Data Exchange Services

This request for information has been modified to change the due date for submissions from July 15, 2019 to July 19, 2019. See revised details below and in attached document. NOAA's Request for Information (RFI) for Data Exchange Services General: The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is requesting that interested parties review this document and provide input on the questions below. NOAA may utilize the responses to this RFI to conduct additional market research to include a one on one meeting with select entities that respond to this RFI. Information obtained from this RFI may be utilized to assist NOAA in developing a formal Request for Proposal (RFP) or Request for Quote (RFQ). To the maximum extent possible, please submit non-proprietary information. Any proprietary information submitted should be identified as such and will be properly protected from disclosure. No solicitation exists; therefore, do not request a copy of the solicitation. This notice is not to be construed as a commitment by the Government to award a contract nor will the Government pay for the requested information. Please submit any questions for clarification no later than May 31, 2019, at 5:00 PM EDT. Send your questions to the point of contact listed in the paragraph below. A consolidated list of questions from each entity is highly encouraged. Please send your submission via email to the attention of Marcelle Loveday at marcelle.loveday@noaa.gov no later than July 19, 2019, at 5:00 PM EDT. There is no limit on the number of pages in the response; however, the Government requests that interested parties provide as clear and concise input as possible. Introduction Under the Department of Commerce, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) collects, processes, disseminates, and archives a significant portion of the world's environmental data. NOAA, through the National Weather Service's Office of Dissemination, provides real-time access to a portion of that data for numerical weather prediction among the member countries of the World Meteorological Organization. As NOAA looks to complement its weather data portfolio, consisting of data from government owned and operated systems, with data acquired from commercial systems, it needs to also consider these international data exchange mechanisms. Objective of this RFI Based on its experience providing data services domestically and internationally, NOAA is seeking input from the cloud-computing and tech-services vendor community on the feasibility to establish an enterprise data exchange, facilitating the shared acquisition by public entities of commercial weather and earth observations. The purpose of this RFI is to collect information pertinent to the operation of such a cloud-based platform that can host a global exchange of weather data between public and commercial participants. Overall Goals ? Use public-private partnerships to design and engineer a data exchange platform, including defining technical requirements, legal frameworks, and business operations ? Facilitate commercial data acquisition by multiple national meteorological services (and other participants if desired) via efficient cost-sharing methods ? Stimulate private-sector investment in data-sparse regions, by creating an efficient marketplace for selling weather data ? Enable seamless operations within cloud infrastructure between storage, processing, and transfer of weather data on this exchange, supporting real-time assimilation in models NOAA seeks information generally on ways to achieve these goals, with specific issues and questions outlined in the following sections. Solutions must comply with legal requirements and policy, minimize expenses to NOAA and the public, and ensure data reliability and authenticity. Background The single-most limiting factor in numerical weather prediction is a lack of quality observations covering the globe. Globally, the acquisition and exchange of environmental data faces challenges in terms of limited infrastructure and imperfect governance mechanisms, hindering the weather enterprise from achieving its full potential. As the landscape of environmental data providers is evolving to include commercial vendors, a primary issue is the potential for regulatory and cost barriers limiting the benefits of such new data within the current framework. Some of the procurement and sharing issues faced by individual meteorological services are limited purchasing power and associated limited redistribution rights. Another issue in the current architecture is the limited integration of Big Data management, throttling the processing and extraction of value from data, especially given the significantly larger volumes that are expected to be produced over the next several years. It is certain that under the current structure, these challenges will continue to burden NOAA's ability to acquire and utilize new sources of data, hinder growth of the weather enterprise, and impede the mission of protecting life and property. Yet, these challenges present an opportunity for the international community, to formulate a roadmap towards a future global weather enterprise creating more data, efficiently shared and at lower cost, for more people. As the world increases its reliance on high quality data to improve extreme weather prediction, new and emerging commercial technologies can be leveraged in an efficient data-exchange framework to maximize benefits for everyone. Moving beyond mere updates to data-sharing policies that are largely unenforceable, and beyond incremental updates to ageing infrastructure, a future global data exchange should foster investment and continual innovation, and have the ability to support growth of high quality environmental data from established and emerging players, both governmental and commercial. Vision NOAA envisions potential solutions that take advantage of technological advancements, such as cloud-based computing, to promote greater data sharing and reduce obstacles to the procurement and sharing of commercial data. Developed together with international public and private partners, a cloud-based platform facilitating the joint procurement of commercial data could potentially address challenges in existing data acquisition and dissemination governance. Potential solutions should be able to incorporate a variety of data sets and participants, be scalable to support a range of evolving operational needs, and form the potential foundation for a future incentive-driven, public & commercial, international weather data exchange program. Information Requested ? Does an off-the-shelf solution exist to fulfill the data exchange objective? If so, what is its capability and how has it previously been implemented? ? If not, how long would a platform take to create? ? What are the current technical limitations to constructing an online data exchange platform? ? What security measures exist that should be considered for such an exchange platform? (Specifically in the areas of confidentiality, integrity, and availability) ? Are there laws, policies, or private practice standards preventing such an exchange? ? What type of maintenance measures and costs would generally be associated with keeping a platform running?