Membership to Community Initiatives for Software Carpentry Foundation & Data Carpentry Services

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) intends to negotiate on a sole source basis, under the authority of FAR 13.106-1(b)(1) using Simplified Acquisition Procedures, with Community Initiatives, located at 354 Pine Street, Suite 700, San Francisco, CA 94104-3204 to purchase training memberships for a twelve-month base period and four twelve-month optional periods in two non-profit organizations that support and promote world class, innovative, open source scientific computing projects. The sole source justification is based on the following: NIST's Material Measurement Laboratory's Office of Data and Informatics (ODI) is a premier, pioneering resource for researchers and institutions in the Materials Chemical, and Biological sciences who need to leverage both large and information-rich data sets now common in many disciplines. To continue its efforts to fulfill NIST's mission, ODI requires membership in professional organizations, specifically the Software Carpentry Foundation and Data Carpentry Organization, which aim to teach concepts, skills, and tools for working more effectively with data, and to help scientists be more productive by learning highly specialized computing skills. Membership into the Software Carpentry Foundation and Data Carpentry can only be obtained through Community Initiatives. NIST had previously issued purchase order SB1341-17-SE-0061 to NumFOCUS Inc. for membership in these organizations. However, NIST was notified that, effective February 1, 2018, NumFOCUS has assigned all of its rights and obligations under the Agreement to Community Initiatives, a California nonproft public benefit corporation. NIST is electing to issue a new purchase order with Community Initiatives in lieu of exercising the next option period of SB1341-17-SE-0061 and incorporating a novation agreement into that contractual vehicle in the interest of efficiency in terms of the administrative burden. NIST has determined that the expenditure in these professional memberships would further the authorized activities of the agency; and this determination is not affected by any incidental benefits that may accrue to individual employees. The membership fulfills the following NIST requirements: 1. Reservation of six (6) seats per year in an online instructor led training course. 2. Ability for NIST to self-organize unlimited internal software workshops with no additional workshop fees. 3. Organization of up to four (4) workshops at NIST Gaithersburg Campus, including: - Coordinating with NIST to identify instructors with requisite skills/experience for workshop's subject matter. All instructors must be certified by either the Software Carpentry foundation or Data Carpentry Organization. - Developing subject matter presentation content for the workshops. Market research has shown that Community Initiatives, on behalf of the Software Carpentry Foundation and Data Carpentry, is the sole organization that can provide such membership, as they are the only professional organizations that support open source scientific computing, and promote sustainable high-level programming languages, open source code developments, and reproducible scientific research. There is no other organization that provides the kind of instructional materials that Software Carpentry Foundation offers. They are deliberately operating-system and applications-program agnostic. They focus on commonly used and mostly open source software tools such as Unix, Git and GitHub, Python, and R, though they also run workshops for users of SQL databases and MATLAB. They bring a unique perspective to training of researchers that does not promote a particular vendor's software or hardware platform. This approach is especially important for researchers at NIST, where staff utilize a wide variety of software and hardware configurations. Similarly, Data Carpentry is a partner organization that focuses on training programs in data management, curation, visualization, and analytics. Membership allows full access to all their resources. Like Software Carpentry Foundation, Data Carpentry is operating-system and applications-program agnostic, which is a key requirement for NIST's researchers. Given these facts, Community Initiatives is determined to be the only source reasonably available to provide the required membership and training. The resulting purchase order will be a Firm Fixed Price order. The NAICS is 813920 with a size standard of $15 million. No solicitation package will be issued. This notice of intent is not a request for competitive quotations; however, interested parties who regard themselves as capable of fulfilling these requirements are invited to submit responses to the Government for consideration. Responses received by 9 AM ET on 2/16/2018 will be considered by the Government. A determination by the Government to no compete the proposed acquisition based upon responses to this notice is solely within the discretion of the Government. Information received will normally be considered solely for the purpose of determining whether to conduct a competitive procurement.