Inactive Total Small Business Set-Aside (FAR 19.5)

SOURCES SOUGHT NOTICE DIGITIZE FILES VETERANS BENEFITS ADMINISTRATION VA REGIONAL OFFICE PROVIDENCE, RI 02903 Introduction: In accordance with Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) 52.215-3, Request fo... SOURCES SOUGHT NOTICE DIGITIZE FILES VETERANS BENEFITS ADMINISTRATION VA REGIONAL OFFICE PROVIDENCE, RI 02903 Introduction: In accordance with Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) 52.215-3, Request for Information or Solicitation for Planning Purposes This Sources Sought/Request for Information (SS/RFI) is for information and planning purposes only at this time and shall not be construed as a solicitation or as an obligation on the part of the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), Veterans Benefits Administration (VBA). Although "proposal" and/or "Offeror" may be used in this SS/RFI, any response will be treated as information only. Requirements: Please see attached draft Statement of Work (SOW). Submittal Information: Contractors having the skills and capabilities necessary to perform the stated requirements should submit a single spaced, 12-point font minimum, response to the information identified in the Sources Sought Notice. Please also submit a cover page which includes, at a minimum, the company s name, address, Dunn & Bradstreet (DUNS) number, General Service Administration (GSA) contract number (if applicable), point-of-contact name, phone number, and e-mail address. Companies shall provide clear and unambiguous evidence to substantiate their capability to fulfill the requirements outlined in this Sources Sought Notice. Please provide Company business size and status - (i.e., Large Business, Small Business, Service-Disabled Veteran Owned Small Business, Veteran Owned Small Business, Women-Owned Small Business, etc.) Any affiliate information (parent company, joint venture partners, potential teaming partners, and VA Mentor Protégé Program membership status), as well as the number of years in business should also be provided. It is requested that the above information be provided no later than Tuesday, February 12, 2019, 8:00AM EST. Responses should be emailed to Kimberly Tomasi at kimberly.tomasi@va.gov. All Email Correspondence for this project must reference the Sources Sought Number AND Project Title in the subject line of the email. Example: 36C10E19Q0079 DIGITIZE FILES VBA - VA REGIONAL OFFICE PROVIDENCE. No phone calls will be accepted. RESULTS INFORMATION: Sources Sought responses will not be returned; neither will Respondents be notified of the Government's evaluation of the information received. The Government may incorporate into the final version of the SOW any information or comment resulting from this request that is determined to be useful. Respondents are advised that the Government is under no obligation to acknowledge receipt of the information received or provide feedback to respondents with respect to any information submitted under this Sources Sought. DISCLAIMER: This Sources Sought Notice is issued solely for information and planning purposes only and does not constitute a solicitation. All information received in response to this Sources Sought that is marked as proprietary will be handled accordingly. Responses to this notice are not offers and cannot be accepted by the Government to form a binding contract. Responders are solely responsible for all expenses associated with responding to this Sources Sought Notice. Primary Point of Contact: Kimberly Tomasi, VBA Contracting Officer Services Team Email: kimberly.tomasi@va.gov STATEMENT OF WORK DIGITIZE FILES I. INTRODUCTION/BACKGROUND: Claims for post-traumatic stress disorder and other mental health claims due to traumatic events in military service are a large subset of Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) disability claims filed each year. While the VA has relaxed its documentation requirements for post-traumatic stress disorder, other mental health claims still require verification that the stressful event likely took place. Verifying these stressors has traditionally been a long, drawn out process requiring inquiries to the Joint Service Records Research Center (JSRRC), which can take up to 60 days. This process has recently been significantly improved by the development of the Official Military Activities Report (OMAR), a Tableau Dashboard that maps hundreds of thousands of combat events in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Dashboard allows users to filter thousands of combat events by time, location, and type of event to identify the combat events needed to verify non-PTSD mental health claims in a matter of minutes. The goal of this proposal is to digitize similar data from the Vietnam era to facilitate the processing of health claims by the VA. While data on a wide variety of combat events have been declassified and are available in text-format through the National Archives, these files cannot currently be used by the OMAR Dashboard or similar systems. The project will digitize these extant files to produce usable files (i.e. Excel format) to be linked to the OMAR Dashboard or similar systems. The deliverable will include, at the least, information on the time, location, and type of event for fourteen different types of records listed in Section IV. I. LIST OF RECORDS TO BE DIGITIZED: The following is the list of the records to be digitized from the following National Archives and Records Administration website: https://www.archives.gov/research/military/vietnam-war/electronic-data-files.html . Items marked with a star (*) are administrative files on the location of enemy bases and allied battalions. All other files contain combat operations. INCDA TIRSA KHMER VCIIA TIRS SITRA BASFA* SEAFA* VNDBA GORS HOSTA CONGA FO SYSTEM DATA FILES VC SYSTEM DATA FILES II. TECHNICAL REQUIREMENTS: The following tasks will be performed to meet the objectives listed above. Convert each of the fourteen record types from text-format to Excel format. Clean the extracted files to ensure that their content is usable (include headers, remove problematic unicode text, enforce uniformity in formatting within columns and across files). Extract relevant information (time, location, and type of event) from each of the twelve combat incident files into a single master Excel sheet to replicate the SIGACTs data available for Iraq and Afghanistan. Extract relevant information (time, location, and base or military unit) from each of the two administrative files into separate Excel sheets. Write documentation for each file to indicate the formatting and column contents. Deliver one master file, two administrative files, and three documentation files to VA. All steps in the conversion process will be fully documented and replicable. The project performer will keep the scripts needed to transform the original records into the final output. III. TIMELINE AND DELIVERABLES The proposed work will be completed within 30 days of the project start. The deliverables are: A master file with the time, location, and type of event Two administrative files with time, location, and base or military unit Three documentation files describing the composition of the files mentioned above IV. MONITORING AND COMMUNICATION: The project performer and VA shall maintain email communication about the project progress and technical requirements. After digitizing the first set of records (INCDA), the project performer will send this subset of the master file to VA to verify that the file has been digitized in a way that is usable by the VA team.