Inactive 8(a) Set-Aside (FAR 19.8)

November 5, 2021 UPDATE (Amendment 004): Amendment 004 is issued for the following reasons: 1. To provide responses to questions relevant to Stage 2 of this solicitation (attached). 2. To provide amen... November 5, 2021 UPDATE (Amendment 004): Amendment 004 is issued for the following reasons: 1. To provide responses to questions relevant to Stage 2 of this solicitation (attached). 2. To provide amended RFP package documents to align with responses to questions received and/or to provide further clarity to existing requirements. The following documents have been amended are are subsequently attached: - 19AQMM21R0302-A004 - Attachment 3, Labor Categories and Position Descriptions - Attachment 8, Instructions to Offerors & Advisory Down-Select Process The Stage 2 proposal due date remains unchanged (2pm EST Monday, November 15, 2021). October 25, 2021 UPDATE (Amendment 003): Amendment 003 is issued for the following reasons: 1. to notify offerors that Stage 2 advisory notices have been provided; 2. to extend the due date for Stage 2 questions to Noon EDT Friday, October 29, 2021; and 3. add FAR 52.223-99 Ensuring Adequate COVID-19 Safety Protocols for Federal Contractors (OCT 2021) (DEVIATION). The Stage 2 proposal due date is extended to 2pm EST Monday, November 15, 2021. September 3, 2021 UPDATE (Amendment 002): Amendment 002 is issued for the following reasons: 1. To provide responses to questions submitted (attached). 2. To provide updated RFP package documents to align with responses to questions received and/or to provide further clarity to existing requirements. The following documents have been amended: - 19AQMM21R0302-A002 - Attachment 5, Past Performance Questionnaire - Attachment 7, Pricing Template - Attachment 8, Instructions to Offerors & Advisory Down-Select Process - Attachment 9, Evaluation Procedures & Evaluation Factors for Award As a result in the delay in providing responses to questions and associated updates, the Stage 1 proposal due date is extended to 14 September 2021, 2pm EDT. September 1, 2021 UPDATE (Amendment 001): While the Government performs its due diligence to answer all questions submitted by the provided deadline, the Stage 1 Proposal (to include the submission of past performance questionnaires directly from offeror customers) due date is extended to Monday September 13th at 2PM EDT. Should posting of an amended RFP package, to include responses to questions, be further delayed the Government may consider providing an additional due date extension for Stage 1 Proposals. The following documents are attached and comprise the total RFP package for this requirement: - RFP 19AQMM21R0302 - RFP Attachment 1: Application Tracker - RFP Attachment 2: Platform Technology Tracker - RFP Attachment 3: Labor Categories and Position Descriptions - RFP Attachment 4: ECA DIN Infrastructure Diagram - RFP Attachment 5: Past Performance Questionnaire (to be submitted by clients directly to the government) - RFP Attachment 6: Employee Tenure and Retention Table - RFP Attachment 7: ECA/EX/IT Pricing Template (to be submitted with Price Proposal) - RFP Attachment 8: Instructions to Offerors and Advisory Down-Select Process - RFP Attachment 9: Evaluation Procedures and Factors for Award - RFP Attachment 10: Bidders DD-254 Prospective offerors should submit any questions regarding this solicitation in writing to the Contracting Officer and Contract Specialist. Questions MUST be received by 3pm EDT August 24, 2021. Questions received after that date may not be answered prior to the date established for the receipt of proposals. In order to streamline the receipt and review of questions, the subject line of the email submission must read, "Question(s) re: RFP 19AQMM21R0302". Questions must be emailed to the Points of Contact listed in this Posting (also listed in Section L-006 of the RFP).

Inactive 8(a) Set-Aside (FAR 19.8)

IAW FAR 5.205(f), this acquisition is being offered for competition limited to eligible 8(a) participants. Eligibility to participate in this competition may be restricted to 8(a) participants in eith... IAW FAR 5.205(f), this acquisition is being offered for competition limited to eligible 8(a) participants. Eligibility to participate in this competition may be restricted to 8(a) participants in either the developmental stage or the developmental and transitional stages (see Go/No-Go critieria). The following represents the general requirements as reflected in the government's Performance Work Statement. A complete solicitation (SF1449) and relevant attachments will be released on/about August 20, 2021. 1.0 BACKGROUND AND VISION Pursuant to the mandate of the Mutual Educational and Cultural Exchange Act of 1961, the mission of the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs (ECA) within the U.S. Department of State (DoS) is to build friendly, peaceful relations and increase mutual understanding between the people of the United States and the people of other countries by means of educational and cultural exchanges. ECA works to accomplish this mission through academic, cultural, athletic, and professional exchanges, as well as public-private partnerships. ECA is comprised of five functional offices that work together in support of the goals and mission of the Assistant Secretary of State (A/S) for ECA. Each of these, as well as the A/S, require contractor services on an ongoing basis. The separate offices are as follows: Office of Public Affairs and Strategic Communications (PASC): PASC coordinates with bureaus throughout the Department, the White House, other U.S. Government agencies, and grantee and implementing partner organizations to coordinate strategic communication and continuity of message to domestic and international audiences. It has oversight of outreach efforts that include speaking engagements, media, social media, video, and website, and coordinates with all ECA offices to liaise with stakeholder audiences and manage public outreach. Policy: The Policy Unit serves as ECA’s own empowered think tank, aligning ECA programs to foreign policy and providing information and analysis on exchange programs in each geographic region. The Unit advises on the foreign policy direction of bureau programming from a whole-of-bureau perspective, provides coordination across ECA and the rest of the Department, develops options that guide ECA’s response to big-picture questions, and creates products and tools that help ECA more effectively operate. The Unit also develops the Functional Bureau Strategy and oversees its implementation. In addition, it assembles ECA Country Profiles with information about ECA programming in each country. Academic Programs: The Academic Programs Directorate is the primary State Department sponsors of academic exchanges and oversees all academic programs supported by ECA. It is comprised of three offices: Office of Academic Exchange Programs, Office of Global Educational Programs (inclusive of an Education USA Branch, Study Abroad Branch, and Teacher Exchange Branch), and the Office of English Language Programs. Professional and Cultural Exchanges: Professional and Cultural Exchanges is divided into two offices: Office of International Visitors: and Office of Citizen Exchanges. These offices conduct a broad range of people-to-people exchanges in support of U.S. foreign policy priorities and reach out to professionals in the government, non-profit, and private sectors; high school students; representatives from the cultural and sports communities; women and religious leaders; and disenfranchised and underserved audiences. Private Sector Exchange: The Office of Private Sector Exchange designates, monitors and partners with U.S. organizations to administer the Exchange Visitor Program, including government agencies, academic institutions, educational and cultural organizations, and corporations. The EVP brings over 300,000 foreign citizens to the United States from over 200 countries and territories annually. The Exchange Visitor Program consists of 15 categories of programs, which includes over 1,400 sponsors. ECA’s IT organization (EX/IT) is seeking support for its IT TRANSFORMATION AND OPERATIONS SERVICES requirements. EX/IT provides strategic IT services and IT operational support to over 1,000 end users across the Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs agency, which includes ECA, GEC, and R/PPR within the R Family. To better support this large and growing user base, EX/IT is implementing a significant organizational restructuring, along with an IT transformation and modernization effort to implement new technologies, processes and best practices to enhance delivery of IT services across the Public Diplomacy organization. These complex requirements are anticipated to require significant support resources, potentially in excess of 50 FTE, across numerous functional disciplines and technologies. The scope of this acquisition includes services to support implementation of the EX/IT strategic organizational transformation, including establishing fundamentally new capabilities and business practices, while effectively maintaining ongoing operations during the transition to the planned future state. The selected Contractor shall provide the necessary personnel, expertise, strategic guidance, management structure, and the processes, tools, and services required to satisfy these requirements. EX/IT Vision EX/IT’s vision is to be regarded as a strategic IT partner that delivers high-quality, innovative solutions that empower customers to make informed, accurate, data-driven decisions to advance the Public Diplomacy (PD) mission. The challenges of the current state include reactive rather than proactive customer engagement, overly complex and fragmented processes, and dated infrastructure and technology. To alleviate these pain points and achieve its desired future state, EX/IT is aggressively modernizing and simplifying its organization and services to re-orient itself as a proactive, strategic, and efficient partner to R Family customers. This transformation involves substantive changes to all existing functional areas, as well as the development and implementation of some entirely new functional areas as described below. Functional Areas Overview The new EX/IT organizational structure is comprised of the following six (6) functional areas: (A) Customer Engagement: The Customer Engagement functional area is central to the overall ECA EX/IT vision of becoming a customer-centric, “one-stop shop” for IT solutions and support that strategically partners with customers to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of their operations through innovative IT solutions. With proactive customer engagement, a well-structured portfolio, and a defined service catalog, customers will have improved access to critical data and business intelligence and IT-enabled business processes to effectively advance the Public Diplomacy (PD) mission. This shift represents a significant transformation in the approach to identification and delivery of the solutions and support required by customers. Customer service approaches that previously differed across customer groups and functional silos will be standardized and integrated, reducing cost and complexity. A deliberate focus on proactively engaging and partnering with customers to jointly identify and develop solutions of value will be implemented to boost collaboration and foster innovation. (B) Data & Analytics: As part of the overall vision to become a more proactive and strategic partner in supporting customer missions, EX/IT is establishing an entirely new functional area dedicated to improved management and curation of data assets across ECA. The targeted end state is a structured and holistic approach to better leverage ECA data assets and create a more robust overall framework for data analytics and knowledge management. Once established, this fundamentally new service will enable EX/IT to respond more quickly and effectively to ever-growing customer requests for data reporting as well as provide data-driven decision support. Over time, EX/IT will develop and deploy improved customer interfaces to provide self-service data reporting and analytics capability through a data-as-a-service operating model to further empower customers to access and use their data more strategically and securely. (C) Solutions: The Solutions functional area partners with ECA customers to build and enhance innovative solutions and applications and integrate them with enterprise systems, to enable data-driven decisions, and optimize workflows. Historically, ECA’s broad range of applications have been developed and deployed largely on-premises rather than leveraging the efficiencies of the cloud. Going forward, EX/IT is planning and executing a full transition to the cloud, consolidating and modernizing applications and technology, and employing Agile methodology, Continuous Integration/Continuous Delivery (CI/CD), and DevSecOps in all solutions and application development. These changes will simultaneously improve efficiency, reduce cost, ensure a proactive approach to engaging customers in the creation of innovative solutions, and improve security that is aligned with the NIST’s Risk Management Framework (NSIT-RMF). (D) Platforms: Innovation, modernization, and stability are now paramount to the Platforms functional area as customers rely on EX/IT to succeed in a largely remote work environment, with expanding mobile device usage and increased requirements for reliable remote access to DOS data and systems. Historically, reactive operations and complex, over-engineered Dedicated Internet Network (DIN) infrastructure resulted in inconsistent customer experiences. The transformation of the Platforms functional area will achieve consistent customer satisfaction by providing robust, stable infrastructure and enhancing situational awareness through proactive monitoring. Modernizing equipment and reducing the complexity of processes will also simultaneously increase the efficiency and decrease the operating costs of DIN infrastructure through deployment of a newly consolidated AWS cloud platform. Additional efficiencies will be gained through the implementation of a fee-for-service subscriber model with an optimized footprint. Platforms will rely on the Customer Engagement functional area to provide a “one-stop-shop” for customer support requests and refer appropriate customer inquiries to Platforms personnel to leverage their expertise where appropriate. (E) Security: The new Security functional area represents a shift from EX/IT’s previous compliance-focused approach to a much more proactive and holistic approach to embed security best practices into all aspects of development, deployment and operations to meaningfully improve security and safety. This new area is critical to providing a safe, secure framework to develop efficient and innovative IT solutions which enable ECA customers to fulfill their Public Diplomacy (PD) mission. Once fully stood up, the Security functional area will implement and manage both long and short-term cyber, data/information, and overall IT security programs and provide automated, continuous security monitoring. (F) Governance: The new Governance functional area is foundational to EX/IT achieving its strategic vision to develop efficient and innovative IT solutions. It leads and provides the thought leadership for the shifts to agile/Scrum methodology, DevSecOps, increased security monitoring and planning, and risk management and mitigation strategies. The various positions within the Governance functional area will collectively oversee and perform the full range of IT governance functions for EX/IT operations, focusing on the planning and analysis of IT projects, programs, and services, as well as strategically aligning the goals of EX/IT with the broader Public Diplomacy mission. The changes in the EX/IT Governance functional area reflect the evolving need to deliver guidance on ECA’s compliance with laws, policies, and regulations impacting its IT operations. Consistent with the new emphasis on customer engagement throughout EX/IT, the Governance functional area will consult with ECA customers to identify and specify governance requirements, as well as develop plans, reports, and metrics in keeping with the overall goals and objectives of ECA and the Department of State. With the emphasis on developing a robust cybersecurity framework with mitigated risks and vulnerabilities, the Governance functional area will work closely with Security to focus on addressing cybersecurity architecture, requirements, objectives, and policies. 2.0 STATEMENT OF NEED To transform EX/IT operations for each functional area to align with the vision described above, as well as to function successfully in the new future state, ECA’s IT Transformation and Operations Services requirements for a contractor to provide a broad range of IT services are summarized as follows: The contractor shall provide a Program/Project manager to oversee contractor support services in the six EX/IT functional areas: Customer Engagement Data & Analytics Solutions Platforms Security Governance EX/IT seeks to competitively award a single new 5-year IDIQ contract as an 8(a) set-aside IDIQ to obtain fully compliant, best-in-breed solutions for meeting the full scope of ECA EX/IT transformation and operations services requirements and to fulfill project-based emergent requirements in a highly flexible, responsive, and effective manner. This IDIQ will include a Base Year and four (4) Option Years, for a total of five years. Issuance of both Time and Material (T&M) / Labor Hour (LH) and Firm Fixed Price (FFP) orders is contemplated, with the preference being for FFP whenever possible. The government will follow a 3 part process to evaluate proposals and select the best value offer, based on tradeoff procedures. The following is a high-level overview of the factors being evaluated, as well as the advisory down-select process (complete details to be provided with formal RFP package): 1. Pre-Screening - upon submission of proposals by the identified due date the government will validate the following based on contents of the Stage 1 proposals: Offerors shall possess, and provide proof of, a valid SECRET Facility Clearance or higher at the time of proposal submission. Offerors shall certify their ability to submit all key personnel cleared at the Secret level for reciprocity on Day 1. Offerors shall be certified at the CMMI Development – Level 3 or higher and the CMMI Service – Level 3 or higher (both). Proof must be provided with Phase 1 submission. Offerors shall be ISO 9001 certified and provide proof of such certification with their Phase 1 submission. Offerors shall possess AWS Consulting Partner Network Select (Standard) or higher and provide proof of this with their Phase 1 submission. Offeror’s unable to substantiate meeting all GO/NO-GO criteria will not receive further consideration and their Stage I response will not be evaluated. 2. Stage 1 Non-Price Evaluation Factors (listed in descending order of importance): Factor 1: Technical Work Product: Data Analytics & Visualization Factor 2: Technical Work Product: IT Modernization Factor 3: Past Performance Advisory Down-Selection Notice: After its assessment of required Stage I submissions is complete, the Government will issue an Advisory Notification between the two stages. Notwithstanding the advice provided by the Government in response to the Stage I submissions, all offerors who participated in Stage I may participate in Stage II, if they meet all required initial screening GO/NO-GO qualifications and have submitted a complete and fully responsive proposal for Stage I. 3. Stage 2 Non-Price and Price Evaluation Factors (listed in descending order of importance): Factor 4: Technical Approach, Agile Development Management Plan (ADMP) & Q&A Factor 5: Staffing Plan and Key Personnel Resumes Factor 6: Program Management Plans (Transition, Communications, Quality) Factor 7: Pricing Volume (evaluated separately) All Non-Price factors will be evaluated using Confidence Ratings (High, Moderate, and Low). The relative order of importance of all non-price factors, regardless of Stage, are as follows: Factor 1: Technical Work Product: Data Analytics & Visualization Factor 2: Technical Work Product: IT Modernization Factor 4: Technical Approach, Agile Development Management Plan (ADMP) & Q&A Factor 3: Past Performance Factor 5: Staffing Plan and Key Personnel Resumes Factor 6: Program Management Plans (Transition, Communications, Quality) These non-price factors, when combined, are significantly more important than price. A complete RFP package for a commercial IDIQ competition will be released in short order, as described above. Questions regarding this presolicitation notice or the follow-on solicitation may be directed to the contacts listed in this notice.