NCATS Cybersecurity Services Program Support

INTRODUCTION

PURSUANT TO FAR Subpart 5.2—Synopses of Proposed Contract Actions, THIS IS A PRE-SOLICITATION NOTICE OF A PROPOSED CONTRACT ACTION.   

THIS IS A PRE-SOLICITATION NON-COMPETITIVE NOTICE OF INTENT TO AWARD A CONTRACT OR PURCHASE ORDER WITHOUT PROVIDING FOR FULL OR OPEN COMPETITION (INCLUDING BRAND-NAME). 

The National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS) at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) intends to award to Zero Trust, LLC, 6710A Rockledge Dr., Ste. 400, Bethesda, MD, 20817-2847, a two-month bridge contract with an estimated value not to exceed $700,000 titled “NCATS Cybersecurity Services Program Support.” This will be a firm-fixed-price contract with a period of performance of July 29, 2024, through October 15, 2024.

The scope and objective of this acquisition is to continue to provide cybersecurity support for NCATS for an additional 2.5 months while a recompetition for a new contract award is conducted as a competitive, open market total small business set-aside with an expected award date early in fiscal year 2025 on or around October 16, 2024.

Additionally, this acquisition will avoid the following risk that would result if these services ended abruptly: the security of sensitive information involved in active and ongoing projects would be jeopardized. This includes personally identifiable information (PII) and millions of identifiable electronic health records contained within the National Covid Cohort Collaborative (N3C) which are utilized by the collaborators within this cloud environment. In the event of a breach of the N3C data, the programs and reputation of NCATS would be irreparably harmed. It would prematurely terminate the  N3C program and jeopardize the work of hundreds of active projects with collaborators around the world.

NORTH AMERICAN INDUSTRY CLASSIFICATION SYSTEM (NAICS) CODE

The intended procurement is classified under NAICS code 541519, Other Computer Related Services, with a small business size tandard of $34 million.

REGULATORY AUTHORITY

The resultant task order will include all applicable provisions and clauses of the Federal acquisition Requlation (FAR) in effect through the Federal Acquisition Circular (FAC) 2024-5 with effective date of May 22, 2024.

STATUTORY AUTHORITY
This acquisition is conducted as non-competitive under the authority of 41 U.S.C. 1901 using the procedures in FAR Subpart 13.5.

DESCRIPTION OF REQUIREMENT

Background
NCATS Information Technology Resources Branch (ITRB) established a Cybersecurity Services (CSS) section as a separate function from its general scientific research support and IT support section. The Cybersecurity Section has two groups. The Information Security and Privacy group focuses on the user side, providing training, user support, program support, audit management, regulatory and policy compliance. The Cybersecurity Integration Center focuses on the technical side, providing security engineering, infrastructure protection, penetration testing, incident detection/management/response, and threat identification.

NCATS uses an extensive array of physical and virtual systems to support its scientific mission, focused both within NCATS and toward extramural collaboration. This includes scientific instrumentation, data acquisition, data analytics, robotics and laboratory automation, intra- and interagency collaboration abilities, information technology infrastructure, and technical support. Each of these has its own cybersecurity requirements.

NCATS requirements to support this array are elastic. NCATS requires day-to-day cybersecurity support, but also requires on-demand efforts to address specific administrative security projects such as preparation of technical approval packages, special studies, technical coordination with extramural collaborators.

Purpose and Objectives
The purpose of this requirement is to provide the NCATS ITRB CSS Division with day-to-day support services.
 

Project Description
A full description is included as Attachment 1 – Statement of Work (SOW).

Period of Performance
July 29, 2024, through October 15, 2024.

CLOSING STATEMENT

This synopsis is not a request for competitive proposals; however, all responsible sources may submit a capability statement, proposal, or quotation, which shall be considered by the agency

Responses to this solicitation must include clear and convincing evidence of the offeror’s technical capability of fulfilling the requirement. Responses that fail to include relevant technical capability information and all terms and conditions may be assessed as not capable of meeting the requirement.
 

The respondent must also provide their Unique Entity Identifier (UEI), organization name, address, point-of-contact, and size and type of business (e.g., 8(a), HubZone, etc.), pursuant to the applicable NAICS code and any other information that may be helpful in developing or finalizing the acquisition requirements. All offerors must have an active registration in the System for Award Management (SAM) www.sam.gov.

A determination by the Government not to compete this proposed contract based upon responses to this notice is solely within the discretion of the Government.  The information received will normally be considered solely for the purposes of determining whether to proceed on a non-competitive basis or to conduct a competitive procurement.  

All responses must be received by 09:00 AM Eastern Time, July 23, 2024, and reference number 75N95024Q00446.

All responses must be emailed to Mark McNally, Contracting Officer, at mark.mcnally@nih.gov. 

All responsible sources may submit a capability statement, proposal, or quotation, which shall be considered by the agency.