Zignal Systems Sole Source Special Notice in PDF.pdf

Sole Source Special Notice No. 693JK423R600005

This is a SOLE-SOURCE Special Notice in support of a planned SOLE-SOURCE Purchase

Order under which the U. S. Department of Transportation (DOT) will receive, from Zignal

Labs, the benefit of a research tool of publicly available open-source information in discovering potential security-risks that might affect transportation-stakeholders and DOT employees.

Additional supporting information is given below.

1. IDENTIFICATION OF THE REQUIRING ACTIVITY AND CONTRACTING

ACTIVITY:

AGENCY (REQUIRING ACTIVITY):

U.S. Department of Transportation

Office of the Secretary

Office of Intelligence, Security and Emergency Response (S-60)

U.S. Department of Transportation

1200 New Jersey Avenue, SE

Washington, DC 20590

CONTRACTING ACTIVITY:

U.S. Department of Transportation/OST

Acquisition Services Division, M-63

1200 New Jersey Avenue, SE

Washington, DC 20590

2. NATURE/DESCRIPTION OF ACTION:

The aforementioned contracting activity proposes to issue a Fixed-Price one-year contract to Zignal Labs, to obtain, for DOT, the benefit of a research tool of publicly available open-source information in discovering potential security-risks that might affect transportation-stakeholders and DOT employees.

3. DESCRIPTION OF SUPPLIES/SERVICES:

Zignal Labs will provide, to DOT, a research tool of publicly available open-source information that will help DOT to discover potential security-risks that might affect transportation-stakeholders and DOT employees. DOT has an uncompromisable and irreducible need for each of, and for all of, the specific Zignal research tool’s software-capability-features described below in this Notice.

4. IDENTIFICATION OF STATUTORY AUTHORITY:

The statutory authority permitting other than full and open competition is 41 U.S.C.

253(c)(1) as implemented by the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) 6.302-1, “Only one responsible source and no other supplies or services will satisfy agency requirements.”

5. DEMONSTRATION OF CONTRACTOR’S UNIQUE CAPABILITIES

DOT’s Office of Intelligence, Security, and Emergency Response (S-60) intends to award, to

Zignal Labs, a SOLE-SOURCE Purchase Order (or other contract), under which Zignal Labs will provide, to DOT, a research tool of publicly available open-source information that will help

DOT to discover potential security-risks that might affect transportation-stakeholders and DOT employees. DOT, in supporting this mission, has an uncompromisable and irreducible need for each of, and for all of, the specific research tool’s software-capability-features described below in this Notice.

Zignal Labs leverages proprietary artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI / ML) technologies to enable a thorough understanding of the information environment and the specific narratives shaping global conversations, attitudes and off-line actions. Unlike industry standard tools that merely scrape publicly available information, Zignal ingests billions of raw data and metadata points daily through data provider partnerships. The platform provides access to more than 50 million unique open sources, including social, broadcast, traditional (print and digital) media, as well as other online publications, review sites, and forums.

Zignal uses artificial intelligence and proprietary algorithms to sort and display open source publicly available media. Zignal Labs is one of the few big data analytics technologies that ingests the full spectrum of media data in a single platform. This media includes social, traditional (print and digital), broadcast, social video and online sources—to give users the most comprehensive picture of the open-source digital media environment in real-time. Users can simultaneously analyze different aspects of multiple issues to identify and observe trends to maximize their situational understanding in a multitude of scenarios.

Accessing multiple user dashboards enables DOT to separate topics of interest and still allow access to the full spectrum of information. This key factor separates Zignal’s product from other solutions. It gives the system administrators the capability to build search factors and dashboards based on specific mission requirements.

Zignal’s system identifies peaks through a graph feature when incidents receive high traditional media and social attention, thereby identifying critical issues quickly for the users. This feature can be built into the dashboards and simultaneously provide peaks to different profiles built into the different dashboards.

Zignal’s software is configured to send automated alerts to specific e-mail addresses. This feature enables a constant watch for emerging events even when a user is not logged into the system. With initial queries in place, the Zignal Enterprise platform allows users to create unlimited, highly sophisticated alerts based on a combination of time, volume and selected keywords or filters (data source, issues, author, outlet, groups and many others). Any member of the organization, including non-Zignal users, can be notified in real time via e-mail when an alert is triggered. Zignal offers an ensemble of alert mechanisms including “as it happens” and custom thresholds to suit preferred workflows.

The origin and distribution of a particular narrative can be readily understood given Zignal’s global language coverage. The platform allows end-users to monitor and automatically translate content in over 170 languages and dialects and provides targeted sentiment analysis for 78 major languages through a patented AI / ML model. For languages such as Chinese, Japanese and

Korean, subject matter experts and native speakers can also build search queries with tokenized characters for comprehensive analysis of the original text.

Zignal users can create reports from user-defined templates aligning to a specific role, workflow or challenge. Similar to the customizability of dashboards, users can design report templates with out-of-the-box data visualizations as well as custom annotations and text, SWFs, PDFs, and then share them as a PDF or PNG file with unlimited team members via e-mail.

Zignal is one of the few companies working with the USG that has been selected to join an exclusive group of innovators from the media and social analytics marketplace as a strategic

Twitter partner, giving it an unlimited data stream and complete access to every data product

Twitter offers—including Enterprise API.

Zignal’s data access was far superior to any other product that was tested during market research previously conducted by DOT. This access allows for near-real-time alerts based on specified user criteria.

Zignal Discover allows users to search against the complete Twitter data and Metadata archive with traditional Boolean operators. The module’s trend graph and raw data display allows users to conduct ad-hoc research, compare scientific trends, conversations, URLs, and hashtags, and gather trending images and video context.

Zignal’s Sentiment Analysis feature allows for results to be quickly sorted and prioritized based off positive, neutral, or negative sentiment. Zignal Labs leverages a combination of a proprietary classification system and a third-party partnership with Lexalytics to provide sentiment scores in

78 languages and continuously evolve its models as the use of language changes across the world. Zignal’s sentiment model uniquely identifies mentions of a specific organization, person, or issue within a story or post, and distinguishes the nuances of sentiment between mentions of that target (versus an also-mentioned adversary, for example) and scores accordingly. While this patented model is highly accurate, the Zignal platform supports manual scoring override at the individual story level or in bulk for custom dataset tagging and classification.

Zignal offers the ability to perform multilingual searches across the wide array of social and traditional media sources. Zignal ingests geo-tagged data from numerous sources which is crucial for maintaining situational awareness.

Furthermore, Zignal capabilities provide a unique overlay to identify and understand disinformation campaigns designed to amplify specific narratives and drive behavioral changes. The Zignal platform identifies artificial narrative amplification by social media bots enabling users to better recognize and understand the complexities associated with misinformation or disinformation campaigns.

The Zignal Labs platform presents a holistic view of the open-source media environment and the integrated view delivers valuable information in true real-time. From the ability to measure public reactions to identifying event signatures, Zignal provides a holistic media picture enhancing situational understanding of the information environment.

From a user standpoint, the system is easy to use and easy to understand. Because of its ease of use, DOT does not need to add additional personnel to monitor the system. Staff can incorporate this system into their responsibilities without too much additional effort.

The systems capabilities are constantly changing to capture applicable information.

Zignal Labs is one of the few open-source media research platforms that offers customers real-time data feeds, Narrative Detection & Analysis, automated alerts via Peak Detection, Targeted Sentiment Analysis, and synthetic (or bot) detection via Automation Score.

6. EFFORTS TO SELECT POTENTIAL SOURCES:

Due to the statutory authority of 41 U.S.C. 253(c) (3), efforts to select potential sources have thus far been limited to Zignal Labs, which is believed to be uniquely qualified to perform this project. Arguably, however, this published Sole Source Special Notice itself constitutes an effort to find qualified sources other than Zignal Labs.

7. DETERMINATION OF FAIR AND REASONABLE COST:

All costs for the subject services will be evaluated by a technical analyst and by a contracting officer to ensure a fair and reasonable cost to the Government.

8. DESCRIPTION OF MARKET RESEARCH:

A market survey was not conducted due to the statutory authority of 41 U.S.C. 253(c) (3), which allows for a sole source award. But, as was noted above, this published Sole

Source Special Notice itself constitutes a Market Research effort.

9. OTHER SUPPORTING FACTS:

None.

10. OTHER INTERESTED SOURCES:

No source, other than Zignal Labs, has thus far expressed interest in this project.

11. ACTIONS TAKEN TO REMOVE BARRIERS TO COMPETITION:

None, for the reasons specified herein.

Readers of this Sole Source Notice must understand that DOT’s need is not merely for some approximation or subset of the research tool of publicly available open-source information features specified above, but rather is for all of those capabilities at a performance-level at least as robust as is available from Zignal Labs. Any interested entity, other than Zignal Labs, whose managers and / or marketers believe that the entity could provide such a level of support to DOT at the high level of quality indispensable to the Department, may attempt to prove that point by submitting a Statement of Qualifications to james.mowery@dot.gov and to

Leonel.Raba@dot.gov and to Jasmine.Lilly@dot.gov not later than 11:30 PM Eastern Daylight

Time May 9th, 2023.

mailto:james.mowery@dot.gov mailto:Leonel.Raba@dot.gov mailto:Jasmine.Lilly@dot.gov