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FAMIM REQUEST FOR INFORMATION (RFI) Future Cache System Commercial-Off-the-Shelf Solution (COTS) Date: August 13, 2021 Issuing/Using Agency: USDA Forest Service (FS) Washington Office (WO) Acquisition... FAMIM REQUEST FOR INFORMATION (RFI) Future Cache System Commercial-Off-the-Shelf Solution (COTS) Date: August 13, 2021 Issuing/Using Agency: USDA Forest Service (FS) Washington Office (WO) Acquisition Management 3900 Masthead St NE Albuquerque, NM 87109 Summary This Request for Information (RFI) is for information and planning purposes only and does not require the issuance of a solicitation nor does it constrain the Government as to the ultimate acquisition approach. There is no solicitation available at this time and a timeframe for one, if developed, is not yet available. This is not a request for proposals (RFP) and requests for a solicitation will not receive a response. The Government will not reimburse any Respondent for any cost associated with preparing or submitting a response to this RFI. Further market research outreach may be undertaken as circumstances and needs dictate. The Government will retain all submitted materials and will not return any materials to the Respondent. Objectives for this Request for Information The Forest Service (FS) Fire and Aviation Management (FAM) Information Management (FAM-IM) Support Branch seeks to identify those sources potentially able to provide solutions to the requirements described in the attached performance work statement. FAM-IM further seeks to understand the capabilities of those sources and the best practices they employ to address challenges associated with cache systems. Forest Service Goals influence and shape FAMIM’s Focus and Approach The USDA Forest Service Strategic Plan for FY2021-2022 articulates seven (7) Strategic Goals. These Goals directly influence and shape FAMIM’s Vision, Mission, and Strategy. Below are the specific statements from the Forest Service Strategic Plan that have helped shape FAMIM’s focus and approach. Enable FAM to optimize wildfire suppression: “Our forest fire suppression capability helps protect human lives, natural resources, and communities.” Enable FAM to control fires in a coordinated manner: “When a response to wildfire is necessary, the Forest Service will work to control fires in a coordinated manner that is safe, efficient, and cost effective in order to retain healthy, resilient forests and grasslands while bolstering thriving communities.” Enable FAM to provide science-based software to assess fire risk: “Our fire managers use science-based software to help them assess fire risk. Using the latest tools, we decide when and where to suppress a fire and when and where to use fire to achieve our objectives for long-term ecosystem health and resilience.” Enable FAM to evaluate the impact of action: “We will make sure that the actions we take, whether to use fire or control fire, are socially, economically, and ecologically sustainable.” Enable FAM to safely use firefighters and other assets: “Respond to fires based on a protocol for managing risk, leading to a safe, efficient, and effective use of firefighters and other assets.” Enable FAM to build effective partnerships with internal USDA, external agencies, external commercial entities, and international partners at all levels: “Build partnerships at all levels to reduce risk from wildfires by managing for healthy forests and grasslands and making communities safer when a wildfire does occur.” Enable FAM to incorporate improved technology: “Continually review the fire program to incorporate improved technology and to develop more efficient and cost-effective fire management techniques and processes.” While not explicitly stated in these Goals, FAMIM also recognizes the critical role it plays in the support of Interagency needs and the importance of its relationship with, and support of, its Interagency partners. FAMIM’s Support Needs for a Future Cache System In addition to requiring support during the transformation from the existing cache system to the future cache system, FAM-IM is currently experiencing multiple challenges to delivery of efficient and effective inventory management system products and services. Critical to addressing these challenges is the acquisition of contractor support to develop, enhance, and maintain the COTS application and the IT infrastructure on which the application resides. Some of the challenges affecting efficient inventory management are: Inefficient printing capabilities: Can only use specifically designated printers resulting in critical disruption of supply chain distribution when printer issues arise. Poor efficiency when making supply item adjustments in kits: Some supply items are sent out as “kits” (a group of individual items). When changes to need occur to the individual items residing within these kits, it requires the entire kit be disassembled (“de-kitted”) in the inventory management system and then the kit must be manually rebuilt (“kitted”) in the system. This is a frustrating and labor-intensive process. Poor reporting of scan gun errors Scan guns are used to assist with inventory management and when the scan guns report an error, the error is a multiple lines and characters and is indecipherable for the user to understand what the error is reporting. Inefficient usability for users doing manual entry into inventory management system. The system requires the user type in CAPS LOCK. This is a frustrating feature that requires users to often restart their typing and task. Poor search feature in the inventory management system that does not allow the user to do a global search by unique order number across the different types of orders. User must pick the type of order first (choice of four types of orders) and then the user can complete a search by the unique order number. Poor autonomy for the supply and inventory staff to adjust quantities or an order. When quantity adjustments need to be made for an order, it requires multiple screens and steps to indicate actual shipping quantity. Non-functional data export feature that allows export of selected data and fields. Need for a more adequate way to integrate supply requests. Current system requires manual import into ICBS after being received through a variety of methods. Need for a scalable system to support the full supply chain of activities. One of the fifteen inter-agency warehouses also uniquely tracks and ships two unique items: 1) National radio and associated communication equipment; and 2) Printed national firefighting publications, manuals and training material. These two items are completely unique to one of the fifteen inter-agency warehouses. Due to the uniqueness of these two items, inefficiencies occur with the requesting, ordering and tracking of these unique items within the inventory management software. Both of these items require different process flows than the rest of the business needs. Printed publication challenges: can only receive fax orders, which are manually entered by supply staff, and the shipping costs are calculated manually. Radio and communication equipment challenges: these items are highly technical and housed within a separate warehouse and managed by radio staff members, not warehouse supply staff members. These pieces of communication equipment are repaired, adjusted, cleaned, and prepped for shipping and the inventory management system poses challenges by tracking and accounting of these items due to the unique needs and repair of radio communication equipment. The radio and communications team is required to complete redundant tasks and steps in order to use the inventory management system to track their equipment and shipping. Potential respondents should note that the Forest Service has not yet selected an acquisition or contracting strategy for this/these acquisition(s) and potential respondents are encouraged to identify, in their response, any contract vehicles through which their services and products can be procured. This Contractor is responsible for providing the COTS solution; providing applicable configuration; supporting the interface to the middleware and/or operating systems; and the steady state operation of the COTS product (e.g. infrastructure, servers, operating systems, database, and middleware). The Future Cache System team provides the standards and versions that hosted applications need in order to enhance or to sustain the environment. The contractor shall ensure that the system has been upgraded such that security and policy standards are adhered to. The Future Cache System Contractor is responsible for providing configuration documentation and ensuring it is up to date and that application/systems can be certified to federal requirements. Overview of the current cache inventory system Interagency Cache Business System(ICBS). The current inventory management system, ICBS can be described as an enterprise-level, web-based system featuring: industry-standard warehouse management practices; facility-specific optimization of inventory picking and put-away functions; wireless barcode-enabled data input; robust product returns, refurbishment and kit building functionality; bar-code enabled physical count/inventory logic; credit card sales and an interface with another enterprise application for resource ordering. ICBS was developed as a highly customized version of IBM’s Sterling Warehouse Management System (WMS), Order Management System (OMS) and Mobile commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) applications. ICBS is the primary interagency application used in fifteen (15) Type 1 and Type 2 interagency incident support caches (warehouses) to manage a nationwide inventory of firefighting supplies. This inventory is referred to as the NWCG National Fire Equipment System (NFES). The NFES includes firefighting tools, personal protective clothing and equipment, fire shelters, pumps, hose, specialized incident communications equipment, publications, forms and training materials. Some of the key cache business processes supported by ICBS include: Managing a nationwide cached inventory of supplies and equipment (real-time inventory visibility is provided through the use of wireless bar code scanners and agency/bureau-provided WLANs) Maintaining the NFES supply catalog Physical inventory counting and auditing logic Creating and processing supply resource orders (including those created by cache personnel and those received through an interface with Interagency Resource Ordering Capability (IROC) Receiving inventory from suppliers or from other caches Issuing supplies to incidents, and other customers and to other caches Receiving and processing returned supplies from incidents (returns process) Tracking supply transfers from incident to incident Refurbishing and disposing used supplies Kit building and breakdown Credit card sales to government and non-government customers (through an interface with the Treasury Department’s Pay.gov system) Reporting and analytics (including historical reporting through an interface with the Fire and Aviation Management (FAM) Data Warehouse system Bar code labeling (with dedicated networked label printers) Shipping The scope of the current ICBS contract includes, among other tasks: 3.1.1. Program management, included but not limited to, project scheduling, project control, resource planning, workload management, progress and status reporting; 3.1.2. Support and maintenance of the ICBS computing environments Preproduction, Quality Assurance (QA) and User Acceptance Testing (UAT), production failover sites from the application operating system (OS) to the middleware and the hardware infrastructure and network; 3.1.3. Technical expertise to guide and assist the government in: 3.1.3.1. System administration including availability management, backup and recovery/restore, storage management and administration, performance monitoring, user account administration, configuration management and change control, OS administration, administration of system level network configuration and administration, etc. 3.1.3.2. Database administration including database administration planning, database backup and recovery, database installation, creation, patching, configuration, administration, monitoring, performance tuning, troubleshooting, and upgrading, technical assistance to application or project teams and application or project database administrators, etc. 3.1.3.3. Network administration including network administration planning, network installation, creation, patching, configuration, administration, monitoring, performance tuning, troubleshooting, scanning, and upgrading, network backup, recovery, export, and restoration, managing roles and end?user network permissions, etc. 3.1.4 Security management and monitoring including implementation of federally compliant security controls, vulnerability management and mitigation, syslog monitoring, security testing, system assessments, certification, and accreditation, etc. 3.1.5 Development, modernization, and enhancement including eliciting, analyzing, and documenting requirements; designing user interfaces and user experience; development/coding in various languages using various tools and platforms; testing the full application from unit through system and integration testing; deployment and release management. 3.1.6 Operations and maintenance (O&M) support including updates to meet end user needs that do not significantly change the functionality available to the end user, technology refresh, defect remediation, testing, software configuration, performance management, log analysis, troubleshooting, incident and problem resolution, release management, availability management, configuration and change management, participation in review boards, document and data management, regulatory compliance, participation in security audits, etc. 3.1.7 Application support including incident and problem management, troubleshooting, knowledge document development, status reporting, application training, etc. Instructions for Submittal of Responses The Government asks that Respondents submit compliant packages to the Contracting Officer no later than 5:00 PM MT on Date 2021. Packages should include very minimal marketing material and only if absolutely necessary to an understanding of the Respondent’s response. Narrative text shall be in font Arial, size 12, and packages shall not exceed ten (10) one-sided pages and a one (1) page executive summary. The Government cannot guarantee the consideration of packages received after the due date/time. Packages should be submitted to the below point-of-contact: Name: Kay Steffey, Contracting Officer Phone: 208-387-5714 Email: Arlene.Steffey@usda.gov Packages should be organized as follows: Section 1: Company Information: In Section 1, please provide the below information: Organization Name (if organization has experienced name changes, please list all previous names used) Industry (NAICS) Codes (North American Industry Classification System) and business size for each NAICS code Vehicles and contracts held (vehicle, agency, expiration date) Year company was established/founded Company ownership (public, private, joint venture) Business Classification / Socio-Economic Status (e.g., large, small, 8(a), women owned, hub-zone, SDB, Service-Disabled Veteran Owned) Location of corporate headquarters Locations of facilities Overview of Products and Services provided Overview of experience in delivery of a COTS product and associated services similar or identical to those discussed above Relevant certifications and appraisals held Section 2: Relevant Company Capabilities and Experience: In Section 2, please provide a description of your company’s capabilities and experience as related to the scope identified in the performance work statement. In particular, where company capabilities and experience reflect innovative solutions to similar needs, please highlight these solutions and describe “the universe of the possible”. Please assist FAM-IM in understanding how your innovative solutions can be applied in new and better ways to our specific needs. Section 3: Company Perspective In Section 3, please provide your thoughts on the following questions. In all cases, please provide information on your company’s solution to the specific challenge, where applicable. Describe your experience implementing Inventory Management Systems (IMS) having multiple user roles and privileges. Describe your experience implementing IMS having a wide variety of inventory items. Describe your experience implementing cloud based IMS. Which cloud service was used? Describe your experience implementing IMS having geographically dispersed inventory warehouses (caches). Per the National Wildfire Coordination Group (NWCG), a cache is defined as: a pre-determined complement of tools, equipment and/or supplies stored in a designated location, available for incident use. Additionally, a unique business process of the caches includes the receiving, refurbishment, and re-issue of fire supply items. Some examples of refurbishment include pressure testing fire hoses, laundering sleeping bags, repairing pumps, replacing failed valve components, verifying kit components are accounted for, and sharpening shovels. Describe your experience implementing IMS capable of querying inventories in geographically dispersed warehouses. (caches). Describe your experience implementing IMS systems having report generation capabilities. Describe your experience implementing IMS systems having defined workflows. Describe your experience implementing IMS in which the system is required to integrate with a wide variety of complex external financial systems. FAMIM seeks to move all applications in its portfolio to Cloud hosting services over the next several years. Several have already migrated, and more are underway. Yet some applications have been evaluated as unsuitable for Cloud-hosting. They cannot be made “Cloud-ready”. Please describe your experience and ability to migrate or implement your solution in a cloud environment. What practices do you employ and recommend FAMIM consider? FAMIM is developing the majority of its applications using Agile development methodologies. FAMIM has chosen this approach in order to mitigate the challenges of fully and precisely understanding a complete set of requirements in advance of a multi-year period of performance. Please describe you experience with implementing a COTS solution using Agile methodology. In your experience, what problems and challenges do these changes in requirements create? For the software developer? For the Product Owner? For the contracting office? What is the impact of this challenge on efficiency and productivity, re-work, quality, etc.? In evaluating each Offeror’s proposal, should FAMIM consider use of a technical demonstration to observe the quality of the Offeror’s actual COTS capabilities, rather than relying solely on past performance and a written proposal? If so, how would you recommend this be structured? A consistent challenge for Government agencies is to maintain awareness of new technologies and solutions, understand the manner in which these products and services can be employed to solve their problem(s), and maintain the flexible contractual mechanisms for acquiring these technologies and solutions. What is your view of this challenge? How do you suggest the Government address this challenge? Do you see any areas in the performance work statement that need additional clarification? If so, please include in your response. Thank you for your participation and response.