Sources Sought and Request for Information_FINAL.docx

Notice Type:

Sources Sought Notice (SSN)/Request for Information (RFI) & Industry Day Announcement Agency/Office:

United States (US) Census Bureau Title:

Decennial Transformation & Application Modernization (DTAM) Primary NAICS Code:

541511 Custom Computer Programming Services Solicitation/Identification Number:

YA1323-24-DTAMRFISS-0001

Contracting Office Address:

United States (US) Census Bureau- Acquisitions Division 4600 Silver Hill Road Suitland, MD 20746

Primary Point of Contact:

Matthew Gore (Matthew.S.Gore@census.gov) Alternate Point of Contacts:

Bryan Shearer (Bryan.Allan.Shearer@census.gov) Leeann Washington (Leeann.Washington@census.gov) Synopsis:

THERE IS NO SOLICITATION AVAILABLE AT THIS TIME. REQUESTS FOR A SOLICITATION WILL NOT RECEIVE A RESPONSE. This is not a Request for Proposal or an indication that a contractual commitment will exist for this requirement. The Government does not intend to award a contract on the basis of this market research. Submission of any information in response to this market survey is purely voluntary. The Government assumes no financial responsibility for any costs incurred and the respondents will not be notified of the results of the evaluation.

The SSN/RFI & Industry Day is in support of Market Research being conducted by the Census Bureau Decennial Contract Execution Office (DCEO) to identify potential sources capable of providing Decennial Transformation & Application Modernization services for the US Census Bureau. Additionally, the US Census Bureau wants to understand best practices and seek recommendations from vendors on how to best acquire the needed industry expertise and achieve benefits in accordance and compliance with federal requirements.

The Government is interested in all businesses to include Large Businesses, Small Businesses, Small Disadvantaged Businesses, 8(a)s, Veteran-Owned Small Business, Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned Small Businesses, HUBZone Businesses, and Women-Owned Small Businesses.

As permitted by FAR Part 10, this market research tool is being utilized for informational and planning purposes. The result of this market research will assist the Government in the development of its acquisition strategy for a Request for Proposal (RFP) or Request for Quote (RFQ), to be issued at a later date, and in determining whether any type of small business set-aside is possible for this procurement or whether full and open competitive procedures should be utilized. If full and open competition is determined, response to this notice will be used to aid in establishing small business participation and subcontracting goals.

NAICS Classifications:

The proposed primary North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) code assigned to this notice is 541511 - Custom Computer Programming Services. The Small Business Administration small business size standard for this NAICS code is $34 Million.

Background:

The US Census Bureau is the Nation’s primary source of statistics about the U.S. population, housing, and economy. These measures assist the Congress, the Executive branch of the Federal Government, state and local governments, the public, and the private sector in the development and evaluation of social and economic activities. The Census Bureau’s major programs include periodic censuses, current surveys, and a wide range of reimbursable work performed on behalf of other agencies.

The reliable collection, preparation, tabulation, and dissemination of demographic and economic statistics are vital to the Census Bureau’s mission. The 2030 Census & Decennial Directorate will take advantage of new technologies and data sources while minimizing risks and costs to provide a high-quality population count.

This is a new requirement. Given significant advances in cloud, secure applications, and advanced data science, the Census Bureau is ready to focus efforts on technology transformation and application modernization for the Decennial programs. This new Decennial Transformation & Application Modernization (DTAM) procurement will provide the Census Bureau with a single award that can provide and manage a range of application modernization services. The Government is anticipating a Period of Performance of up to 8 years.

Requirement:

The Draft DTAM Performance Work Statement (PWS) has been attached to this announcement.

The Draft DTAM PWS requirements are designed to support Decennial programs transformation to secure cloud applications and expanded use of advanced data science. These requirements will enable the secure design, operations, and management of applications and the deployment of innovative solutions to improve the Census Bureau’s ability to create high quality data products for its stakeholders and customers.

While the Draft DTAM PWS does not speak explicitly to the size and complexity of Decennial programs, it is a very important for Interested Parties to understand the requirements from this perspective for this SSN/RFI.

As such, the Decennial Programs defines DTAM size and complexity as follows:

· Size – Ability to provide and manage large (base year ~50 Full Time Equivalent (FTE) and scaling up to ~200 FTEs across the decade) contractor technical staff, including multiple subcontractors, for app development, data science, systems engineering, and IT program/project management.

· Complexity – Providing full lifecycle IT transformation services for large portfolio (100+) of applications including multiple (20-50) concurrent large-scale (billions or more records) applications. Transformation services include business process reengineering, cloud native application development using DevSecOps, and use of Artificial Intelligence (AI)/Machine Learning (ML) with advanced data science / management.

Industry Day:

Notice to Vendors The U.S. Census Bureau, Decennial Programs and Decennial Contracts Execution Office (DCEO) will host a virtual Industry Day on December 12, 2023, from 1:00 PM EST to 3:30 PM EST. The industry day will provide an overview of the 2030 Census Strategy and Roadmap and a deep dive into DTAM requirements.

Registering for the Industry Day This will be a virtual event through Webex.

Register by visiting: https://uscensus.webex.com/weblink/register/re098ed788931c2d2666b4563bc69280f A list of registered companies may be posted on SAM.gov after the event, however individual names will not be made public.

Questions for Industry Day Vendors may submit questions to be considered for industry day no later than 9:00 am on December 4, 2023.

Questions should be submitted via email to Matthew.S.Gore@census.gov, Bryan.Allan.Shearer@census.gov, and Leeann.Washington@census.gov with subject line: “DTAM Industry Day Questions.”

Prior to submission of questions, vendors should review the Draft DTM PWS attached.

Sources Sought Notice (SSN)/Request for Information (RFI) Submission Instructions:

Interested parties who consider themselves qualified are invited to submit a response to this SSN/RFI. Responses shall be in Microsoft Word or Office compatible format and are due no later than December 20, 2023, at Noon EST. Responses shall be limited to the number of pages for each section defined below, single-spaced 8.5 x 11-in pages, no smaller than 12-point Times New Roman font, with margins no smaller than 1 inch on every side, and submitted via e-mail to Matthew.S.Gore@census.gov, Bryan.Allan.Shearer@census.gov, and Leeann.Washington@census.gov.

Proprietary information, if any, should be minimized and MUST BE CLEARLY MARKED. To aid the Government, please segregate proprietary information. Please be advised that all submissions become Government property and will not be returned.

Responses must be in writing and must provide clear and concise documentation indicating a potential offeror’s capability to provide these services. The Government does not desire to receive extraneous narratives, elaborate brochures, uninformative marketing material, etc. Verbal responses and electronic submissions to any address other than what has been provided in this notice are not acceptable. Census Bureau personnel may contact firms responding to this announcement to clarify a responder’s capabilities and other matters as part of this market research process.

DCEO will be utilizing Contractor personnel in assisting with this effort. Appropriate non-disclosure forms have been signed by all Contractor personnel and are on file with the Decennial Contract Execution Office.

The Government will not affirmatively release any information received in response to this notice to the public but may use information received in developing the best approach for a contract strategy, and therefore such information may be recognizable to the interested party who submitted it.

The Government reserves the right to release the company names of all respondents unless specifically requested not to do so by the respondent.

Submission Contents:

A. Company Profile (1-page limit)

· Company name and address

· Company website (webpage URL)

· Company Cage Code

· Company’s Unique Entity Identifier (UEI), as registered in the System for Award Management (SAM)

· Company’s socio-economic status, if any (e.g., Small, 8a SDB, VOSB, SDVOSB, WOSB, EDWOSB, HUBZone, Other)

· Primary Point of Contact name, email, and telephone number

· List of Government-Wide Contract Vehicles that your company currently holds that are applicable to the requirements in the Draft DTAM PWS.

· Affiliate information: parent company, joint venture partners, and potential teaming partners.

B. Capabilities (10-page limit)

· Contract Management:

· Describe your experience managing a large technical staff (similar to the size defined above), to include the management of subcontractors and teaming partners, for work with similar scope and complexity of the DTAM requirement.

· What types of functions or services would likely be subcontracted out within this requirement?

· Scaled Agile

· What has been your experience and approach in implementing SAFe® methodology for a large, complex IT ecosystem involving 20-50 applications. Please describe the scope of the IT ecosystem, challenges, the best practices employed for SAFe® and lessons learned during that engagement.

· Cloud Engineering

· Please describe your experience in defining cloud engineering strategies, standards, patterns, policies, governance for a large, complex IT ecosystem involving 20-50 application development efforts. Please identify challenges, best practices and lessons learned.

· Please describe your experience for the following:

· Establishing and maintaining cloud naming standards (i.e., for naming workloads, instances, etc.) and incorporating names to resource tagging.

· Establish and maintain cloud messaging standards to provide secure, reliable program-to-program communication (including but not limited to simple notifications, pub/sub implementation, etc.)

· Develop a cloud control plane to provide management across cloud application deployment.

· Application and Data Security

· Please describe your experience in designing, developing, and implementing a rigorous and comprehensive application and data security program for a complex IT ecosystem. Please describe the critical elements of the application and data security program, how zero trust principles where implemented, and what application and data security constructs were applied that reduced the threat vectors and likelihood of attack. Please describe challenges, best practices and lessons learned.

· Data, Data Systems, and Data Governance

· Please describe your experience with developing advanced algorithms, models, and frameworks that leverage the latest advances in technologies to transform business processes and culture to encourage data-driven decisions, increase automation, optimize operations, reduce costs, and explore data & analytics innovations associated with managing, governing, and leveraging data for critical mission needs.

· Please identify the business need, scope of the effort, the solution technology, challenges, best practices, and lessons learned. Please cite resulting metrics that represent improvements to the program.

· Please provide your experience in developing and executing cloud-based data lakes/architectures to support sustainable and enterprise-level use of leading-edge data science applications such as AI/ML, DataOps and/or MLOps. Please describe the type of data (operational, graph, transactional, spatial) and the volumes, varieties, and velocities. Please identify challenges, best practices and lessons learned. Provide the agency (or industry if commercial) for which these practices were developed.

· DevSecOps

· Based on your corporate experience, provide lessons learned from using DevSecOps for development of cloud native apps within the Federal IT environment, include your experience establishing and maintaining continuous integration and continuous deployment (CI/CD) standards to automate the deployment process and provide rapid and reliable releases. Provide the federal agency names for these lessons learned.

C. Contracting Approach (5-page limit)

· Based on experience what type of contracting strategy would you recommend for this requirement? Are there any pros, challenges, risk associated with a specific contract type?

· Based on the nature of the requirement, please provide your recommendation of the primary NAICS code that may closely related to the work.

D. Questions and Comments (no page limit – use template provided)

· Vendors may submit questions and/or comments regarding DTAM by submitting the DTAM Question & Comment Submission Template.

· NOTE: The Government is not obligated to respond to any questions and/or comments received as a result of this SSN/RFI.

Attachments:

· Draft Decennial Transformation & Application Modernization (DTAM) Performance Work Statement (PWS) (PDF File)

· DTAM Question & Comment Submission Template (Excel File)