Geospatial, Analytics, Visualization, and Envirofacts Information Technology Support (GAVETS

U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) Federal Acquisition Service (FAS) Contracting Division (CD) 50 United Nations Plaza 2nd Floor North San Francisco, CA 94102 REQUIRING AGENCY: U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) Federal Acquisition Service (FAS) Assisted Acquisition Services (AAS) Acting in support of: United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Office of Environmental Information (OEI) Office of Information Management (OIM) MC 2831T EPA West 6312U 1200 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW Washington, DC 20460 Nature and/or description of the action being approved This Exception to Fair Opportunity is made for the solicitation and award of a sole source award for continued information technology (IT) support currently in use by the EPA. This procurement is for continued operations and maintenance of EPA public IT systems and continued modernization of the EPA Digital Analytics Program (EDAP). This procurement will be a Labor Hour task order under GSA Alliant II Unrestricted Governmentwide Acquisition Contract (GWAC) for continued support of the EPA Envirofacts web site and data warehouse. The limited source task order will be issued to Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) via its GSA Alliant II contract 47QTCK18D0001. 3. Description of the supplies/services required (including the estimated value) The interim bridge task order will provide the EPA Office of Environmental Information (OEI) continued IT support for the development and deployment of enhancements to the legacy Envirofacts website and data warehouse. The following tasks are required. PWS Paragraph Type 3.1 Project Management & Transition Plan Labor Hour 3.2 Meeting & Outreach Support Labor Hour 3.3 Envirofacts & Related Applications Labor Hour 3.4 Data Platform, Data Science & Analytics, Data Management, Database Development and Modifications Labor Hour 3.5 Application Development Labor Hour 3.1.2 Amazon Web Services Cost Reimbursable 9.4 Travel Cost Reimbursable The period of performance of the interim bridge task order is twelve (12) months, from November 1, 2018 through October 31, 2019. The estimated value of this procurement is $7,014,518.24 for this twelve month bridge. FAR Clause 52.217-8 Option to Extend Services is not incorporated. Identification of the exception to fair opportunity (see 16.505(b)(2)(i)(B)) and the supporting rationale, including a demonstration that the proposed contractor's unique qualifications or the nature of the acquisition requires use of the exception cited. The acquisition is to be conducted under the authority of Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) Subpart 16.5-Indefinite-Delivery Contracts, in accordance with the Exceptions to the fair opportunity procedure 16.505(b)(2)(i)(B) - Only one source is capable of providing the supplies or services required at the level of quality required because the supplies or services are unique or highly specialized. Contractor, SAIC, is the only source capable of providing continuity of service for the highly specialized and EPA unique cloud transfer and modernization effort of Envirofacts, one of the largest and most critical application which is currently housed on EPA in house servers. SAIC has the most familiarity, knowledge and specific expertise with the system and is the only source that could deploy efficiently, thereby minimizing disruptions in operability and resulting in the government saving money. There are many unknowns with the Lift & Transform of Envirofacts to AWS during this Phase II. With a new vendor, mistakes would be made because of the lack of system knowledge along with the mix of moving to a new unknown hosting environment. In addition, through Envirofacts, SAIC provides Cloud access and web services for over 100 legacy software components; over 25 EPA unique systems and applications; and an additional 25 Amazon Cloud Solution services described in the Performance Work Statement. SAIC controls a purchasing agreement with Amazon that is used to store many EPA applications and an EPA data warehouse. If the access to the Cloud and web services stops, it will eliminate the access to critical public environmental data. The impact would be global with over 5.5 Million recorded web page hits against the Envirofacts web site, and 17.5 Million database hits against the Envirofacts Warehouse per month. The Envirofacts web site is just one of the many systems that SAIC is managing. Along with efforts to provide operations and maintenance (O&M) support of Envirofacts and the multitude of other legacy applications, Phase II (of three phases) includes the Envirofacts modernization effort under the current Alliant order. That order is entitled Analytics, Geospatial, Visualization, Data Management Support (AGVDMS) with associated task order/PIID numbers ID09180098/GSQ0917BH0103. The modernization effort currently is only partially completed because of the unanticipated large spikes in the requirements for O&M support. For instance, on January 25, 2018, Modification 002 provided an Other Direct Costs (ODCs) Cloud Services ceiling increase to cover the cost of additional users. The usage increase of the AWS platform is due to the early unanticipated success of the pilot use cases that were started fall 2017 at EPA. As a result, the AWS hosting costs, which vary from month to month based on usage, have already exceeded the original expected monthly average by as much as 3 times. In addition, the following usage data further demonstrates the unexpected increase in systems usage from the previous years and increased support under Phase II: Date Number of Data Scientists & Analytics Experts utilizing the AWS Analytics Platform EDAP Data 10/2016 0 ? 10/2017 5 565 Gigabytes 10/2018 70 1.5 Terabytes 10/2019 150* 2.5 Terabytes* *Projected Additionally, the remaining work under Phase II is to transfer Envirofacts and other applications to the cloud. This process is now called Lift and Transform (L&T). Envirofacts and more than 60 other applications will be transferred to the Amazon cloud (AWS). Note that EPA, OEI could not begin transferring applications to the cloud until the Authorization to Operate (ATO) and virtual private network (VPN) connectivity to AWS was approved by the Senior Information Official (SIO) of EPA. When that approval would be forthcoming was a major uncertainty during the current task order. The ATO is scheduled to be approved this October, 2018 allowing OEI to move forward and complete transfer to the cloud under Phase II. Once that authorization has been secured, the Phase II requirement has expanded to require a system re-architect and move of more than 1,185,000 lines of code, 1000+ GB of data, 7405 tables, 500+ Oracle PL/SQL Packages, and connections to 60+ Program databases, systems, and tools. And applications will need to be updated and modified, as needed, so that the legacy Envirofacts and the tools that rely on Envirofacts data work correctly without a disruption in service for the millions of data requests per month. The Lift and Transform in Phase II needs to be completed by the current vendor. Another vendor would not have the programmatic knowledge or system knowledge that is needed to efficiently implement L&T. For instance, just moving from one server to another has significant complications including connection challenges and missed database links, as examples, with complications compounded by this effort that entails moving an entire system to a new cloud hosted environment. SAIC possesses the specific programmatic, systems and technical IT knowledge and experience necessary to successfully and efficaciously implement the complex transition. The EPA estimates that it would take a new vendor 6 to 8 months, based on previous experience to perform even the basic O&M of legacy systems. The technically complex plan for L&T for Phase II could be delayed to the point of possible cancellation. Either consequence, extended delay or cancellation, would be costly to the government. With a new vendor, there would be too much risk to accomplish this task over a reasonable period of time. Possible risks include wasted money and time and/or system failures with possible ultimate modernization cancellation. Furthermore, the vendor that has the most familiarity and expertise with the system, would save the government money by deploying efficiently and minimizing disruptions in operability. There are many unknowns with the Lift & Transform of Envirofacts to AWS. With a new vendor, mistakes would be made because of the lack of system knowledge along with the mix of moving to a new unknown hosting environment. The government cannot afford these risks which could lead to system inoperability or long term double hosting charges as a new vendor moves along a complex and extended learning curve. EPA has been engaged in a massive data migration project to the cloud over the course of the current contract, and that sizable project has exceeded reasonable expectations for the amount of effort and time it would take to complete. Disruption of this migration would be an extreme risk to EPA performance of its mission and a high risk of negative cost consequences. Due to the highly specialized requirements associated with operating, maintaining and modernizing the Envirofacts systems, SAIC is the only source that can provide these highly specialized services at the level of quality required in the midst of the ongoing Phase II. The shifted focus of Phase II has become L&T to the cloud with modernization, while ongoing, taking a back seat to L&T and the ongoing O&M. This task order will avoid a break in service while a competitive solution for Phase III is developed by the Government. After L&T under Phase II, Phase III which will entail continued modernization, beta testing and full implementation as well as ongoing O&M over a 3 to 5 year period. Any service or support gap during Phase II would bring about significant risk to American citizens and the U.S. Government. In order to mitigate the risk of a burdensome, cost-extensive delay or even failure, a sole source bridge to SAIC has been determined by the Government to be the only interim procurement solution. The contractor, SAIC, has begun a modernization effort that is only partially complete during its Phase II of the three phase transition. Phase II of the Envirofacts Modernization started during the Analytics, Geospatial, Visualization, Data Management Support (AGVDMS) task order ID09170098/GSQ0917BH0103 but implementation was delayed because O&M support was larger than expected, as documented above. Therefore the modernization effort ended up only partially completed. At the beginning of the AGVDMS task order ID09170098/GSQ0917BH0103, the goal was to complete the modernization effort through both Phase II and Phase III before going live with the newly improved version of Envirofacts at the conclusion of Phase III. The original plan.would have required EPA to keep the legacy version of Envirofacts up and running at EPA's National Computer Center (NCC) while a contractor worked on the modernization effort in AWS during Phase III, therefore, creating 2 hosting environments that would need to be fully funded, maintained and synchronized. The previous modernization plan would incur overlapping hosting costs at both EPA's NCC and the AWS cloud for 3 - 5 years until the modernization effort would be complete. After Phase III modernization, beta testing and rollout, the modernized Envirofacts and associated applications would be publicly released in the cloud. The legacy version of Envirofacts at the NCC cannot be shut down until it is ready for public release in AWS. The new Phase II plan, Lift and Transform, allows EPA to move more efficiently by standing up legacy Envirofacts in the cloud so that Phase III will be focused only on modernization, beta testing and rollout rather than also the complexities and riskiness of transfer to the cloud. This approach allows EPA to shut down Envirofacts at EPA's NCC server earlier than expected (i.e. prior to Phase III), saving up to $275K per year in hosting and software costs at the NCC ($225K for hosting at the NCC up to $50K for switching to open source software). These savings will be felt immediately by not having to pay double the hosting charges during the modernization effort over the next 3 - 5 years under a competed contract that ultimately will complete Phase III. With the new Lift and Transform approach in Phase II, the result will be legacy Envirofacts moved to the AWS cloud and going live, making it publicly available via the cloud years earlier than originally expected. This exception to fair opportunity action serves only as an interim solution to provide the continuity of mission critical services until the new, Phase III procurement can be competed and awarded. The performance period is limited to twelve-months, which is sufficient time to complete Phase II and allows adequate time to complete a competitive, long term contract for continued support. An advantage to this new approach will be that a complete Lift and Transform of the Legacy and partially modernized Envirofacts and associated applications creates a natural break for a competitive Phase III acquisition and removes barriers to competitive entry. Given the above, the Government's best interest is served by having SAIC complete the modernization effort during this bridge arrangement because switching contractors midstream during Phase II could impact adversely both the schedule and quality of the modernization effort and portends a high risk of delays and failure. The Government intends to fully compete the new procurement for Phase III at a natural break in the overall long term project. At this time, the Government is giving consideration to the appropriate acquisition strategy and contract vehicle for Phase III. Continued mission support must be procured as a sole-source task order in order to allow completion of Phase II Lift and Transform, adequate time to complete market research for a Phase III competitive acquisition, collect workload data from the incumbent for Phase III Operations and Maintenance (O&M) and modernization service support, solicit, and award a competitive follow-on acquisition. Tentative milestones for the competitive follow-on acquisition that justify the need for this interim sole-source task order are as follows: Market Research/Workload data collection 1 March 2019 thru July 30 2019 Issue RFP: Aug 10 2019 RFP Response: 10 Sept 2019 Evaluation Complete: 30 Sept 2019 Award: 20 Oct 2019 Transition Continuity of Services If Necessary NOTE: The FBO system was not accepting the .pdf attachment in viewable form, hence this posting with substantive content. 11-14-18