Inactive

Amendment 01 (03 July 2024) - Updated the ASSIST registration link and added the ASSIST Help Desk phone number and email to the registration paragraph in the attachment: 47QFAA24R0004_T10_08a Solicita... Amendment 01 (03 July 2024) - Updated the ASSIST registration link and added the ASSIST Help Desk phone number and email to the registration paragraph in the attachment: 47QFAA24R0004_T10_08a Solicitation_RFP_2024-07-03. Amendment 02 (12 July 2024) - Provided Questions and Answers; due to some questions the following have been updated: Updated Section L to reflect page limitations per Volume (Volume 1 - 20 pages, Volume 2 - 20 pages, Volume 3 - 30 pages), Updated Key Personnel information on page 35 of the Solicitation in Section H.1 and in Attachment 4, Updated Attachment 6, Tab 1 to add an additional space for the 4th submission of Prior Experience. Extended the solicitation due date to 7/19/2024. Amendment 03 (16 July 2024) - Updated to allow for submission of a Compensation Plan in Volume 2 - Pricing, separate from the page limitation; updated proposal submission from submission in GSA ASSIST to submission via email to the Contracting Officer and Contract Specialist C.1 Introduction The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC) is a federal corporation established under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) of 1974, as amended. It guarantees payment of basic pension benefits earned by over 33,000,000 of America’s workers and retirees participating in more than 25,000 private- sector defined benefit pension plans. The Single-Employer Program protects about 22,300,000 workers and retirees in about 23,800 pension plans. The Multiemployer Program protects about 11,200,000 workers and retirees in about 1,360 pension plans. By law, the two programs are financially and operationally separate. Operations are financed by insurance premiums set by Congress and paid by sponsors of defined benefit plans, investment income, assets from pension plans trusteed by PBGC, and recoveries from the companies formerly responsible for the plans. For additional information about PBGC, visit www.pbgc.gov. The American Rescue Plan (ARP) Act of 2021 — a historic law passed by Congress and signed by President Biden on March 11, 2021 — established the Special Financial Assistance (SFA) Program for certain financially troubled multiemployer pension plans. The SFA payments are derived from appropriated funds and financed by general revenues of the U.S. Department of the Treasury (Treasury) Office of Management and Administration (OMA): The mission of the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation’s (PBGC) Office of Management and Administration (OMA) is to plan and direct the efficiency and effectiveness of the PBGC’s management and administrative policies and programs, including strategic planning, customer service, budget, procurement, human resources, quality management, and facilities services. The OMA includes five departments: the Budget Department, the Human Resources Department, the Procurement Department, the Quality Management Department, and the Workplace Solutions Department. The Budget Department is responsible for managing and coordinating the formulation and execution of PBGC’s budget, ensuring that the Agency’s budget is executed within the resources provided, managing the allocation and reallocation of resources, including full time equivalent work years (FTE), leading and overseeing the planning and cross departmental coordination that helps support the changes in workload resulting from pension plan terminations, expanded multiemployer plan assistance, increased requests for standard terminations, and corporate efforts to prevent plan terminations or other requirements. PBGC seeks to obtain contractor support with expertise interfacing with existing Federal software systems. Preference for contractor support who has experience with at least one of the following interfaces: Federal Financial Management Systems (e.g., Oracle’s e-Business Suite Federal Financials), Federal Acquisition Management Systems (e.g., Unison’s PRISM), Federal Shared Services Human Resources (HR) Systems (e.g., Department of the Interior HR System. The contractor will be responsible for working with the Budget Department (BD) customer area located in the Office of Management and Administration (OMA). The Budget Department is responsible for managing and coordinating the formulation and execution of PBGC’s budget, ensuring that the Agency’s budget is executed within the resources provided, managing the allocation and reallocation of resources, including full time equivalent (FTE) work years, leading and overseeing the planning and cross departmental coordination that helps support the changes in workload resulting from pension plan terminations, expanded multiemployer plan assistance, increased requests for standard terminations, and corporate efforts to prevent plan terminations or other requirements. The contractor will be responsible for working with the Business Innovation Services Department (BISD) in the Office of Information Technology (OIT). BISD provides IT program, project, and contract management for all PBGC’s business systems and ensures IT programs and projects are managed with best practices and disciplined approaches. One of the four divisions in BISD is Corporate Management Services Division (CMSD) and this contract will be managed by BISD/CMSD Contracting Officer’s Representative (COR). The contractor will be responsible for working with three other departments in OIT and the Financial Management Services Division (FMSD) for integration with financial systems. The Program Management Innovation Division (PMID) enables the four services divisions with standardized processes, methodologies, tools, approaches in Agile, Program Management and Project/Product Management. Business Innovation Services Department (BISD) focuses on providing IT program, project, and contract management for all PBGC’s business systems and ensures IT programs and projects are managed with best practices and disciplined approaches. IT program managers also serve as division managers of BISD’s four service delivery divisions: Financial Management Services Division (FMSD), Participant Management Services Division (PMSD), Corporate Management Services Division (CMSD), and Shared Business Services Division (SBSD). The Program Management Innovation Division (PMID) enables the four services divisions with standardized processes, methodologies, tools, approaches in Agile, Program Management and Project/Product Management. This contract will be managed by BISD/CMSD. Office of Information Technology (OIT): The mission of the Office of Information Technology (OIT), led by the Chief Information Officer, is to provide Information Technology (IT) leadership that advances the PBGC mission, improves management effectiveness, and delivers superior results to the Corporation employees and U.S. citizens. OIT accomplishes its mission through its four major offices: Enterprise Cybersecurity Division (ECD) focuses on Cybersecurity policy and oversight in partnership with the Privacy Office. Enterprise Governance Department (EGD) establishes the CIO’s governance functions such as the IT Strategic Plan, Enterprise Architecture and IT Capital Planning programs and leads governance boards such as the IT Portfolio Review Board and Technical Review Board. IT Infrastructure Operations Department (ITIOD) focuses on providing common office productivity tools for the Corporation, such as desktops, laptops, mobile devices, Office 365, database platforms, QA/test environments, development tools, production environments, COOP, security operations, network services, etc. C.2 Budget Department Management System (BDMS) The Business Needs Analysis (BNA) identified a technology recommendation: Implement a purpose built, enterprise budget formulation solution that supports real-time budget figure updates across a collaborative, secure environment. OMA and OIT jointly established the below strategic drivers and improved business outcomes to be achieved with the implementation of BDMS OneStream Solution: In accordance with the CIO’s vision, technology implementation is most successful when it is a part of the People, Process, and Technology (PPT) framework. PBGC envisions utilizing OneStream’s out-of-the-box capabilities and configurations to the maximum extent possible. Any customization or configuration of code must be carefully evaluated for downstream maintenance/upgrade impacts. The approach of embracing out-of-the-box functionality forces current PBGC processes and practices to be changed to adapt to the technology used. The intent of data integrity is to ensure that data is recorded exactly as it was intended and upon retrieval, the data is the same as it was originally entered. Data integrity ensures data accuracy and consistency across the entire acquisition lifecycle and is a critical aspect of any procurement system. Maintaining data integrity relies on the ability to work within system constraints, including maintaining the accuracy of the information, training users on proper data entry, and embedding data validation rules throughout the system. BDMS: The Budget Department, Budget Liaison Officers (BLOs), and Department Directors across the agency use the Budget Department Management System (BDMS) for formulating, approving, and overall management of the budget process. BDMS is a cloud-hosted application based on the OneStream software platform and is used for the budget formulation process and projecting personnel compensation and benefit (PC&B) costs for employees. The initial Production release of BDMS was implemented in December 2021, with a second major release of People Planner PC&B in December 2022. The target state of the application will also include all budget execution related processes, support of the Master Staffing List (MSL), and robust reporting on all system data. The BDMS contractor is expected to adhere to the IT Solution Life Cycle Management (ITSLCM) including the control gates - the Change Advisory Board (CAB) that reviews and approves all changes to the infrastructure and the Technical Review Board (TRB) that governs technical and products standards and approves solution designs for compliance to those standards. C.3 Scope Specific services, responsibilities, and details will be outlined in BDMS task orders. The sections below provide a high-level overview and description of the work. Agile at PBGC: BISD has successfully adopted a modified Agile SCRUM approach and envisions that PBGC’s Contractor partner will conduct change management activities to acclimate PBGC’s business area stakeholder, the Budget Department , with the Contractor’s proposed Agile approach leveraging BISD’s guiding principles of people, process, and technology. A company-level Agile certification is not required. People: A project’s success begins with a tight partnership between BISD’s IT Product Manager, business-area Product Owner, and Contractor Product Manager & ScrumMaster enabled by the Contractor team. Additionally, the Contractor’s Project Manager (PM) and corporate executives will function with the Federal IT and System Owner’s Project/Product team. This three-way partnership (business, BISD and Contractor) will lead to successful implementation and overall management of IT systems. PBGC’s Federal Product Owners and Product Managers are typically Scrum Alliance Certified, and PBGC’s Federal Product Managers are also PMI® PMP certified. Process: PBGC successfully adopted a modified Agile SCRUM approach for major modernization projects. Unlike traditional SCRUM and continuous integration practices, finished work from each sprint is queued up with that of other sprints as part of a Release Train. Once all the sprints in the Release Train have been completed and undergone thorough User Acceptance Testing, the Release Train can then be pushed to PBGC’s Production environment. PBGC recognizes that Agile neither reduces/eliminates robust and proven PMI® Project Management disciplines and practices nor reduces/eliminates sound systems engineering documentation. All system engineering efforts must comply with PBGC’s IT Solutions Life Cycle Management (ITSLCM) framework which provides the overarching framework for implementing IT at PBGC. PBGC’s ITSLCM is included in PBGC Directive IM-05-07 which provides the policies, roles, and responsibilities for IT practitioners. The IT Management Directive is a part of this contract and Task Order and is available on www.pbgc.gov https://www.pbgc.gov/about/procurement. Although the journey to and tools used for sound systems engineering documentation (e.g., Requirements Document, Design Document) may be quite different on an Agile project than a traditional waterfall project, the rigor and philosophy behind them (e.g., traceability, data modeling) remain the same and necessary artifacts must be delivered in compliance with the ITSLCM, and other PBGC guidelines. Given the Agile approach, the Contractor must work with the IT Product Manager and Business Product Owner and key stakeholders to map Agile artifacts with ITSLCM deliverables and utilize PBGC- provided DevOps tools. For example, in Agile, the design document may be incrementally built but ultimately must provide enough detail to demonstrate how user stories/requirements were translated into functionality and supported by the technical implementation. A copy of the ITSLCM Framework and Handbook are provided in Attachment 11 – IT Solutions Life Cycle Management (ITSLCM) Framework and Attachment 10 – ITSLCM Handbook. Technology: Program, Project and Portfolio Management (P3M), PBGC’s Microsoft Project Online and SharePoint IT solution utilized by the IT project management community, complemented with PBGC’s DevOps tool chain as illustrated in the diagram below (Microsoft on-prem DevOps Server 2020). All the Sprints and artifacts shall be developed and managed in the DevOps Tool. Integrated Project Team (IPT): PBGC has a larger IPT as illustrated in Figure 1: People Diagram that includes the Information System Security Privacy Officer (ISSPO), Information System Security Manager (ISSM), Infrastructure Security Representative, Privacy Officer, Enterprise Architect (EA), and Infrastructure Representative. This IPT is led by the Federal IT Product Manager, Contractor Product Manager, and Business Product Owner. The larger IPT must meet regularly, to ensure that PBGC technical requirements are met and to identify and mitigate any risks or issues. Agile procedures must be followed in maintaining backlogs, planning sprints, standup meetings, showing demos, retrospective meetings. During key design decision-making time, EA, Security, Infrastructure and other key stakeholders need to review and give feedback to the design. Applications must be developed using standard PBGC approved EA standards, and the team must coordinate with the project Product Manager to get Technical Reference Model (TRM) approval before using the proposed design. As BDMS may eventually have multiple integration points with systems internal and external to PBGC, additional members to the IPT must be included as impacted. This extended IPT will be notified of any changes and collaboration conducted to ensure release work can be completed successfully. The Contractor shall propose the most effective means of communication between the Agile project team and the systems IPT, as well as the frequency of updates. A part of the IPT, but not illustrated in Figure 1: People Diagram, is the GSA Contracting and Project Management team via the GSA Contracting Officer, GSA Contract Specialist, and the GSA Acquisition Project Manager whose role is to provide contract and project management support to all stakeholders at the IDIQ and task order levels. Agile Product Team (APT): As an Agile project, the Contractor shall propose an Agile Product Team structure with associated roles for management of the project, and clearly identify the responsibilities for those players. This shall be inclusive of any stakeholders (generally included in system IPTs) required to participate in sprint reviews, backlog refinement, retrospectives or any other Agile activities in the proposed Agile methodology. In addition, an IPT will be established to coordinate system operations and changes. The Contractor shall be an active member and coordinator of the project IPT and facilitate monthly IPT meetings for project updates. The IPT is composed of members from the Agile team, related system project teams, BD, Infrastructure, Enterprise Architecture, Enterprise Information Security Office, other interfacing project teams, and PBGC functional staff and users as required. The Contractor shall work with the Product Owner in sprint planning and prioritizing the backlogs and shall map backlogs to Features and Epics, and then organize these into Release Trains and Production Releases. The Contractor shall bring visibility to the customer(s) through the project cycle and get early feedback from users, allowing the team to adjust to meet the business needs. The Contractor shall use resources as a cross functional team, provide an environment where they are able to mentor one another and focus on the same end goal, delivering a high-quality solution to the PBGC. Internal (e.g., CFS) and External Interfaces/Integration A collaborative environment shall be maintained across PBGC contractor teams, including technical teams and business partners, to exchange information, solicit agreement on system-related decisions, developing and testing integration with other systems, and following all security and enterprise architecture guidelines to ensure a seamless, full-service solution to PBGC.