the NSD.

Tier Two and Tier Three help desk support shall be available from 7:00 AM to 6:00 PM Eastern Standard Time, Monday through Friday except for federal holidays. The Contractor shall provide help desk ticket support in accordance with the HELP DESK SLA documented in Appendix B and summarize all activities in a Monthly Help Desk Status Report detailed below.

The Contractor shall perform the following tasks:

· Continuously build on and enhance existing knowledge base in the VA help desk tool. The Contractor’s work includes, but is not limited to, documenting all problems, troubleshooting steps, probable solutions and librarying the communication script for the responses to users (for uniform customer service). Work also includes maintenance of materials to ensure they are accurate, current, and that they are functionally useful to VA National Service Desk Technicians and VA users.

· Provide all the necessary coordination with the VA National Service Desk, VA PM and other cross functional support teams to handle all reporting activities required for managing and resolving tickets.

· Report metrics to validate that the HELP DESK SLAs (VA has established the HELP DESK SLAs for all production applications/systems) are being met.

· Manage and update the ServiceNow Dashboards.

The HELP DESK SLA timeline will start at the moment the issue is logged. The goal will be measured monthly, calculated form the first to last day of the month.

The Contractor shall provide a monthly Help Desk Status Report which will be matured over time as part of process improvements, and shall include, at a minimum, the following:

· Description of trouble tickets and resolution

· Status of resolution

· Recommendations for code and/or procedural changes of a preventive nature and to improve the customer experience

· Number of incidents, problems, and requests

· Breakdown of incidents, problems, and requests by severity

· Percent of critical and high priority tickets

· Percent of aged tickets

· Average response and remediation times by severity

· Average time to close incidents by severity

· Total number of overdue incidents

· Number of resolutions and overdue incidents by assigned group

· Number of change orders

· Release occurrences, start time, and end time

· Number of release rollbacks and reason for each

· Number of emergency fixes

· Number of emergency fixes related to a schedule release

· Mean time between releases (scheduled and unscheduled)

· Mean time to failure

· Mean time to repair Mean time between failures

Deliverables:

1. Monthly Help Desk Status Report

TRAINING MATERIALS FOR CHANGES

The Contractor shall provide Training Materials with each release. The Contractor shall ensure training materials accurately describe and effectively portray LIPAS application/system functionality to end users. Training materials shall include, but may not be limited to, instruction on application/system functionality, a user guide, including graphical user interface menu structure and navigation procedures, help resources, explanation of error messages, troubleshooting steps, and interaction with other applications/systems. The Contractor shall include in the training materials information pertinent for end users reliant on adaptive technology (Section 508 compliant) who use LIPAS applications/systems to perform their work.

Deliverable:

10. Application/System Training Materials

0. LIPAS BUSINESS PROCESS & AUTOMATION FUTURE ENHANCEMENT PLANNING

The Contractor shall work closely with VA Subject Matter Experts to analyze current business processes as prioritized by VA Program Manager and develop proposed solutions to reduce or eliminate manual employee actions. The Contractor shall document both the “as is” and “to be” business processes using swim lane diagrams.

The Contractor shall work closely with VA Subject Matter Experts to document proposed changes to existing user stories or develop new user stories and record in the VA’s requirements system of record for approval by VA Program Manager.

The Contractor shall update existing applicable Interface Design Documents or deliver new Interface Design Documents to document technical details of interfaces impacted by proposed automation solutions.

BATCH JOBS AND MONITORING

The LIPAS system currently utilizes numerous recurring batch processes and scheduled tasks to process Insurance transactions, update Insurance policies, generate letters and reports, process incoming collections files, generate outgoing payment files, and process files in support of various other system interfaces. Insurance Service requires a nightly cycle to be run every evening, consisting of numerous batch processes as well as recurring jobs running monthly on specified days of the month. Insurance Service requires consistency and reliability in the execution of these jobs to ensure all processes run on schedule and complete successfully. Strict controls must be implemented to ensure expected input files are received on-time for processing, to prevent duplicate processing, and to ensure expected outputs are generated on-time and validated.

The Contractor shall:

· Create a master schedule of all batch jobs and scheduled tasks and document the dates, times and durations when each job will be executed. The schedule shall indicate whether each job is executed manually or automated by a job scheduler. The master schedule shall be updated monthly if any changes to the schedule are made.

· Create and maintain Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) for each batch job and scheduled task. Each SOP shall include a description of the job and its purpose, a listing of required inputs and outputs, instructions for executing the job, and steps required to handle any potential errors or exceptions.

· Create an Operations Manual for personnel responsible for the operations and maintenance of LIPAS batch processing and scheduled tasks.

· Setup and maintain monitoring for all batch jobs and report any failures to OI&T and Insurance Service within 12 hours.

Deliverables:

A: Master Schedule of all recurring batch jobs and scheduled tasks B: SOP for each batch job and schedule task C: Operations Manual

OPTION PERIOD 1

The Contractor shall provide all services required by Section 5.1, including all subtasks, of this PWS. The Contractor shall also provide one (1) Small Team to perform sustainment services in accordance with Section 5.2, including all subtasks, for one (1) Insurance application/system which will be identified at time of option exercise. Additional Sustainment Teams may be exercised throughout Option Period 1 at the Government’s discretion, per Optional Task 1 at PWS Section 5.6

OPTION PERIOD 2

The Contractor shall provide all services required by Section 5.1, including all subtasks, of this PWS. The Contractor shall also provide one (1) Small Team to perform sustainment services in accordance with Section 5.2, including all subtasks, for one (1) Insurance application/system which will be identified at time of option exercise. Additional Sustainment Teams may be exercised throughout Option Period 2 at the Government’s discretion per Optional Task 1 at PWS Section 5.6.

OPTION PERIOD 3

The Contractor shall provide all services required by Section 5.1, including all subtasks, of this PWS. The Contractor shall also provide one (1) Small Team to perform sustainment services in accordance with Section 5.2, including all subtasks, for one (1) Insurance application/system which will be identified at time of option exercise. Additional Sustainment Teams may be exercised throughout Option Period 3 at the Government’s discretion per Optional Task 1 at PWS Section 5.6.

OPTIONAL TASK 1 - ADDITIONAL SUSTAINMENT SUPPORT

VA may exercise this Optional Task upon written notification from the Contracting Officer. VA may exercise this Optional Task for Additional Sustainment Teams at any time throughout the base period and each option period to perform the tasks identified in PWS Sections 5.1-5.2, including all subtasks, for additional Insurance applications/systems. This task may be exercised multiple times, not to exceed the CLIN ceiling, at the discretion of the Government and may be exercised during the base period and each option period of performance.

The Insurance application/system and size requirement for each Sustainment Team effort shall be determined by the Government in accordance with the team sizes identified in PWS Section 5.2 prior to each exercise of this optional task.

OPTIONAL TASK 2 – INSURANCE APPLICTIONS / SYSTEMS ENHANCEMENT SERVICES

The Contractor shall develop enhancements to the LIPAS system to meet Insurance Service’s business process automation requirements. All enhancements must be thoroughly tested in accordance with Section 5.2.1 and submitted for approval by the change control board (CCB) to be released to production for implementation.

Examples of business processes Insurance Service requires enhancement to include:

· Posting of premium and loan payments from deductions/collections files

· Workflow task assignment

· Notification Letters

VA may exercise this optional task for Insurance Enhancement Service Teams throughout the PoP to perform the tasks below. This task may be exercised at any time, up to one (X) time per PoP for up to five (X) scrum teams, at the discretion of the Government and can be exercised during the base period and each option period of performance. This optional task PoP shall run coterminous with the period in which it was exercised.

The services that may be exercised under this optional task will be for the following types of tasks:

Major Release and Development:

The Contractor shall use the SAFe agile methodology and provide DevSecOps support to implement new business or technical requirements, integration, testing, installation and documentation for Insurance applications/systems. The Contractor shall provide system subject-matter experts and dedicated SAFe resources to support interface development and integration with other VA systems if needed. The Contractor shall provide solution planning to accommodate any legislation and VA policy changes as well as mandated security fixes.

The Contractor shall plan, manage, facilitate and execute Program Increment (PI) Planning sessions to gather and prioritize business requirements into executable solutions. The Contractor shall document the processes required to plan, communicate, and execute the PI Planning events including timelines, objectives and content. The Contractor shall conduct sprint reviews and develop and maintain documentation that should easily enable full visibility and transparency of all work from user-stories through epics as well as progress reporting.

Integration and Enhancement:

The Contractor shall provide LIPAS integration and enhancement services to assist in managing and integrating a diverse range of software and services. For example, a new system may have the need to integrate with an existing system for a period of time to exchange data or support a business process. This integration may require support of activities such as system to system integration testing. The Contractor shall ensure software integration and support is managed in each environment. The support required may include, but is not limited to, the following:

· Identify and utilize mechanisms within the VA approved project management tools, e.g. JIRA, GitHub and Confluence through agile methodology.

· Support Test Driven Development.

· Capture and Monitor Code Quality metrics in support of Continuous Integration.

· Assist in the resolution of application issues in each test environment.

· Manage performance of each test environment.

· Provide capacity planning, management and monitoring of each test environment.

· Provide analysis and reporting of system metrics, for example transaction rate metrics and system performance metrics.

· Monitor the operational status of customer systems in each test environment.

· Monitor system health and performance of test environments.

· Configure monitoring system alerts.

· Provide Database (i.e., Oracle, SQL) support, monitor database performance improvement analysis, and triage database related issues.

· Provide performance monitoring for database performance from the Virtual Machine level and above.

· Modify systems and data interfaces to support systems integration

· Review and update application Interface Control Documents

OPTIONAL TASK 3 – TRANSITION SUPPORT

The Contractor shall provide a plan for 60 days of outgoing (end of PoP) transition support for transitioning work from Contractor’s current TO to the new TO. This transition may be to a Government entity or to another Contractor or to the incumbent Contractor under a new TO. In accordance with the Government-approved plan, the Contractor shall assist the Government in implementing a complete transition from this task order to a new support provider. This shall include formal coordination with Government staff and successor/previous staff and management. It shall also include delivery of copies of all artifacts delivered under this contract, as well as existing policies and procedures, and delivery of baseline metrics and statistics. This Transition-Out Plan shall include, but is not limited to:

1. Coordination with Government representatives.

2. Review, evaluation and transition of current support services.

3. Transition of historic data to new Contractor system.

4. Transfer of all necessary business and/or technical documentation

5. Disposition of Contractor purchased Government owned assets,

6. Transfer of Government Furnished Equipment (GFE) and Government Furnished Information, and GFE inventory management assistance.

7. Turn-in of all Government keys, ID/access cards, and security codes.

The finalized asset list shall be delivered as a Certificate of Transition Completion for all Assets, which will be signed by the Development PM and the Receiving Organization to indicate acceptance.

Deliverable:

A. Detailed Transition-Out Plan B. Business rules and configuration files and/or Commercial-off-the-Shelf (COTS) customizations C. Source Material Data

GENERAL REQUIREMENTS

PERFORMANCE METRICS

The table below defines the Performance Standards and Acceptable Levels of Performance associated with this effort.

2. Efficient and effective in meeting requirements

3. Meets technical needs and mission requirements

4. Provides quality services/products

5. Incorporates “ease of use” Human Centered Design principles in any software developed.

Satisfactory or higher

2. Products completed, reviewed, delivered in accordance with the established schedule

3. Notifies customer in advance of potential problems Satisfactory or higher

2. Personnel possess necessary knowledge, skills and abilities to perform tasks

Satisfactory or higher

The COR will utilize a Quality Assurance Surveillance Plan (QASP) throughout the life of the TO to ensure that the Contractor is performing the services required by this PWS in an acceptable level of performance. The Government reserves the right to alter or change the QASP at its own discretion. A Performance Based Service Assessment will be used by the COR in accordance with the QASP to assess Contractor performance.

SECTION 508 – INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGY (ICT) STANDARDS

On January 18, 2017, the Architectural and Transportation Barriers Compliance Board (Access Board) revised and updated, in a single rulemaking, standards for electronic and information technology developed, procured, maintained, or used by Federal agencies covered by Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, as well as our guidelines for telecommunications equipment and customer premises equipment covered by Section 255 of the Communications Act of 1934. The revisions and updates to the Section 508-based standards and Section 255-based guidelines are intended to ensure that information and communication technology (ICT) covered by the respective statutes is accessible to and usable by individuals with disabilities.

The following Section 508 Requirements supersede Addendum A, Section A3 from the T4NG Basic PWS.

The Section 508 standards established by the Access Board are incorporated into, and made part of all VA orders, solicitations and purchase orders developed to procure ICT. These standards are found in their entirety at: https://www.access-board.gov/guidelines-and-standards/communications-and-it/about-the-ict-refresh/final-rule/text-of-the-standards-and-guidelines. A printed copy of the standards will be supplied upon request.