Response_to_PCTE_Industry_Day_Questions.pdf

FBO Posting from PCTE Industry Day Addressing Industry’s Questions and Concerns

Product Manager Cyber Resiliency and Training (PdM CRT) strives to provide continuous transparency and clear messaging to Industry. PdM CRT believes this accountability to transparency and clear messaging will ultimately result in a better product and experience for our Joint Cyber Mission Force (CMF) users. Therefore, PdM CRT wants to directly respond to a number of the questions and concerns from Industry that came out of the PCTE Industry Day held on 11 JUN 2019.

The PCTE acquisition strategy involves procuring mature commercial products to rapidly prototype and provide capabilities to the CMF to train immediately. This acquisition strategy is in line with a number of other Department of Defense (DoD) acquisitions, and is quickly becoming the standard as a direct result of the pace of commercial industry’s innovation in technology. This type of acquisition strategy involves procuring commercial products with restricted data rights and software licensing costs. Estimated software licensing costs were reflected in the Cyber TRIDENT Pre-Solicitation Conference slides as 49% of the total value of the contract. The 49% figure was an estimate that reflected customer funded scope as well as core PCTE mission funds. However, PdM CRT received feedback the percentages made it challenging for Industry to meet the small business participation goal of 30%. Therefore, Army Contracting Command and PdM CRT have made the decision to remove CLIN 0004 – Software Licensing from the calculation of the small business participation goal for the contract, but not from the contract scope. This will ensure the small business participation goal is attainable while still providing adequate work for the Awardee which aids in facilitating a competitive solicitation. PdM CRT has scoped the full support of the PCTE program into Cyber TRIDENT, however, there are a number of decision points in the future on how licensing is procured for PCTE. Some of the options PdM CRT is evaluating includes, but is not limited to, procuring through Cyber TRIDENT, General Services Administration (GSA) contracts, Other Transaction Authorities, and Computer Hardware Enterprise Software and Solutions (CHESS).

Regardless of the software licensing procurement decision point, there is significant scope and planned work remaining under Cyber TRIDENT for integration, logistics, software development, hardware procurements and other work efforts in support of PCTE and the cyber community keeping the ceiling estimated at $957M.

PCTE plans to continue acquiring new cyber training capabilities through Cyber Innovation Challenge (CIC) Other Transaction Authorities (OTA). CIC OTAs give PCTE the ability to rapidly solicit, evaluate, and procure new capabilities. There are currently no restrictions on the Cyber TRIDENT awardee from bidding on future CIC OTAs. The Government will not task the Cyber TRIDENT awardee to develop CIC OTA requirements nor will the awardee have access to new requirements discussions or CIC OTA evaluations. Therefore, the potential exists for the Cyber TRIDENT awardee to receive a portion of the PCTE platform licensing costs as well as the overall integration costs.

PdM CRT is making every effort to maintain transparency and a consistent strategic message to enable a fair and competitive environment for the Cyber TRIDENT solicitation as well as to adequately plan for the long term PCTE acquisition strategy.