RCO-S-FY18-0014_Orbis_Redacted.pdf

Control No: RCO-S-FY18-0014 Contractor: Bureau Van Dijk Electronic Publishing, Inc.

Program/Equipment: Orbis Financial Intelligence Database

Version – March 2017 FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY comprehensive approach to research/analysis.” A unique aspect of Orbis is its ability to “link” ownership relationships between two business entities, a shareholder, and a subsidiary. Orbis’ unique data collection allows a user to query specific businesses, individuals, subsidiaries, and more to find connections – thus providing analysts and investigators the most information available to do their job.

(a) The proposed acquisition must be accomplished through a sole source acquisition because Bureau van Dijk’s Orbis financial intelligence database is the only database which has the robust European coverage necessary to fulfill the EUR-FC’s requirement.

Orbis is the only commercial vendor database that has the level of coverage of European business data required by the EUR-FC to effectively complete their mission. Dunn and Bradstreet and Lexis Nexis were queried multiple times, but have confirmed that they do not have the European coverage of business data required by the EUR-FC.

Representatives from the EUR-FC and the 409th have solicited information from other companies to identify potential offerors of the same or similar capability required. To date, only Orbis has provided responses that confirm capability to meet the Government’s requirements.

(b) If the sole source contract is not approved, this could result in a delay or denial of vital information to law enforcement partners. While lives are unlikely to be directly lost for this, organized crime groups and narcotics traffickers could continue to receive vital revenue to keep their organizations operating and keep a steady stream of narcotics flowing into Europe.

6. Efforts to Obtain Competition: A Sources Sought was posted on FBO.gov 21 February 18 for two weeks to determine vendor capability for providing a comparable data resource, meeting (or mostly meeting) the provided salient characteristics. Bureau Van Dijk was the only responder. The Contracting Officer reached out to two (2) companies with seemingly similar capabilities, LexisNexis and Dun & Bradstreet, in order to obtain competition. LexisNexis provided a line-by-line comparison of their capabilities to the required salient characteristics, of which approximately 50% of the salient characteristics were met. Dun & Bradstreet failed completely to respond to multiple Government requests. However, the end user had conducted market research in the past and found that Dun & Bradstreet does not currently have a capability to meet their needs. Specifically, their coverage within Europe is very limited and it is not a user friendly database.

7. Actions to Increase Competition: In addition to the Sources Sought and request for information to two (2) identified vendors mentioned in paragraph 6, the Contracting Officers researched GSA Advantage to determine vendor capability on various Schedules. Unfortunately none were able to provide the necessary capability. After results from the Sources Sought and responses from the two vendors were reviewed, a secondary review of the salient characteristics by the end user and Contracting Officer was conducted. It was determined that all salient characteristics are required, and cannot be removed for the sake of increasing competition.

Program/Equipment: Orbis Financial Intelligence Database

Version – March 2017 FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY

8. Market Research: Market research was conducted by the end user and the Contracting Officer over the course of the past 10 months. The end user reviewed trade journals, contacted knowledgeable people from Government and Industry in specific markets, contacted other Government end users for current services, attended an anti-money laundering conference and spoke to vendors presenting the newest tools and software, queried Open Source Center for similar information and available databases, performed web searches, and reviewed catalogs and literature published from service providers. Based on the research methods listed above, there are commercially available financial intelligence databases which provide similar, but incomplete, solutions. Many can provide some level of capability, but only one is able to provide all the necessary capabilities to meet the Government’s requirement.

As stated in paragraph 6, a Sources Sought was posted on FBO.gov 21 February 18 for two weeks to determine vendor capability for providing a comparable data resource, meeting (or mostly meeting) the provided salient characteristics. Bureau Van Dijk was the only responder. The Contracting Officer reached out to two (2) companies with seemingly similar capabilities, LexisNexis and Dun & Bradstreet, in order to obtain competition. LexisNexis provided a line-by-line comparison of their capabilities to the required salient characteristics, of which approximately 50% of the salient characteristics were met. Dun & Bradstreet failed to respond. However, the end user had conducted market research in the past and found that Dun & Bradstreet does not currently have a capability to meet their needs.

9. Interested Sources: See Paragraph 6 for the synopsis information. To date, the only interested source that can provided the required capability is Bureau Van Dijk. Their response to the Sources Sought and Orbis database were reviewed by the requiring activity and advised that their product may be acceptable.

LexisNexis also expressed interest in the requirement, but noted that their current capability cannot meet all salient characteristics.

No other vendors expressed interest in the requirement. The Interested Vendors tab on FBO.gov was checked, with no vendors listed.

10. Other Facts:

a. Procurement History:

(1) Contract numbers and dates of the last several contracts for these same requirements.

(2) Issued by:

(3) EUCOM’s Counter Threat Finance (CTF) has awarded previous contracts that provided the Orbis Financial Intelligence Database as part of their overall contracted solution. Source selection information is not available to the customer or 409th CSB at this time. The ECJ9-JICTC-CN European Fusion Center has been borrowing

Program/Equipment: Orbis Financial Intelligence Database

Version – March 2017 FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY database access from CTF but requires its own database license for current and future needs.

b. Class J&A: NA

c. Full and open competition was originally contemplated, as the data required for the database is predominately publically available. However, the collection of such information, and the ability to query the data in multiple ways makes the capability particularly limited. After exhaustive market research was conducted, it was determined that only one source is capable of meeting all the needs of the Government. Other commercially available databases currently exist, but they either provided less data than what is necessary for EUR-FC, only provide data for US-based companies, or their search criteria or report outputs are limited and do not meet the needs of the Government. It is possible that a currently available commercial database with significant modifications could meet the requirement, but the modification would be duplicative in capabilities that Orbis currently has, and unreasonable a cost perspective to make those capabilities available.

d. In accordance with FAR 17.207(c & f), a contracting officer may exercise options only after determining that (among other factors): the requirement covered by the option fulfills an existing Government need; the exercise of the option is the most advantageous method of fulfilling the Government’s need; and that exercising the option is in accordance with the terms of the option, the requirements of this section (17.207), and Part 6 (specifically, the option must have been evaluated as part of the initial competition and be exercisable at an amount specified in or reasonably determinable from the terms of the basic contract).

In order to determine whether the exercise of the option is the most advantageous method of fulfilling the Government’s need, which includes the Government’s requirement to promote full and open competition as available, the contracting officer and the RA will repeat market research efforts and documentation, as described in FAR 13.501(a)(1(ii) and 6.303-2(b)(8 & 9) to verify that only one source is capable of meeting the needs of the Government with a commercial item. Should multiple sources become available to fulfill the Government’s need, the contracting officer will determine that exercising the option is no longer most advantageous to the Government, and will thus compete the requirement for the next year.