Inactive Total Small Business Set-Aside (FAR 19.5)

Sources Sought Notice AMENDMENT 01 DUE DATE IS UPDATED TO 10 APRIL 2020 @ 2:00PM Comptroller Extensible Markup Language (XML) Exhibits Application Support THIS IS A REQUEST FOR INFORMATION ONLY Washin... Sources Sought Notice AMENDMENT 01 DUE DATE IS UPDATED TO 10 APRIL 2020 @ 2:00PM Comptroller Extensible Markup Language (XML) Exhibits Application Support THIS IS A REQUEST FOR INFORMATION ONLY Washington Headquarters Services, Acquisition Directorate seeks information for contractor support of the Comptroller XML Exhibits (CXE) application in the following areas: Completion of planned application modernization and improvements. Preparation for and support of the 2021 President's Budget (PB) through the 2026 Budget Estimate Submission (BES) budget submissions cycles. Update current data Analytics and Visualization tool. Maintaining an up to date working knowledge of the DoD Financial Management Regulation (FMR). Performing transition of the CXE tool to an Office of the Under Secretary of Defense (Comptroller) (OUSD(C)) supported environment. The CXE application is an essential component within the Department of Defense's (DoD) Budget Formulation process, that integrates RDT&E and Procurement Exhibits created by all DoD Components, into standard, FMR regulated, well formatted, validated, and math checked Justification Books, suitable for submission to Congress. The Contractor shall be responsible for maintaining current functionality of the CXE application and the design and development of any necessary enhancements. To facilitate market research, the Government is looking to identify qualified sources under the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) 541 “Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services/541511 Custom Computer Programming Services”. Responses from “all” sources is requested including Small Businesses, 8(a) small businesses, HUBZone small businesses, Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned Small Businesses, Women-Owned Small Businesses and Economically Disadvantaged Women-owned Small Businesses. A contract is anticipated to be awarded in late fiscal year 2020 with a one-year base period and three one-year option periods. The anticipated contract type will be firm fixed price with level of effort. This Sources Sought Notice is for market research purposes only and is not a request for proposal (RFP) nor does it restrict the Government as to the final acquisition strategy. The Government will not reimburse respondents for any costs incurred in preparation of a response to this notice. The Due Date to submit a response to this Notice is 10 April 2020 @ 2:00 p.m. Questions concerning submissions should be in writing and directed to Ms. Chris Smith, Contracting Officer at chrissandra.smith.civ@mail.mil. No phone calls will be accepted. Submission Requirements: Interested firms should submit their response via email to chrissandra.smith.civ@mail.mil and include a capabilities statement covering experience, staffing and technical capabilities. The capabilities’ statement should address the Areas for Support Services identified below and for each project, demonstrate how the firm’s recent past performance (last five (5) years)) is relevant to the technical areas listed including the dollar value, period of performance, size and scope of the firm’s prior contracts. Firms need to include their business address, point of contact, cage code, duns number and small business status including specific category (for example, 8(a), dHubZone or Small Disabled Veteran Owned). Firms will add the following statement at the end of their capabilities statement and respond with an ‘X’: If this project becomes a definite requirement and an RFP is issued, our firm expects [ ] or does not expect [ ] to submit a proposal. The Government will analyze all responses to determine if a pool of qualified small business firms is sufficient for a total set-aside competition restricted to small businesses or for a partial set-aside competition restricted to small businesses. Required format: There is a maximum page limitation of five (5) typed pages that are single spaced using 12 inch Times New Roman font within an 8.5 by 11 inches page size. No hard copy or facsimile submissions will be accepted. Cover letters and extraneous materials (brochures, etc.) will not be considered. Key Task Areas for Support Services: Firms submitting a response to this Sources Sought Notice should address performance of the following areas in their capabilities statement: Complete the planned application modernization and improvements. The primary focus of this area is implementation of the CXE User Interface (UI) modernization requirements. This includes converting all application parts built with Apache Tapestry to AngularJS including all sections of the application to be consistent with the new RDT&E UI look and feel and unification of the CXE supporting codebase. Changing the application database framework from Apache Cayenne to Hibernate is also planned to assist with application performance improvements as the database increases in size and complexity. This effort also includes continuous integration of application fixes and enhancements based on requirements developed from post Budget Estimate Submission (BES) FY 2022, user input and previous Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) Financial Management Regulation (FMR) Support guidance. Also expected is the continued development of appropriate business rules based on the FMR. All revisions, fixes, and enhancements must insure compatibility across the utilizing DoD Components’ formulation processes and/or tool sets. Prepare for and support both application users and the OUSD Comptroller’s Financial Analyst team during each of the President's Budget (PB) and BES submission cycles from FY 2021 to FY 2027. This area’s focus is preparing the CXE tool for each cycle’s submission and supporting the 300+ registered DoD users, from all DoD Services and Agencies, that use the CXE application to submit their budgets. Each budget submission necessitates extensive customer support, immediate fixes of periodic application bugs encountered during submissions and reaction to frequent application changes requested by the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense Comptroller (OUSD(C)), while budget submissions are underway. Activities include developing and documenting functional requirements, defining business rules within the XML validation code and the User Interface (UI). These activities ensure budget exhibit data/formats adhere to the DoD FMR by refining existing Research and Development, Test and Evaluation (RDT&E) and Procurement budget exhibits schemas, XSLTs, XSDs, business rules and code base as necessary. Activities also include accommodating lessons learned and requirements generated from each successive budget submission and developing test plans, performing unit and integration testing in local/development environments and full regression testing in staging and production. Integrate the current analytics dataset with a new analytics and visualization tool. The goal of this area is to replace the current analytics and visualization tool. The current tool has proven too difficult to use for Financial Analysts. The replacement tool must require less technical knowhow and still take advantage of the XML data generated. The new tool should be suitable for DoD budget and program analysts to perform structured queries based on their financial knowledge not their technical skills for building queries. The current analytics dataset must be refreshed on a biannual basis to add data from the BES and PB cycles as they occur in the upcoming PB 2021 through BES 2027 budget cycles. Transition to the OUSD(C) IT Environment The focus of this area is development of a plan and documentation necessary to transition the CXE tool set from the Defense Technical Information Center (DTIC) to the OUSD(C) network. It includes working with the OUSD(C) IT office to determine changes to the code base to accommodate their infrastructure; and make all necessary changes, publishing Standard Operating Procedures for all aspects of the tool's operation including a System Architecture diagram, providing hands on, one on one training to OUSD(C) staff, both IT and functional to educate them in the logic/operation of the tool and working side by side with OUSD(C) staff for a period of at least six months to ensure they are completely familiar with the tool's operation. Minimum Security requirement: A DoD Secret clearance is required for personnel working on this application. Clearance level is to be maintained for the duration of performance. Personnel: Contractor personnel must be United States citizens. A VISA does not constitute as a US Citizen. Acronyms BES Budget Estimate Submission CXE Comptroller XML Exhibits DoD Department of Defense FMR DoD Financial Management Regulation FY Fiscal Year IT Information Technology NAICS North American Industry Classification System OUSD(C) Office of the Under Secretary of Defense Comptroller PB President’s Budget RDT&E Research, Development, Testing and Evaluation RFP Request for Proposal UI User Interface XML Extensible Markup Language XSD XML Schema Definition XSLT Extensible Stylesheet Language Transformations