Inactive

REQUEST FOR INFORMATION Integrated Mission Management Software For U.S. Army Test and Evaluation Command (ATEC) THIS IS A REQUEST FOR INFORMATION (RFI) ONLY, which is being issued in accordance with (... REQUEST FOR INFORMATION Integrated Mission Management Software For U.S. Army Test and Evaluation Command (ATEC) THIS IS A REQUEST FOR INFORMATION (RFI) ONLY, which is being issued in accordance with (IAW) Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) subpart 15.201(e) as part of market research. This is not a solicitation/request for proposal and no contract shall be awarded from this synopsis. There is no solicitation package available at this time. All interested parties should send responses and any comments/questions to Lynette Perez, Contract Specialist, lynette.n.perez.civ@mail.mil and Erin Weber, Contracting Officer, erin.k.weber.civ@mail.mil. All responses to this announcement must be received NLT 16:00 EST on 13 May 2020. All questions regarding this announcement must be received NLT 16:00 EST on 23 April 2020. All questions and comments must be in writing; no telephone calls will be accepted. The Government will not pay for any information received in response to this request, nor will the Government compensate any respondent for any costs incurred in developing the information provided to the Government. Not responding to this RFI does not preclude participation in any future RFP, if any is issued. If a solicitation is released, it will be synopsized on the Federal Business Opportunities website at https://beta.sam.gov/. It is the responsibility of the potential offerors to monitor this site for additional information pertaining to this requirement. Purpose Request for Information – Aberdeen Test Evaluation Command (ATEC) – The mission of ATEC is to plan, integrate, and conduct developmental testing (DT), Live Fire Test and Evaluation (T&E), independent operational testing (OT), and independent evaluations and assessments to provide relevant and timely information to senior Army leaders and acquisition decision makers. By law and regulation, almost every item that the U.S. military buys must first pass appropriate tests to ensure that it does what it is supposed to do, it is safe and suitable for its intended users, and it is survivable against environmental and enemy threats. ATEC equips Army decision-makers with unbiased knowledge and contextual understanding of whether systems are safe to use; operationally effective in providing intended operational capability; operationally suitable for the Army and the Total Joint Force; and survivable against enemy action in the unforgiving crucible of ground combat. ATEC primarily tests and evaluates Army equipment, but also supports the other military services, U.S. Government agencies and departments, private industry, and allied nations. The intent of this RFI is to identify possible sources for a cloud-based software solution combining project and portfolio management, enterprise content management, workflow management, application integration, and business intelligence/data analytics capabilities. All interested firms that possess the capabilities addressed herein are encouraged to respond to this RFI. Estimated Period of Performance: ATEC requires the new integrated software to be fully operational, to include migration of all data from retiring legacy applications to the new system, no later than (NLT) 30 Sep 2023. Ideally, initial operational capability (defined as project management, workflow, and analytics capabilities sufficient to support planning and execution of new T&E projects) would be functional and available by 30 Sep 2021. Place of Contract Performance: This contract requires work to be performed by going TDY to various ATEC locations (ATC, DPG, EPG, OTC, RTC WSMR & YPG) for a period of 120 days to conduct training classes to perform data migration assistance. The contractor will also provide cloud-computing services from data center(s), which shall be located CONUS. The work will be performed at the location specified in each individual Task Order. Contract Type: ATEC is requesting information for a single-award firm fixed price contract with one year base and four one year option years. ATEC is requesting information for a total period of performance of 60 months. Major Support Services Background. ATEC currently does not have ready access to all of the data at the necessary level of detail and accuracy required to identify, diagnose, and address any issues with the effectiveness of T&E reports for decision-making, or with the efficiency of ATEC. Over the course of each T&E project’s life, relevant data and information are created, gathered, processed, and stored in multiple systems which have limited or no interoperability, and the T&E data and management information they store is not easily discoverable, accessible, or understandable by all would-be users. Moreover, these systems do not use common standards for storing data or metadata, which complicates searches and analytics. Users must hunt manually for the data they need within and across multiple systems. The existing legacy T&E project management system and enterprise content management systems are decades old, built on obsolete technologies, and designed for a previous organizational structure and business processes that have since changed, forcing many costly system modifications over the years. Generations of code changes by a series of developers introduced reliability and maintainability problems and cybersecurity vulnerabilities. These systems are difficult to use as well as maintain, generating several hundred trouble tickets per year and necessitating expensive, time-consuming ongoing user training. Operational Requirement. ATEC has a need for a modern, web-based, cloud-hosted application or integrated set of applications to facilitate T&E project management, provide federated enterprise content management (ECM) services, exchange data and information with other Army and DOD systems, automate and accelerate standard T&E workflows, and support organizational performance measurement with advanced business analytics and visualization capabilities. The desired system will combine project management, content management, application integration, business workflows, and data analytics capabilities to provide a unified, reliable, user-friendly, and secure capability to create, store, locate, retrieve, analyze, manage, and share all T&E information, from T&E project initiation through archival and close out, including: • Planning documents and briefing slides • Data collected during testing (both instrumentation-generated and manually collected) • Assessment and evaluation reports generated from test data • Project management information and metrics such as T&E project plans, work breakdown structures, schedules, costs (estimated and actual), resource utilization reports, capacity planning tools, and earned value management reports. Objectives. ATEC’s vision is to provide an integrated T&E mission workplace for the planning, execution, reporting, and evaluation of T&E activities for all of the mission capability areas that ATEC supports. Rather than require all ATEC organizations and users to save all T&E data to a single, one-size-fits-all enterprise content management system, we will federate test center systems that will remain the authoritative data sources. The new system will provide data integration capabilities to enable advanced search and discovery of T&E data Command-wide. The system will provide document storage capability, project workspaces, Army-compliant records management, automated workflows, and a modern, streamlined user interface which enables users to work with a maximum of accuracy and speed, and is engaging, easy to learn, and error tolerant.. The system will also be the authoritative source of detailed T&E cost and performance data, link T&E processes, tasks and milestones to products, and provide transparency and auditability of project information. The system will track and measure metrics associated with the effectiveness of test planning, test cost growth, test schedule timeliness, test reporting timeliness, and test performance assessment. The operational benefits of this system will be: • Save time and labor associated with executing manual processes to enter information into and retrieve data from multiple individual, siloed systems. • Better alignment with current ATEC business processes and easily adapted as processes evolve. • Provide advanced search capabilities across all T&E data repositories. • Provide workspaces for project execution and collaboration. • Comply fully with Army records management guidance (AR 25-400-2, The Army Records Information Management System (ARIMS), 20 Oct 2007). • Provide ability to trace T&E documents to source data, approvals, and distribution. The new system will also eliminate the substantial accumulated technical debt associated with legacy applications. It will replace unstructured and hard-to-decipher source code, unsupported technologies like ASP classic and Active X, cybersecurity vulnerabilities, and browser compatibility issues. The new system will have an improved user interface, and be easier and more intuitive to learn, to use, and to retain proficiency on. The technical benefits will be: Improve system reliability, availability, and maintainability. Simplify (or eliminate) software maintenance and reduces cost of sustainment. Replace obsolete and unsupported technologies. Improve user experience, level of engagement, and satisfaction. Reduce user training requirements and help desk requests. Provide tailorable user, administrator, and manager interfaces to facilitate T&E planning, execution, analysis, and reporting. Enhance security of systems and data. Comprised of supportable COTS solutions with low code extensibility options. Scope The Contractor shall identify and provide a capability/technical statement that outlines their ability to provide a cloud-based software solution that meets the following requirements: Functional Requirements Project and Portfolio Management (PPM) Requirements. ATEC is looking for a PPM capability that is both powerful—lots of features and flexibility—and easy to use (the features do not overcomplicate use of the software). The software must provide basic project management functionality to allow users to: 1. Create a list of the tasks or activities that must be accomplished to complete the project. (This task list is also called a Work Breakdown Structure or WBS.) 2. Estimate how long each task will take to complete. 3. Link tasks in order to create a project schedule and define the critical path. 4. Create a list of resources needed to accomplish the project. 5. Assign resources to tasks. Both the task and schedule development functionality are essential elements to formulating a proper and complete project management plan. The system will provide a templated list of standard tasks and milestones for each type of ATEC project but also provide users with the ability to create custom tasks. Similarly, the system will provide standard schedule templates ordering tasks and milestones based on ATEC business practices but will also allow users to edit and customize their schedules. The task and schedule development capability includes the ability to assign resources (e.g., personnel, facilities, etc) from a standard, shared resource list. Other crucial components of a project management plan are the cost estimate and the ability to track expenditures. The cost estimation capability will allow the user to track actual expenditures against what was budgeted. The cost estimation capability will enable users to create multiple cost estimates (i.e., preliminary, final, adjusted, baseline). Later updates to the project plan must not overwrite or change the original cost estimate generated at the start of the project, given to customers, and used for budgeting. The project execution functionality will enable management personnel to monitor, execute, report on, and track all deliverables, milestones, and resources associated with the project. As the project is executed (i.e., tests are conducted, data is analyzed), the system will automatically track progress according to the project management plan. As actual costs are incurred they will be automatically imported via RESTful web services from external Army enterprise resource planning and financial systems, for example the General Fund Enterprise Business System (GFEBS), and will easily calculate Earned Value Management (EVM) metrics. The system will enable the user to perform “what-if” analysis to create, modify, and compare several courses of action when planning and scheduling T&E projects. This functionality will calculate the optimal T&E plan for a given system by adjusting T&E event locations, number of test articles/examples available for testing, and other variables to minimize total costs and/or time while staying within constraints such as: test facility/test equipment availability, ATEC personnel or Soldier availability, weather/temperature, and number and type of T&E events and trials required for statistically valid results. Users should not be expected to devise the equations defining the optimization problem and constraints; rather, the software should develop them by asking simple questions in a manner similar to TurboTax. Enterprise Content Management (ECM) Requirements. ATEC requires a document management capability, a federated search capability, collaboration workspace capability, and records management capability. The system will serve as a comprehensive “one-stop shop” for ATEC’s test and evaluation reports, program and planning documents, raw data sets and analysis products resulting from test events, and reference materials needed to execute the T&E mission including methodology, policies, templates, standards, technical information, and best practices. Documents span a wide date range from 2001 through the present and can be any file type. Files stored in the system or in federated repositories are intended to be fully discoverable by ATEC employees, DOD Stakeholder/Oversight agencies, and other government agency partners, as appropriate. The solution must support Army Data Plan goals of making data Visible, Accessible, Understandable, Trustworthy, Interoperable, and Secure (VAUTIS). Users are able to conduct searches and retrieve documents and data from the system’s native database and federated repositories. Document release conditions may limit accessibility include classification, customer, proprietary, and competition sensitive information. The system will be accessible via both unclassified DOD networks and commercial internet using a single sign-on enabled authentication provider to include Common Access Card (CAC) & username password. (A separate instance of the system providing only ECM capabilities shall be available on SIPRNET.) Application Integration Requirements. The system shall be able to manage, maintain, coordinate, and synchronize multiple repositories that use different database management systems and file systems. The system shall provide federated search capability across diverse, geographically separated systems to locate and retrieve files from the organizational repositories. The system shall consume web services published by GFEBS, the Army Records Information Management System (ARIMS), the Defense Acquisition Visibility Environment (DAVE), the Assistant Secretary of the Army for Acquisition, Logistics, and Technology (ASA(ALT)) Comprehensive Costs and Requirements (CCaR) tool, and the Defense Technical Information Service (DTIC) Acquisition Information Repository (AIR). The system shall make available a web service application programming interface (API) so that other systems may discover and reuse its data. Workflow Requirements. The system will utilize workflows for timely review, approval, and distribution of ATEC T&E products. The automation of the document review, approval, and distribution process reduces employee time required to manually route, track, and distribute ATEC T&E products. The workflows are customizable (without coding) based on type of document, review, originating organization, required approvals, etc. The system design shall include the ability to execute traditional linear workflows, customizable parallel workflows, and combination parallel/linear workflows. Parallel workflows will facilitate document coordination amongst groups such as coauthors, panel, committee, and signatory members. After document approval is complete, the system notifies distribution list recipients that a document has issued. The distribution process will consider sending distribution list recipients a copy of the file via email or providing a link to the file in the notification message. The system automatically pushes the file to the document library and other required repositories such as DTIC AIR and ARIMS. The system documents the process providing the initiator with a complete record of approvals and distribution. Approval of a document or completion of a distribution workflow should be connected to a Project Management Plan milestone or task, which will be marked complete by the workflow engine. Business Intelligence (BI)/Data Analytics Requirements. The system will automatically calculate pre-determined and user-defined reports consisting of various metrics required by all levels of leadership. The system will provide a dashboard view of specific T&E projects by user, by branch, by division, by directorate, by subordinate organization, and across the command. The metrics functionality will support reviews including the command-level quarterly results and analysis. Also, the system project management data and metadata will be exportable or available for third-party analytics tools. User Experience Requirements. The system shall enable users with different roles (e.g., AST Chairs, AST members, program specialists, supervisors, technical directors, etc.) to customize their interface to display the information they need from the system to perform their mission tasks. This feature includes the ability to set up, modify, and discontinue subscription alerts. Ease of Potential Future Modifications. ATEC prefers that the system incorporate a low-code development platform for rapid reconfiguration/modification of minor features in the future. The expected useful life of this system should be at least 15 years. Non-functional Requirements Cloud Computing. Software-as-a-service (SaaS) managed service offerings are preferred to platform-as-a-service (PaaS). If a PaaS solution is offered, ATEC requires a solution hosted in an approved Army enterprise cloud environment (based on either Amazon Web Services or Microsoft Azure for Government). Multiple Environments. There will be separate development/test, staging, production, and training environments. ATEC requires the full featured solution environments to be hosted on an unclassified network. Also, a limited version providing only content management capabilities is required on the Secret Internet Protocol Routed Network (SIPRNET). Speed, Scalability, and Capacity Anticipated Users. Total number of distinct individual user accounts will be between 3,000 and 5,000. Maximum number of simultaneous active users will be less than 500. Data Storage. Past and present T&E project information and documents in legacy databases totaling over 14 TB may be migrated to the new system. More than 1 TB of data is added each year. The system storage capacity shall be readily expandable. The ideal solution will incorporate storage optimization capabilities to minimize storage costs and maximize system responsiveness by keeping new and frequently accessed files in cached memory and long-term archival copies in low cost cloud storage. The system may employ predictive algorithms to anticipate demand for specific files to manage storage proactively. Responsiveness. The system speed/response of content load in the internet browser window shall have an optimum goal of 3 seconds with a response time of 7 seconds for active site content. Security Requirements. Before being accepted as fully operational, the system must meet all DOD and Army cybersecurity requirements (AR 25-2, Army Cybersecurity, 4 Apr 2019), to include full compliance with relevant Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) Security Technical Implementation Guidance (STIG) and Security Requirements Guides (SRGs). Cloud based systems require FEDRAMP compliance at the Moderate+ level that maps to DISA impact level 4 systems on Sensitive But Unclassified and DISA impact level 6 on SIPRNet. The system must possess a valid Authority To Operate (ATO) issued under the Risk Management Framework (DODI 8510.01 Risk Management Framework (RMF) for DOD Information Technology, Change 2, 28 Jul 2017). Availability, Reliability, Backups and Disaster Recovery. The system shall have a maximum corrective maintenance time of no more than 12 hours per scheduled maintenance event. The system shall have a maximum corrective maintenance time of no more than 4 hours per unscheduled maintenance event. Accessibility and Section 508 Compliance. The system shall be accessible and usable by users with handicaps employing standard COTS tools, e.g. screen readers and voice to text applications. System Documentation and Training. The contractor shall provide system documentation to include security scanning tool reports demonstrating STIG compliance, as well as user training tailored for each user role. Test and Evaluation. The system must pass user acceptance testing and independent operational testing by Operational Test Command and an evaluation by Army Evaluation Command. Requested Information Respondees should provide a description of their service offerings, relevant experience, and how they would meet the Government’s requirements stated above in Major Support Services Section. Respondees are invited to include client references, information regarding potential value-added services, and additional relevant information. At this stage, the Government is especially interested in discovering: Whether any SaaS offerings exist which can provide ATEC the necessary capabilities without requiring that the Government arrange cloud hosting separately. Whether any offerings exist that effectively leverage existing or planned Army and/or DOD enterprise software or cloud services, such as Microsoft Office 365 and SharePoint Online, to provide some required capabilities at minimal cost. Whether any offerings exist that can provide all needed capabilities without requiring customized code or software development services. Responses RFI White Paper. Interested parties are requested to respond to this RFI with a white paper. White papers should be in Microsoft Word or Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF) format and are due no later than 30 days after posting of this request. Questions are due NLT 10 days after the RFI is released. The Government will respond to questions within 5 days, 16:00 EST. The online version of the Request for Information (RFI) includes all required documents. No hard copy of the RFI will be issued. Responses shall be limited to 6 single-sided pages for Section 2 using Arial Font Size 12 and submitted via e-mail to the Contract Specialist, Lynette Perez at lynette.n.perez.civ@mail.mil and Contracting Officer, Erin Weber, at erin.k.weber.civ@mail.mil. Proprietary Information. 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. Section 1. Section 1 of the white paper shall provide administrative information, and shall include the following as a minimum: Business type (large business, small business, small disadvantaged business, 8(a)-certified small disadvantaged business, HUBZone small business, woman-owned small business, very small business, veteran-owned small business, service-disabled veteran-owned small business). Please refer to Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) 19 for additional detailed information on Small Business Size Standards. NAICS codes (518210 Data Processing, Hosting and Related Services or 511210 Software Publishers). The facility security clearance of the respondee. Whether the respondee has a DCAA approved accounting system. The number of pages in Section 1 of the white paper shall not be included in the 6-page limitation, i.e., the 6-page limitation applies only to Section 2 of the white paper. Section 2. Section 2 of the white paper shall answer the issues addressed in Scope Section of this RFI and shall be limited to 6 pages. Questions Questions regarding this announcement shall be submitted in writing by e-mail to the Contract Specialist, Lynette Perez at lynette.n.perez.civ@mail.mil and Contracting Officer, Erin Weber, erin.k.weber.civ@mail.mil. Verbal questions will NOT be accepted. Questions will be answered by posting answers to the beta.SAM.gov website; accordingly, questions shall NOT contain proprietary or classified information. The Government does not guarantee that questions received more than 10 days after posting will be answered. The Government will answer questions within 5 days.