A -- BROAD AGENCY ANNOUNCEMENT (BAA) DOD COUNTERINTELLIGENCE FIELD ACTIVITY BEHAVIORAL SCIENCE DIRECTORATE

BROAD AGENCY ANNOUNCEMENTDEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE COUNTERINTELLIGENCE FIELD ACTIVITY BEHAVIORAL SCIENCE DIRECTORATE APPLIED BEHAVIORAL AND SOCIAL SCIENCE I. INTRODUCTION The Department of Defense Counterintelligence Field Activity (CIFA) Behavioral Science Directorate solicits new proposals for its 4th Qtr fiscal year 2007 and FY 2008 contract program of applied research in behavioral and social science. This Broad Agency Announcement (BAA) is issued per FAR 35.106. A formal Request for Proposal will not be issued. The CIFA contracting officer will not issue paper copies of this announcement. CIFA reserves the right to select for award and to fund all, some, or none of the full proposals received in response to this solicitation. No funding for direct reimbursement of proposal development costs will be allowed. Technical and cost proposals, or any other material, submitted in response to this BAA will not be returned. CIFA will adhere to FAR policy on handling source selection information and proprietary proposals. It is the policy of CIFA to treat all proposals as sensitive competitive information, and to disclose their contents only for the purpose of evaluation. Awards, if any, will take the form of contracts. In the event an offeror is a Federally Funded Research and Development Center (FFRDC), Department of Energy National Laboratory, or other Federally funded entity, the CIFA contracting officer will work with the appropriate sponsoring agency to issue an interagency agreement pursuant to the Economy Act (31 U.S.C. 1531) or other appropriate authority. II. OVERVIEW The purpose of the research is (1) to develop, test and evaluate the application (translation) of known principles and findings of the behavioral and social sciences to enhancing capabilities relevant to current and future intelligence, counter-intelligence, and human intelligence collection; and (2) to understand threats to national security in terms of the principles and methods of the social and behavioral sciences. A portion of the funding may be made available for meritorious proposals from minority institutions and historically Black colleges and universities, and these entities are encouraged to participate. No consideration can be given to purely fundamental (basic) research projects (e.g., mechanisms of memory, affect or performance). However, support will be given to projects that have both basic and applied components; for example, where investigations in laboratory settings help us to understand specific complexities in the field, or where basic and applied approaches are directed concurrently at the same problem. Each proposal will be evaluated by a government technical team in accordance with the criteria established herein. Those proposals determined to be responsive to the BAA, receive high technical ratings and are identified as complementing current research in service to ongoing CIFA operations will be given priority for funding. Proposals that are responsive and receive high technical ratings may also be funded but will generally be given a lower priority. CIFA Behavioral Sciences Directorate The Mission of the Behavioral Science Directorate is collaboration with DoD CI customers, stakeholders, and a broad range of behavioral scientists to produce high caliber behavioral and social science consultation services, training, and research and analytic products, that uniquely improve the quality of counterintelligence (CI) operations, investigations, and analyses. The research component of the Behavioral Sciences Directorate of CIFA supports research projects conducted in the private (industry and academic) sector in support of investigations, consultations, teaching and training relevant to the CIFA Mission. This research is primarily focused on: (i) developing and evaluating reliable, valid, behavior-based methods of evidence and human intelligence sources ssessment; (ii) developing and evaluating methods for understanding terrorist groups and their relationships to populations of interest; and (iii) methods for the translation principles and models in the social and behavioral sciences developed in laboratory settings to field and operational settings. III. BAA RESEARCH AREAS OF INTEREST CIFAs areas of interest for this Broad Agency Announcement are outlined in Secitons A through E below. Research involving human subjects conducted on behalf of a CIFA may be undertaken only with the informed consent of the subject, in accordance with guidelines issued by the Department of Health and Human Services, setting out conditions that safeguard the welfare of such subjects. The methods, data and all analyses will be unclassified. A. Counter-Surveillance Detection Tool At present there are no standardized instruments for behavioral assessments of sources within the field or operational setting. There is ongoing need to develop instruments and methods for source assessment and to determine whether an individual is engaged in or under surveillance. The purpose of this Area of Interest is to evaluate, via field testing, scientifically valid and culturally sensitive Commercial Off the Shelf Software and government-funded instruments that have been developed to aid case officers engaged in assessing sources and detecting surveillance. Evaluations will require interviews with training and operational personnel engaged in behavioral assessments within operational settings to characterize current practices and itemize what practitioners? needs are. The goal would be to reach consensus among the operational/user community as to which methods or tools are most useful. B. Cultural Training Tools In inter-cultural interviews, even when the interviewer can speak the language of the interviewee, often there is a misinterpretation of the behavioral cues (gestures, facial expressions, whole body adjustments) used by both the interviewer and the interviewee. This kind of miscommunication may hinder the exchange of useful information and alienate both parties. The purpose of this Area of Interest is to develop and test indirect assessment methodologies that measure the beliefs of (i) members of a non-Western culture about the behaviors associated with truth-telling and deception within their own culture, and (ii) national security investigators about the behaviors associated with truth-telling and deception within that same non-Western culture. C. Effective Interviewing and Elicitation Techniques Techniques for collecting information from unwilling sources are necessary for a variety of government positions, ranging from the questioning of an embassy ?walk in? to the solicitation of information from a prisoner or detainee. Personnel tasked with obtaining information from human sources must be armed with the most effective and ethical interviewing and interrogation skills and tactics in order to gain intelligence that is reliable and valid. Unfortunately, many of the techniques currently in use often are based only on the individual experiences of the interviewers, anecdotal information, and shared beliefs, rather than on empirical behavioral and social science. Until evidence-based approaches to interviewing and elicitation are established, little progress will be made in our ability to distinguish effective from ineffective techniques. The purpose of this Area of Interest is for the further development and validation testing one or more methods of interviewing unwilling subjects that already has been shown effective in controlled (laboratory) settings, to be assessed in multicultural field settings D. Effective Training in Interviewing and Elicitation Techniques Training programs for collecting information from unwilling sources teach an essential skill set for a variety of government positions, including operators and investigators. There is a need to implement a standardized method of teaching and training. The purpose of this Area of Interest is for the development and evaluation of a training course that takes advantage of what has been shown to be valid in other domains (e.g., marketing, clinical medicine, clinical psychology), such as computer-based structured interviews or training tapes that use actor-based live interviews (these are given as examples, not as requirements). E. Multicultural & Urban Intelligence Some of the most culturally and linguistically diverse communities found anywhere exist within American urban centers. Local law enforcement agencies in these cities have developed intelligence collection methodologies and capabilities that suit such diversity and reflect the particular economic, cultural, and political institutions of both the police and the citizens they serve. These methods have changed in response to local events (e.g., changes in NYPD, LAPD, LASD as a function of terrorist attacks and threats), which means that law enforcement agencies have experience with adapting to new environments and shifting populations. But law enforcement policies and practices are neither conceived nor implemented in a vacuum; these occur in response to changes in the larger population and in specific groups of interest. The relationship therefore is dynamic: responses of the ?state? and responses of the ?people? each affect each other. The purpose of the Area of Interest is to develop and test a method to assess a local population?s reactions to its local law enforcement policies and procedures, with initial testing of the method within an urban population within the U.S., in collaboration with the local law enforcement agency or department. F. Real-time Integration & Analysis Tool Non-invasive/non-lethal behavioral assays, sensing/tracking technologies, and computing storage and analyses capabilities are growing rapidly. These have the potential to serve as powerful adjuncts to human observer-based credibility assessment techniques. In fact, behavioral, physiological, sensing and tracking techniques may be most powerful when they are used in a complementary manner. However, application of these technologies to counter-intelligence requires understanding how they map onto behaviors of interest. Such application also requires methods of determining which out of the large volumes of data collected should be saved, how data of interest can be distinguished from background ?noise,? how signals from various multimodal channels should be synthesized, and how these should be usefully analyzed. In addition, for the results of such analyses to be useful to an operator, they need to occur in real-time. The purpose of this area of interest is for preliminary investigation of the use of sensing and tracking technologies to complement observer-based source and asset assessments, for the development of algorithms to integrate these data on a real-time basis, and for evaluation of these technologies using traditional, observer-based methodologies. Steps towards this goal will include (a) investigation of the usefulness of sensing, tracking and locating technologies for source and asset credibility assessment; (b) investigation of the usefulness of the collection and analysis of digital traces for tracking and for understanding relational and social networks; (c) algorithm development for online (real-time) analyses of methods and tools for source assessments; and (c) validation of the outcomes with traditional measures of behaviors of interest. IV. AWARD INFORMATION A. Anticipated Award Types: It is anticipated to be in the form of a Cost Reimbursement type contract. However the Government reserves the right to award grants, Cooperative Agreements (CAs), Other Transactions (OTs) Agreements, or interagency agreements to appropriate parties should the situation warrant. B. If any awards are made on any area of interest, CIFA anticipates that individual awards will be in $100,000 to $300,000 range. C. Anticipated Periods of Performance for New Awards: All proposals may request funding for a timeframe not to exceed 12 months. V. ELIGIBILITY INFORMATION This BAA is open to ALL responsible sources. Offerors may include single entities or teams from private-sector organizations, government laboratories, FFRDCs, including Department of Energy national laboratories and centers, and academic institutions. Federally Funded Research & Development Centers (FFRDCs), are eligible to respond to this BAA, individually or as a team member of an eligible principal offeror, so long as they are permitted under a sponsoring agreement between the Government and the specific FFRDC. Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU), Minority Institutions (MI), Small Business concerns, Small Disadvantaged Business concerns, Women-Owned Small Business concerns, Veteran-Owned Small Business concerns, Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned Small Business concerns, and Historically Underutilized Business Zone (HUBZone) small businesses concerns are encouraged to submit proposals. They are also encouraged to join others as team members in submitting proposals. However, no portion of this BAA will be set-aside, pursuant to FAR Part 19.502-2. VI. APPLICATION PROCEDURES Vendors are invited to submit proposals for any or all areas of interest. Each area of interest, however, must be addressed in separate electronic proposal submissions. All proposals are to be e-mailed to contact@example.gov in electronic MS Word format. If the electronic version includes a signature from the appropriate representative of the offeror, hard copies will not be needed if a contract is ultimately awarded. Electronic proposals must include separate technical and cost/price files, with separate emails for each area of interest proposed. The technical proposal must include: 1. An Abstract, Background, Technical Approach, References, and Resumes of proposed researchers. 2. Contact information such as e-mail addresses and telephone numbers to allow technical and contracting questions to be addressed; 3. Institutional endorsement, signature of the proposed principal investigator, time frames for all phases of the project, and detailed accounts of proposed work and budget. The Abstract, Background, and Technical Approach sections of the proposals should be no greater than 15 pages in length per area of interest. All pages should be single-spaced, have one-inch margins, and utilize a typeface no smaller than Times New Roman 12 font. Proposals should be sufficiently detailed to be responsive to the criteria, described below, for evaluation. Additional materials may include vitae, references, and institutional information. An evaluation team appointed by the CIFA contracting officer to include scientific peers will review the proposals according to the following dimensions in order of importance: 1. Importance of the research to CIFA Behavioral Science Directorate?s Mission. 2. Technical merit, appropriateness, and feasibility of the proposed approach. 3. Scientific significance and originality. 4. The qualifications, capabilities, and experience of the proposed principal investigator and key personnel, and institutional resources and facilities. For each dimension, the proposal will be given a score grade between 1 and 5, where ?1? is highly meritorious (meets approximately 100% of the requirements), ?2? is meritorious (meets approximately 75% of the requirements), ?3? is good (meets approximately 50% of the requirements), ?4? is fair (meets approximately 25% of the requirements) and ?5? is lacking substantive merit (meets less than approximately 25% of the requirements). Details on the scoring are as follows: 1. Those proposals with very low importance to CIFA will be unable to recover even with high scores on the other dimensions. 2. A score of ?1? for dimensions 2 ? 4 would indicate that the proposal exceeds requirements and clearly demonstrates the offeror?s scientific capability to deliver exceptional performance. All proposal submissions must contain the following sections: Abstract, Background, Technical Approach, References, and Resumes of proposed researchers. A separate MS Word file will contain the proposed Cost or Price information. Abstract. The abstract should be one page or less. It should describe the problem underlying the research, the methodology being developed, explain the objective of the proposal, and provide a condensed, but meaningful description of the technical approach. Authors should reference the most relevant sections of the BAA in the abstract. Background. The background should include a description of the problem, as the proposal author understands it. It is helpful if the author shows an understanding of the CIFA contexts that apply to the proposed research. Clearly, there will not be enough space to write a critical, annotated bibliography, but the author should demonstrate meaningful knowledge of the background of the research that is being proposed. Technical Approach. This should include a description of the behavioral or social science principles upon which the research is to be based, the goal of that research, and a detailed account of how the research is to be done. This account should be much like the methods section of a research paper. It should include a description of the data to be collected, the methods for collecting the data, the number and source of subjects and how they will be acquired, and the proposed research design and likely analysis methods. Reference List. This should be a list of all the references called out in the body of the proposal. It should not include publications that are not referred to in the body. The references list must be in American Psychological Association format, APA 5th Edition. R?sum?s. R?sum?s or vitae should be included for all proposed researchers with special emphasis on the Principal Investigator(s). It is particularly important that resumes include publications that bear on the research being proposed. Cost/Price Proposal. This should be a typical budget section as is required by other federal agencies. However, it should also include a description of total dollars required overall for the government fiscal year (the government fiscal years run from October 1 through the following September 30), and the number of person hours/months broken out by personnel type (senior scientist, graduate student, research associate, clerk, etc.). Proposers who are not in the Washington, DC area should budget at least one trip per year to CIFA in Arlington, VA to present the progress of their research. The cost/price proposal must contain all elements of cost, including labor, indirect charges, profit or fee, and other direct costs to include any material costs and/or travel costs required. Companies which have rates approved for use by DCAA or which have GSA schedule rates shall so identify. VII. CONCEPT PAPERS While Concept Papers are optional, CIFA invites potential applicants who would like an early indication of the suitability of their topics to submit Concept Papers by e-mail (preferred) to contact@example.gov or by post to the below address. If submitted, Concept Papers must be in the form of an MS Word Document, be three double-spaced pages or less, concisely address the proposed research, and should contain only an approximate total budget projection. Please enclose an e-mail address and a telephone number where you can be reached. Please submit concept papers at least 2 weeks before the deadline for proposals. Concept papers submitted later than this date may not receive a timely response. VIII. DEADLINES To be considered for funding in FY07, electronic versions of the formal proposals (in for form of a single MS Word Doc file) must be received at CIFA by e-mail no later than 3:30 P.M. EST on 1 August 2007. Electronic versions of the technical and cost proposals must be submitted as separate files in one email. These files must be e-mailed to contact@example.gov. All vendors submitting proposals will be notified of the results of their proposal and if the government intends to award a contract to them. CIFA intends to make contract awards for areas of interest on this BAA, if at all, between 1 September 2007 and September 30, 2008. IX. INQUIRIES Correspondence, inquiries, and concept papers may be sent to contact@example.gov or by mail to the postal address below. X. POSTAL ADDRESS Counterintelligence Field Activity Department of Defense 251 18th Street Crystal Square 5 Suite 1200 Arlington VA 22202 Attn: Loretta Buckley