DRAFT PWS IBP Concierge Project_RFI_02242024.doc

PERFORMANCE WORK STATEMENT (PWS)

Office of the Undersecretary of Defense Assistant Secretary of Defense (OUSD(A&S)) Industrial Base Policy (IBP) Non-Traditional Businesses Concierge Project

GENERAL INFORMATION

1. General: This is a non-personal services contract to provide application development that allows the Department of Defense (DoD) to better connect with non-traditional companies, improve their ability to scale to better navigate DoD, and guide them through the acquisition process. The Government shall not exercise any supervision or control over the contract service providers performing the services herein. Such contract service providers shall be accountable solely to the contractor who, in turn is responsible to the Government.

1.1 Description of Services/Introduction: The contractor shall provide all personnel, equipment, supplies, facilities, transportation, tools, materials, supervision, and other items and non-personal services necessary to complete the Non-Traditional Businesses Concierge Project as defined in this Performance Work Statement except for those items specified as government furnished property and services. The contractor shall perform to the standards in this contract.

1.2 Background: The mission of OUSD(A&S) is to ensure the delivery and sustainment of secure, resilient, and preeminent capabilities to the warfighter and international partners quickly and cost effectively. Headquartered in Washington, D.C. at the Pentagon, and employing a diverse, professional workforce, OUSD(A&S) works to build and maintain a robust national security industrial base while improving and modernizing production capabilities.

Non-traditional businesses struggle with the complexity of doing business with the DoD and too often promising new technologies face the critical challenge of the “valley of death”, hitting a gap in funding between early-stage development and later stage transition and procurement funding to bring their capability to fruition. OSUD(A&S) aims to develop a sustainable process and digital mechanism to guide non-traditional businesses through the acquisition process to deliver critical capabilities more efficiently and effectively to the warfighter. The contractor must development solutions to challenges non-traditional businesses encounter when brining new and promising technology to the DoD and the warfighter.

1.3 Objectives: The objective of this contract is to connect with non-traditional companies, improve their ability to scale to navigate DoD processes. The contractor shall map out a pathway and develop a concierge service for non-traditional companies to connect with DoD program offices that may be interested in their capabilities to enable the transition of their technologies into defense programs to support the warfighter.

1.4 Scope: The Non-Traditional Businesses Concierge Project will include the following sequential and interrelated phases:

· Phase 0: Discovery and Current/Future State Analysis

· Phase 1: Minimum Viable Product Development and Release

· Phase 2: Version 2.0 Development and Release

· Phase 3: Ongoing Development, Iteration, and Maintenance

1.5 Period of Performance: The period of performance shall be the following:

· Phase 0/1: 1 April 2024 – 30 June 2024 (3 Months)

· Phase 2: 1 July 2024 – 31 October 2024 (4 Months)

· Phase 3: 1 November 2024 – 31 March 2025 (5 Months)

1.6 Recognized Holidays:

New Year’s Day, January 1.

Martin Luther King Jr.’s Birthday, the third Monday in January.

President’s Day, the third Monday in February.

Memorial Day, the last Monday in May.

Juneteenth National Independence Day, June 19.

Independence Day, July 4.

Labor Day, the first Monday in September.

Columbus Day, the second Monday in October.

Veterans Day, November 11.

Thanksgiving Day, the fourth Thursday in November.

Christmas Day, December 25.

1.7 Hours of Operation: The contractor is responsible for conducting business, between the hours of 0800-1600 Monday thru Friday except Federal holidays or when the Government facility is closed due to local or national emergencies, administrative closings, or similar Government directed facility closings. The contractor must at all times maintain an adequate workforce for the uninterrupted performance of all tasks defined within this PWS when the Government facility is not closed for the above reasons. When hiring personnel, the contractor shall keep in mind that the stability and continuity of the workforce are essential.

1.8 Place of Performance: The work to be performed under this contract will be performed at the contractor facility and the Pentagon or Mark Center as required.

1.9 Identification of Contractor Employees: All contract personnel attending meetings, answering Government telephones, and working in other situations where their contractor status is not obvious to third parties are required to identify themselves as such to avoid creating an impression in the minds of members of the public that they are Government officials. They must also ensure that all documents or reports produced by contractors are suitably marked as contractor products or that contractor participation is appropriately disclosed.

1.10 Contractor Furnished Items and Responsibilities: The contractor shall furnish all supplies, equipment, facilities and services required to perform work under this contract. The contractor shall provide a production and testing environment in order to create and demonstrate the application. This must be compatible with DoD systems. The contractor shall have servers, laptops, computer engineer materials in order to meet the requirements under this PWS.

1.11 Government Furnished Items: The Government will provide workspace as needed to include a desk, telephone, computer, and laptop. The Government will provide access to Standard Operating Procedures and Policies, project plans, and agency requirements documents that will be used in mapping.

1.12 Security Requirements: Contractor personnel performing work under this contract must have a Top Secret clearance at time of the proposal submission, and must maintain the level of security required for the life of the contract. The security requirements are in accordance with the DD254. The contractor must abide by all applicable regulations, publications, manuals, and local policies and procedures regarding security, cyber security, information technology development.

1.13 Physical Security: The contractor shall be responsible for safeguarding all government equipment, information and property provided for contractor use. At the close of each work period, government facilities, equipment, and materials shall be secured.

TASKS

2. Services. The contractor shall provide services for the development of the Non-Traditional Businesses Concierge Project. The scope may be updated throughout development to reflect necessary design changes based on discovery research or feedback. The full application must be public facing and will ultimately be transferred over to the DoD.

2.1 Phase 0: Discovery and Current/Future State Analysis

The discovery phase of this project will be an assessment that ensures the concierge tool effectively addresses non-traditional challenges and reflects well-thought pathways to connect them with DoD stakeholders. During this discovery phase, it is envisioned that the contractor will conduct discovery work to gain an understanding of how non-traditional businesses at present can move through the DoD acquisition process from prototype to fielding of a capability. To gain this understanding, the contractor will conduct interviews; lead workshops and discovery sessions with stakeholders; and lead working-level meetings as needed. The intention of these sessions will be in part to understand the current challenges faced by non-traditional companies, as well as to identify potential solutions for them to engage DoD.

To that end, after identifying the current state baseline, the next part of this phase will focus on developing draft maps that illustrate the pathways for how non-traditional businesses can ideally connect with DoD stakeholders and accelerate that process beginning-to-end. The maps shall clearly show the process flow and include any necessary contextual information such as non-traditional entry points, regulatory considerations, specific funding vehicles, risks, obstacles and/or bottlenecks, timelines, and proposed improvements over existing flows. The map(s) shall identify how “matching” will occur between non-traditional companies and the DoD and what funding opportunities may be available after identifying a match.

Current and future state analysis should reflect non-traditional user segments (i.e., personas) such as the following:

1. Hardware directly to the government

2. Hardware to Primes or subcontractors

3. Software directly to the government

4. Software to Primes or subcontractors

5. Software as a service

6. Services Considerations for their pathways should include:

1. Familiarity with defense

2. Dual use (defense as their objective vs. mix vs. commercial as their objective)

3. Small business qualification / disqualification

4. Funding runway timelines

5. Previous government contract experience (Business readiness level)

6. Technology readiness level

7. Integration readiness level

8. Manufacturing readiness level

It is envisioned that pathways should include consideration of how existing structures, such as APEX Accelerators or the National Security Innovation Network’s (NSIN) Regional Strategy, might be leveraged in the final solution of the concierge service.

The Office of Industry Engagement will work with the contractor to set up a cadence for interviews and discovery working sessions during this phase. These are expected to include:

1. Working session(s) on the vision for concierge

2. Working session(s) on user personas

3. Working session(s) on user journeys

4. Stakeholder interviews

5. Working session(s) to establish what an AI-powered dating-like “matching” capability will look like and what existing/future data sources can be leveraged

6. Working session(s) to develop process workflow after a match has been made between a company and government user

7. Additional workshops and discovery sessions as needed to ensure entirety of scope is envisioned and mapped out

At the conclusion of Phase 0 (discovery period), it is envisioned that the contractor will ensure that output is integrated into the minimum viable prototype to be developed as part of Phase 1.

2.2 Phase 1: Minimum Viable Product Development and Release

The first development phase of this project will be to develop a minimum viable prototype (MVPr) and a minimum viable product (MVP). It is envisioned that the contractor produces an MVPr version of the service at the wireframe level so that UX testing and validation can be conducted. The MVPr should include enough features to be able to test with users to solicit input and feedback to refine the service and offerings. The user testing that the contractor conducts during this phase should inform the design and elements for the MVP and eventual full-scale service. Following MVPr wireframe development, it is envisioned that the contractor will develop an MVP version of the tool that is more refined and moves beyond wireframes. During Phase 1, the contractor will develop a branding concept for the tool in collaboration with the Office of Industry Engagement. The branding design shall include potential naming, tag line, logo, color, and font options for the government to decide on.

The following features represent a preliminary concept for an MVP to ensure the delivery of core functionality first, followed by additional features in the future. These features are subject to change based upon the discovery phase and user input during wireframe testing:

MVP Preliminary Features (subject to change)

1. Matching Functionality

a. To reach MVP, the contractor shall develop a matching functionality that links technical attributes as stated by companies within their profile to Joint Staff requirements and subsequent PEOs.

b. The contractor shall leverage the Joint Capability Area (JCA) taxonomy to match the companies’ technical attributes to the Joint Staff (JS) unclassified requirements data.

c. The contractor shall identify to what extent the unclassified JS requirements data/tool will also connect to a PEO or government user and should build that functionality into the tool for the MVP.

2. Post-Matching process flow within tool

a. For the MVP, the vendor shall leverage the paper flow of the post-matching functionality developed during the discovery phase to build an initial digital flow within the tool.

b. This flow might be different depending on the user’s role as stated in their profile.

i. For example, a market research portal/report for contracting officers, a playbook/timeline for a PM / PEOs

ii. This post-matching flow should identify where to incorporate feedback loops into the tool to drive user engagement so that success can be tracked throughout the tool and identify what outcome a match led to.

iii. This basic digitized flow should identify how feedback can be used to refine the matching algorithm to continuously improve matches.

3. Communication Functionality

a. The vendor shall develop a communication function to indicate that a match has been made and to allow for a human-in-the-loop post-matching process flow during the MVP stage.

i. The initial communication function will be an auto-generated email to the Industrial Base Policy (IBP) Industry Engagement (IE) team, the Acquisition Integration and Interoperability team (AI2), and the PEO with contact information for the company, whereby the government can initiate further contact post-match for follow-up actions.

4. Scope

a. The scope of the MVP tool may focus on the Joint All Domain Command and Control (JADC2) problem set and early adopter PEOs working within that mission area.

5. The contractor shall deliver training / how-to resources for new users to understand the tool’s functionality and features to make the tool accessible upon launch.

2.3 Phase 2: Version 2.0 Development and Release

Phase 2 of the project will include delivery of version 2.0 of the service. The 2.0 version should be a more refined and advanced version of the MVP, incorporating feedback and new features based on the user testing conducted during Phase 1. It is envisioned that the 2.0 version produced by the vendor in Phase 2 will include increased automation. It is expected that the vendor continue to solicit input and feedback from users following the 2.0 version release to inform future versions of the service.

Phase 2 Features

1. Matching Functionality

a. Following MVP, the vendor shall further build out the profile development / characteristics for government users to drive matching to the profile characteristics of industry.

i. Profile characteristics should include, but are not limited to: role of government users, rank, color/type of funding available, timeline of projected funding or new efforts, interest areas, access to unique funding (RDER, APFIT, DPA, etc.)

b. In addition to building out profile features for government users, the vendor shall continue to work to integrate any future iterations of requirements capabilities into the concierge tool, to include classified requirements data.

i. The vendor shall provide regular updates to the government to identify needs, timelines, issues, etc. related to incorporating a matching functionality for classified data.

2. Post-Matching process flow within concierge tool

a. Following the initial digitized process flow developed during the MVP stage, the vendor shall work to increase automation and build additional features for the process flow within the concierge tool.

3. Communication Hub

a. The vendor shall develop a communication hub so that industry and government users can connect and communicate directly after a match has been made. The IE and AI2 teams may still be in the loop, but there will be increased opportunities for vendors and government to interact directly.

4. Scope

a. The scope of the 2.0 version will include the JADC2 problem set along with additional mission areas as identified, along with increasing PEOs and government users.

2.4 Phase 3: Ongoing Product Development, Iteration, and Maintenance Phase 3 of the project represents additional refinement to the concierge tool, including increased features and data integration with other relevant DoD tools. Scope is expected to further expand (to include additional PEOs and/or capability areas). Ongoing maintenance and product iteration is also expected to take place during this phase.

Phase 3 features may include the following (for illustration), with objectives to be further refined during Phases 1 and 2.

1. Data Integration Across Relevant DoD Tools

a. The vendor shall work to establish a hub-and-spoke model for the concierge tool to converge data across related DoD applications.

b. The vendor shall first prioritize integration of data from SOCOM’s Vulcan tool, followed by data integration from AFWERX’s Ignite tool, and then the Space Systems Command Front Door.

c. As additional DoD tools are identified the government will update prioritization as needed.

2. Events Tab / Listing

a. The vendor shall include tailored/recommended events based on a user’s specified interest areas.

b. The vendor shall build a feature for government users to advertise their upcoming events.

3. Training / Resources

a. The vendor shall build out a training / resources tab to provide targeted recommendations to companies.

b. A ‘business readiness’ roadmap shall be developed as part of this resources section.

4. Newsfeed

a. The vendor shall develop a targeted newsfeed of relevance based on user’s indicated interest areas.

5. Scope

a. The scope at this phase will include maximum mission areas and will be open to all government PEOs and interested users.

DELIVERABLES SCHEDULE

3 copies

Electronically via PDF

COR, 2 leads

Progress Status

Report

5th of every month

1 copy, total of 12 per year

Summary monthly reports for each supported office of all funding documents developed and approved by WHS by assigned activities, programs

per year

General reports, spreadsheets, presentation material, and drafts of official correspondence

QUALITY ASSURANCE

3. The contractor service requirements are summarized into performance objectives that relate directly to mission essential items. The performance threshold briefly describes the minimum acceptable levels of service required for each requirement. These thresholds are critical to mission success.

Performance Objective

(The Service required—usually a shall statement)

PRS # 1.

The contractor shall conduct discovery and current/future state analysis of ability of non-traditional business to match and work with DoD acquisitions.

PRS # 2

Develop a matching source with the unclassified JCA taxonomy

PRS # 3

Develop an automated matching within the tool with communication function for classified requirements

PRS # 4

Converge data from related DoD application for matching.

3.1 Quality Control Plan (QCP): The contractor shall develop and maintain an effective quality control plan to ensure services are performed in accordance with this PWS. The contractor shall develop and implement procedures to identify, prevent, and ensure non-recurrence of defective services. The contractor’s quality control plan is the means by which he assures himself that his work complies with the requirement of the contract. QCP should be submitted within 15 working days after contract award to the KO. The written QCP shall be submitted to the KO and the COR within 5 work days when changes are made thereafter. After acceptance of the quality control plan the contractor shall receive the contracting officer’s acceptance in writing of any proposed change.

3.2 Quality Assurance: The government shall evaluate the contractor’s performance under this contract in accordance with the Quality Assurance Surveillance Plan (QASP). This plan is primarily focused on what the Government must do to ensure that the contractor has performed in accordance with the performance standards. It defines how the performance standards will be applied, the frequency of surveillance, and the minimum acceptable defect rate(s).

SPECIAL REQUIREMENTS

4.1 Data Rights In this effort, the contractor will have access to Government owned information as well as proprietary information of non-traditional businesses. The Government has rights to all of the data and the application developed. Any licenses required will be accredited to the US Government.

4.2 Post Award Conference/Periodic Progress Meetings: The contractor agrees to attend any post award conference convened by the contracting activity or contract administration office in accordance with Federal Acquisition Regulation Subpart 42.5. The contracting officer, Contracting Officers Representative (COR), and other Government personnel, as appropriate, may meet periodically with the contractor to review the contractor's performance. At these meetings the contracting officer will apprise the contractor of how the government views the contractor's performance and the contractor will apprise the Government of problems, if any, being experienced.

4.3 Non-Disclosure Agreement: In the event this type of information is accessed, the contractor shall agree that it will not use or disclose any such information unless authorized by the CO or COR. The contractor shall further agree that it will use its best efforts to ensure that its employees and others performing services under this contract will not use or disclose any such information unless authorized by the COR or CO. The Contractor shall protect information in accordance with the Privacy Act of 1974 (5 U.S.C. 552a) and the Freedom of Information Act (5 U.S.C. 552, as amended). The Contractor shall agree that each of its employees and others performing duties under this contract will sign a Non-Disclosure Agreement.

4.4 Organizational Conflict of Interest: Contractor and subcontractor personnel performing work under this contract may receive, have access to or participate in the development of proprietary or source selection information (e.g., cost or pricing information, budget information or analyses, specifications or work statements, etc.) or perform evaluation services which may create a current or subsequent Organizational Conflict of Interests (OCI) as defined in FAR Subpart 9.5. The contractor shall notify the Contracting Officer immediately whenever it becomes aware that such access or participation may result in any actual or potential OCI and shall promptly submit a plan to the Contracting Officer to avoid or mitigate any such OCI. The contractor’s mitigation plan will be determined to be acceptable solely at the discretion of the Contracting Officer and in the event the Contracting Officer unilaterally determines that any such OCI cannot be satisfactorily avoided or mitigated, the Contracting Officer may effect other remedies as he or she deems necessary, including prohibiting the contractor from participation in subsequent contracted requirements which may be affected by the OCI.

4.5 Key Control: The contractor shall establish and implement methods of making sure all keys/key cards issued to the contractor by the Government are not lost or misplaced and are not used by unauthorized persons. NOTE: All references to keys include key cards. No keys issued to the contractor by the Government shall be duplicated. The contractor shall develop procedures covering key control that shall be included in the Quality Control Plan. Such procedures shall include turn-in of any issued keys by personnel who no longer require access to locked areas. The contractor shall immediately report any occurrences of lost or duplicate keys/key cards to the Contracting Officer. The contractor shall prohibit the use of Government issued keys/key cards by any persons other than the contractor’s employees. The contractor shall prohibit the opening of locked areas by contractor employees to permit entrance of persons other than contractor employees engaged in the performance of assigned work in those areas, or personnel authorized entrance by the Contracting Officer.