Multi-Source Exploitation Assistant for the Digital Enterprise (MEADE)

Amendment No. 4 to BAA FA8750-18-S-7005 The purpose of this amendment is to republish the original announcement, incorporating any previous modifications, pursuant to FAR 35.016(c). This republishing also includes the following changes: 1. Update to Contracting Focal Point throughout; 2. Part I Overview Information-Submission dates and times updated to remove the extended FY19 IACF Focus Area white paper date and updated Type of Instruments that May be Awarded; 3. Section III.2: updated Foreign Participation/Access; 4. Section IV-Application and Submission Information, Submission dates and times updated to remove the extended FY19 IACF Focus Area white paper date; 5. Section V.2.b.2.: updated the evaluation categories 6. Section VI.1: updated to reference the most recent version of the RI-Specific Proposal Preparation Instructions, dated Jun 2018 7. Section VI.4: updated to revise and add new Administrative and National Policy Requirements; 8. Section VI.7: added paragraph (d) 9. Section VII: updated the Alternate OMBUDSMAN. No other changes have been made. NAICS CODE: 541715 FEDERAL AGENCY NAME: Department of the Air Force, Air Force Materiel Command, AFRL - Rome Research Site, AFRL/Information Directorate, 26 Electronic Parkway, Rome, NY, 13441-4514 BAA ANNOUNCEMENT TYPE: Modification BROAD AGENCY ANNOUNCEMENT (BAA) TITLE: Multi-Source Exploitation Assistant for the Digital Enterprise (MEADE) BAA NUMBER: FA8750-18-S-7005 PART I - OVERVIEW INFORMATION This announcement is for an Open, Two (2) Step BAA which is open and effective until 30 Sep 2022. Only white papers will be accepted as initial submissions; formal proposals will be accepted by invitation only. While white papers will be considered if received prior to 3:00 PM on 30 Sep 2022, the following submission dates are suggested to best align with projected funding: FY18 by 29 Jan 2018 FY19 by 13 Apr 2018 FY20 by 29 Mar 2019 FY21 by 27 Mar 2020 FY22 by 26 Mar 2021 Offerors should monitor the Federal Business Opportunities website at http://www.fbo.gov in the event this announcement is amended. CONCISE SUMMARY OF TECHNOLOGY REQUIREMENT DESCRIPTION: Seeking innovative research to develop a vetted digital assistant that provides analytical answers within operator-driven timelines. The software must perform constrained analytical tasks specified by user in the form of a question and include software agents that perform tasks independently (question answering). BAA ESTIMATED FUNDING: Total funding for this BAA is approximately $24.9M. Individual awards will not normally exceed 36 months with dollar amounts normally ranging from $100K to $3M. There is also the potential to make awards up to any dollar value as long as the value does not exceed the available BAA ceiling amount. ANTICIPATED INDIVIDUAL AWARDS: Multiple Awards are anticipated. TYPE OF INSTRUMENTS THAT MAY BE AWARDED: Procurement contracts, grants, cooperative agreements or other transactions (OT) depending upon the nature of the work proposed. In the event that an Other Transaction for Prototype agreement is awarded as a result of this competitive BAA, and the prototype project is successfully completed, there is the potential for a prototype project to transition to award of a follow-on production contract or transaction. The Other Transaction for Prototype agreement itself will also contain a similar notice of a potential follow-on production contract or agreement. AGENCY CONTACT INFORMATION: All white paper submissions and any questions of a technical nature shall be directed to the cognizant Technical Point of Contact (TPOC) as specified below (unless otherwise specified in the technical area): BAA PROGRAM MANAGER: DEPUTY BAA PROGRAM MANAGER: Brian O'Hern Stephen Scott AFRL/RIEA AFRL/RIED 525 Brooks Rd 525 Brooks Rd Rome, NY 13441-4505 Rome, NY 13441-4505 Telephone: +1 (555) 000-0000 Telephone: +1 (555) 000-0000 Email:contact@example.gov Email: contact@example.gov Questions of a contractual/business nature shall be directed to the cognizant contracting officer, as specified below (email requests are preferred): Amber Buckley Telephone +1 (555) 000-0000 Email: contact@example.gov Emails must reference the solicitation (BAA) number and title of the acquisition. Pre-Proposal Communications between Prospective Offerors and Government Representatives: Dialogue between prospective offerors and Government representatives is encouraged. Technical and contracting questions can be resolved in writing or through open discussions. Discussions with any of the points of contact shall not constitute a commitment by the Government to subsequently fund or award any proposed effort. Only Contracting Officers are legally authorized to commit the Government. Offerors are cautioned that evaluation ratings may be lowered and/or proposal rejected if proposal preparation (Proposal format, content, etc.) and/or submittal instructions are not followed. PART II - FULL TEXT ANNOUNCEMENT BROAD AGENCY ANNOUNCEMENT (BAA) TITLE: Multi-Source Exploitation Assistant for the Digital Enterprise (MEADE) BAA NUMBER: FA8750-18-S-7005 CATALOG OF FEDERAL DOMESTIC ASSISTANCE (CFDA) Number: 12.800 & 12.910 I. TECHNOLOGY REQUIREMENTS DESCRIPTION: The Air Force Research Laboratory, Information Fusion Branch, is soliciting white papers under this Broad Agency Announcement (BAA) for research, development, integration, test and evaluation of technologies/techniques to provide an interactive question answering system that functions as a virtual assistant by performing analytical tasks or services for an analyst. Multi-INT analysis efficiencies need to be increased in order to match the complexity, velocity, variety, and volume of intelligence data being collected against increasingly agile and deceptive adversaries. The MEADE objective is to make complex analytics possible for nearly anyone, regardless of their technical ability. This effort is intended to not only support an Intelligence function, but also Command and Control functions (to make a decision). For purposes of MEADE, an - analytic' is defined as a process that discovers, interprets and communicates meaningful patterns in order to describe, predict, or improve knowledge of Entities, Events, and Relationships in context. The intent is to provide analytics that answer questions directly or that will interact with the user to help steer analysts to an answer rather than simply providing a ranked list of potential information sources to help the analyst answer the question themselves. In addition to directly providing information such as weather, calculations, or facts from existing sources or media, complex analytics shall be cued as needed. For purposes of MEADE, interactive question answering involves two aspects of "interaction", one involves the mechanism by which you interact with the software (text, voice, file upload), the other relates to iteratively responding to user input as needed to reduce question ambiguity and improve product satisfaction. While fundamentally similar to chat-bots used in virtual assistants (Apple's Siri, Google Assistant, Amazon Alexa, and Microsoft Cortana) as far as providing an artificial conversation, the actual intent is to use the conversation to improve the efficacy of analytical tasks important to the military against both polished Intelligence and raw sensor data. Ultimately, an airman would be armed with a richer set of information "connecting more dots" across air, space, cyber, land, sea, and undersea to provide a more comprehensive situation understanding. MEADE involves creating the foundation for a fully functional "Information Wingman" by adding the element of mutual support to enhance analytics. The intended deliverables include software tools, interfaces, and processes that are used by an analyst to direct, clarify, and scope automated analytics. This will be achieved by pursuing two Focus Areas (FAs), Real-Time Operator-Driven Gist Exploration and Response (ROGER) in conjunction with Interactive Analytics and Contextual Fusion (IACF). Focus Area 1 - ROGER Under the ROGER, offerors will develop an Analyst Assistant to provide a convenient interface to allow interactive searches, data/information retrieval, tasking, and analytics for a constrained question space. This combines multi-INT search / retrieval, natural language processing (focused text extraction), recommendation engines, applied analytics, and a question-and-answer system that execute in a cloud or distributed computing environment. In addition, ROGER is deciding whether to implement an analytic to solve the question or there is an answer readily available for lookup. This Focus Area answers "lookup" questions directly, leverages user behavior, cues / focuses analytics, and integrates technologies from the other focus area into a prototype, so at least involves the following: - Developments in "Rogerian Argumentation" to reach agreement on what is needed to answer queries (for those not directly answered) by leveraging collaborative and memory-based recommendation engines as an information filtering system (based on actual searches, prior results, or user roles and locations) - Technologies to interface with services to perform actions, interactions, searches, collation, analytics, ranking, and ultimately, return an answer - Natural Language Processing (NLP) (part of speech tagging, noun-phrase chunking, dependency & constituent parsing) to translate text queries into "parsed text", usable for an assistant. - Developments in question & intent analysis to analyze parsed text, detecting user commands and actions. (e.g. "Update my role", "Extract a statistic", "Find data" ) - Software that: o Directly answers Multi-Domain questions and Requests For Information (RFIs) o Interacts to optimize and tailor results o Adds the element of mutual support to enhance analytics, improve results, and improve response time - Metrics to define how you measure success, such as First "Hit" Success Rate, First Answer Reciprocal Rank, Question Prediction Accuracy, Precision, Total Reciprocal Rank, Likert-type Scale, symmetry of categories, and others. Please see Attachment 2-MEADE Notional Overview. Focus Area 2 - IACF Under the IACF, offerors will develop contextual fusion and anticipatory analytic capabilities that are requisite for advanced capabilities such as prescriptive analytics, which is dedicated to finding the best course of action for given situations. Offerors will investigate methods to interact with ROGER as well. This project develops technologies that answer analytic questions, driven by ROGER and at least involves the following: - Developments in data analytics against Multi-INT sources - Contextual Fusion - beyond multi-platform or multi-sensor o Provides the circumstances that form the setting for an event, in terms of which it can be fully understood and assessed o Improves efficiency by reducing search space and adding confidence - Hybrid Information Extraction approaches for Patterns of Life (Anomaly Detection) - User and Entity Behavior Analytics as context and feedback for improvements - Use of structured narratives or a similar common semantic representation to organize information about activities in context and with provenance. - Software that: o Gathers, processes, cues, applies, analyzes, and ranks analytical results o Answers a constrained range of questions with information compatible with natural language as a priority (vs ranked results) o Identifies aspects of products (images, graphs/plots, tables, etc.) that answer the question o Applies descriptive, predictive, and prescriptive analytic approaches - Metrics to define how you measure success, such as Source Elasticity (Volume/Document), Response Time, Precision, Recall, Probability of Correct Association, Probability of False Alarm, Probability of Detection, and more. Timeline/Milestones: In order to demonstrate a viable approach early, the - constraint" on ROGER is to scope the possible question space in FY18 to existing analytical capabilities, answer sources, and evidence sources. Similarly for IACF, the FY18 constraint is to modify or tailor existing or otherwise proven analytical capabilities to support interaction, and to utilize a common semantic representation for queries or analytical cues. For the remainder of the effort, as analytics emerge, the range of possible questions and the requisite analytics to support them will expand. AFRL will create a Systems Integration Laboratory (SIL) to support the installation, testing, analysis, and maturation of deliverables under this effort through our Automated Processing and Exploitation (APEX) Center. Additional Information: Submissions/White Papers should clearly identify the MEADE focus area(s) being addressed. Proposers are encouraged to directly address each evaluation criteria identified in Section V below and to avoid ambiguous language, such as: "could, ought, might, will consider, it appears, may, should, hope". A proposal may address either focus area or a combination of ROGER and IACF. Any proposer submitting to both focus areas should submit a single proposal and ensure that the budget is clearly delineated so that partial awards would be possible. AFRL expects to provide awardees, as reasonable or prudent, some, all, or more than the following: - Actual (real) and operationally relevant data for analytical tools to process through the SIL as Base Support - Limited modelling and simulations capabilities to support evaluation and development as Government Furnished Information (GFI). - Existing Government owned tools, utilities, software libraries, and Application Programmer's Interfaces (APIs) for data, databases, and data warehouses as GFI - Example sets of questions and answers based upon Air Force Distributed Common Ground Station (AF-DCGS) analyst functions as GFI - Access to the SIL, for approved users to install, test, and mature developments against available datasets, databases, and capabilities as Base Support In addition to defining what is needed above, Submissions/White Papers should clearly identify any GFI, COTS, GOTS, or Base Support items such as networks, computer/cluster capabilities, or cloud implementations necessary for successful completion of the proposed work. II. AWARD INFORMATION: 1. FUNDING: Total funding for this BAA is approximately $24.9M. The anticipated funding to be obligated under this BAA is broken out by fiscal year as follows: FY18 - $5.0M FY19 - $5.5M FY20 - $6.5M FY21 - $4.4M FY22 - $3.5M a. Individual awards will not normally exceed 36 months with dollar values ranging from $100K to $3M per award. There is also the potential to make awards up to any dollar value as long as the value does not exceed the available BAA ceiling amount. b. The Government reserves the right to select all, part, or none of the proposals received, subject to the availability of funds. All potential Offerors should be aware that due to unanticipated budget fluctuations, funding in any or all areas may change with little or no notice. 2. FORM. Awards of efforts as a result of this announcement will be in the form of contracts, grants, cooperative agreements or other transactions, depending upon the nature of the work proposed. 3. BAA TYPE: This is a two-step open broad agency announcement. This announcement constitutes the only solicitation. As STEP ONE - The Government is only soliciting white papers at this time. DO NOT SUBMIT A FORMAL PROPOSAL. Those white papers found to be consistent with the intent of this BAA may be invited to submit a technical and cost proposal. See Section VI of this announcement for further details regarding the proposal. III. ELIGIBILITY INFORMATION: 1. ELIGIBILITY: All qualified offerors who meet the requirements of this BAA may apply. 2. FOREIGN PARTICIPATION/ACCESS: a. This BAA is closed to foreign participation. This includes both foreign ownership and foreign nationals as employees or subcontractors. b. Exceptions. 1. Fundamental Research. If the work to be performed is unclassified, fundamental research, this must be clearly identified in the white paper and/or proposal. See Part II, Section I for more details regarding Fundamental Research. Offerors should still identify any performance by foreign nationals at any level (prime contractor or subcontractor) in their proposals. Please specify the nationals' country of origin, the type of visa or work permit under which they are performing and an explanation of their anticipated level of involvement. You may be asked to provide additional information during negotiations in order to verify the foreign citizen's eligibility to participate on any contract or assistance agreement issued as a result of this announcement 2. Foreign Ownership, Control or Influence (FOCI) companies who have mitigation plans/paperwork in place. Proof of approved mitigation documentation must be provided to the contracting office focal point, Amber Buckley, Contracting Officer, telephone +1 (555) 000-0000, or e-mail contact@example.gov prior to submitting a white paper and/or a proposal. For information on FOCI mitigation, contact the Defense Security Service. Additional details can be found at: https://www.dss.mil/ma/ctp/isia/bams/foci/foci_mitigation/ 3. Foreign Nationals as Employees or Subcontractors. Applicable to any effort not considered Fundamental Research. Offerors are responsible for ensuring that all employees and/or subcontractors who will work on a resulting contract are eligible to do so. Any employee who is not a U.S. citizen or a permanent resident will be restricted from working on any resultant contract unless prior approval of the Department of State or the Department of Commerce is obtained via a technical assistance agreement or an export license. Violations of these regulations can result in criminal or civil penalties. c. Information Regarding Non-US Citizens Assigned to this Project a. Contractor employees requiring access to USAF bases, AFRL facilities, and/or access to U.S. Government Information Technology (IT) networks in connection with the work on contracts, assistance instruments or other transactions awarded under this BAA must be U.S. citizens. For the purpose of base and network access, possession of a permanent resident card ("Green Card") does not equate to U.S. citizenship. This requirement does not apply to foreign nationals approved by the U.S. Department of Defense or U.S. State Department under international personnel exchange agreements with foreign governments. It also does not apply to dual citizens who possess US citizenship, to include Naturalized citizens. Any waivers to this requirement must be granted in writing by the Contracting Officer prior to providing access. Specific format for waiver request will be provided upon request to the Contracting Officer. The above requirements are in addition to any other contract requirements related to obtaining a Common Access Card (CAC). b. For the purposes of Paragraph 1, it an IT network/system does not require AFRL to endorse a contractor's application to said network/system in order to gain access, the organization operating the IT network/system is responsible for controlling access to its system. If an IT network/system requires a U.S. Government sponsor to endorse the application in order for access to the IT network/system, AFRL will only endorse the following types of applications, consistent with the requirements above: a) Contractor employees who are U.S. citizens performing work under contracts, assistance instruments or other transactions awarded under this BAA. b) Contractor employees who are non-U.S. citizens and who have been granted a waiver. Any additional access restrictions established by the IT network/system owner apply. 3. FEDERALLY FUNDED RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT CENTERS AND GOVERNMENT ENTITIES: Federally Funded Research and Development Centers (FFRDCs) and Government entities (e.g., Government/National laboratories, military educational institutions, etc.) are subject to applicable direct competition limitations and cannot propose to this BAA in any capacity unless they meet the following conditions: a. FFRDCs: FFRDCs must clearly demonstrate that the proposed work is not otherwise available from the private sector; and FFRDCs must provide a letter on official letterhead from their sponsoring organization citing the specific authority establishing their eligibility to propose to Government solicitations and compete with industry, and their compliance with the associated FFRDC sponsor agreement's terms and conditions. This information is required for FFRDCs proposing to be prime contractors or sub-awardees. b. Government Entities: Government entities must clearly demonstrate that the work is not otherwise available from the private sector and provide written documentation citing the specific statutory authority and contractual authority, if relevant, establishing their ability to propose to Government solicitations. While 10 U.S.C. 2539b may be the appropriate statutory starting point for some entities, specific supporting regulatory guidance, together with evidence of agency approval, will still be required to fully establish eligibility. FFRDC and Government entity eligibility will be determined on a case-by-case basis; however, the burden to prove eligibility for all team members rests solely with the proposer. Government agencies interested in performing work related to this announcement should contact the Technical Point of Contact (TPOC). If resulting discussions reveal a mutual interest, cooperation may be pursued via other vehicles. IV. APPLICATION AND SUBMISSION INFORMATION: All responses to this announcement must be addressed to the Technical Point of Contact (TPOC) listed in SECTION VII. DO NOT send white papers to the Contracting Officer. 1. SUBMISSION DATES AND TIMES: It is recommended that white papers be received by 3:00 PM Eastern Standard Time (EST) on the following dates to maximize the possibility of award: FY18 by 29 Jan 2018 FY19 by 13 Apr 2018 FY20 by 29 Mar 2019 FY21 by 27 Mar 2020 FY22 by 26 Mar 2021 White papers will be accepted until 3:00 PM EST on 30 Sep 2022, but it is less likely that funding will be available in each respective fiscal year after the dates cited. This BAA will close on 30 Sep 2022. All offerors submitting white papers will receive notification of their evaluation results within 45 days of submission. Offerors should email the TPOC and the Contracting Officer listed in Section VII, for status of their white paper(s) after 45 days, if no such correspondence has been received. 2. CONTENT AND FORMAT: Offerors are required to submit 2 copies of a 3 to 5 page white paper summarizing their proposed approach/solution. Include both an Adobe pdf and MSWord version of the white paper on a disc with your hardcopies submission. The purpose of this white paper is to preclude unwarranted effort on the part of an offeror whose proposed work is not of interest to the Government. The white paper will be formatted as follows: a. Section A: Title, Period of Performance, Estimated Cost, Name/Address of Company, Technical and Contracting Points of Contact (phone and email)(this section is NOT included in the page count); b. Section B: Task Objective; and c. Section C: Technical Summary and Proposed Deliverables. All white papers shall be double spaced with a font no smaller than 12 point. In addition, respondents are requested to provide their Commercial and Government Entity (CAGE) Code, their unique entity identifier and electronic funds transfer (EFT) indicator (if applicable), an e-mail address and reference BAA FA8750-18-S-7005 with their submission. Multiple white papers within the purview of this announcement may be submitted by each offeror. If the offeror wishes to restrict its white papers, they must be marked with the restrictive language stated in FAR 15.609(a) and (b). 3. HANDLING AND MAILING INSTRUCTIONS: a. CLASSIFICATION GUIDANCE. All Proposers should review the NATIONAL INDUSTRIAL SECURITY PROGRAM OPERATING MANUAL, (NISPOM), dated February 28, 2006 and incorporating Change 2, dated May 18, 2016, as it provides baseline standards for the protection of classified information and prescribes the requirements concerning Contractor Developed Information under paragraph 4-105. Defense Security Service (DSS) Site for the NISPOM is: http://www.dss.mil/. In the event of a possible or actual compromise of classified information in the submission of your white paper or proposal, immediately but no later than 24 hours, bring this to the attention of your cognizant security authority and AFRL Rome Research Site Information Protection Office (IPO): Information Protection Office (contact only if a security compromise has occurred) Monday-Friday (0730-1630): Call +1 (555) 000-0000 or Email: contact@example.gov Evenings and Weekends: Call +1 (555) 000-0000 b. CLASSIFIED SUBMISSIONS. AFRL/RIEA will accept classified responses to this BAA when the classification is mandated by classification guidance provided by an Original Classification Authority of the U.S. Government, or when the offeror believes the work, if successful, would merit classification. Security classification guidance in the form of a DD Form 254 (DoD Contract Security Classification Specification) will not be provided at this time since AFRL is soliciting ideas only. Offerors that intend to include classified information or data in their white paper submission or who are unsure about the appropriate classification of their white papers should contact the technical point of contact listed in Section VII for guidance and direction in advance of preparation. c. MAILING INSTRUCTIONS. Any mailed responses, unclassified/classified, to this announcement must be sent U.S. Postal Service, registered mail or similar service and addressed to AFRL/RIEA, 525 Brooks Road, Rome NY 13441-4505, and reference BAA FA8750-18-S-7005. Electronic submission is NOT authorized. Questions can be directed to the TPOC listed in Section VII. 4. OTHER SUBMISSION REQUIREMENTS/CONSIDERATIONS: a. COST SHARING OR MATCHING: Cost sharing is not a requirement. Cost sharing may be proposed and will be considered on a case-by-case basis. b. SYSTEM FOR AWARD MANAGEMENT (SAM). Offerors must be registered in the SAM database to receive a contract award, and remain registered during performance and through final payment of any contract or agreement. Processing time for registration in SAM, which normally takes forty-eight hours, should be taken into consideration when registering. Offerors who are not already registered should consider applying for registration before submitting a proposal. The provision at FAR 52.204-7, System for Award Management (Oct 2016) applies. c. EXECUTIVE COMPENSATION AND FIRST-TIER SUBCONTRACT/ SUBRECIPIENT AWARDS: Any contract award resulting from this announcement may contain the clause at FAR 52.204-10 - Reporting Executive Compensation and First-Tier Subcontract Awards (Oct 2016). Any grant or agreement award resulting from this announcement may contain the award term set forth in 2 CFR, Appendix A to Part 25 which can be viewed at: http://www.ecfr.gov/cgi-bin/text-idx?SID=8fb6c83606df57968c3e7e145e7d683c&mc=true&node=ap2.1.25_1360.a&rgn=div9 d. ALLOWABLE CHARGES: The cost of preparing white papers/proposals in response to this announcement is not considered an allowable direct charge to any resulting contract or any other contract, but may be an allowable expense to the normal bid and proposal indirect cost specified in FAR 31.205-18. Incurring pre-award costs for ASSISTANCE INSTRUMENTS ONLY are regulated by 2 CFR part 200.458, Pre-Award Costs. e. GOVERNMENT APPROVED ACCOUNTING SYSTEM: An offeror must have a government approved accounting system prior to award of a cost-reimbursement contract per limitations set forth in FAR 16.301-3(a) to ensure the system is adequate for determining costs applicable to the contract. The acceptability of an accounting system is determined based upon an audit performed by the Defense Contract Audit Agency (DCAA). IMPORTANT: If you do not have a DCAA approved accounting system access the following link for instructions: https://www.fbo.gov/index?s=opportunity&mode=form&id=1cffad228f48b58057072a6c9113799d&tab=core&_cview=1 f. HUMAN USE: All research involving human subjects, to include the use of human biological specimens and human data, selected for funding must comply with Federal regulations for human subject protection. Further, research involving human subjects that is conducted or supported by the DoD must comply with 32 CFR 219, "Protection of Human Subjects" found at: http://www.access.gpo.gov/nara/cfr/waisidx_07/32cfr219_07.html, and DoD Instruction 3216.02, "Protection of Human Subjects and Adherence to Ethical Standards in DoD-Supported Research" found at: http://www.dtic.mil/whs/directives/corres/pdf/321602p.pdf. 1. Institutions awarded funding for research involving human subjects must provide documentation of a current Assurance of Compliance with Federal regulations for human subject protection, for example a Department of Health and Human Services, Office of Human Research Protection Federal Wide Assurance found at: http://www.hhs.gov/ohrp. 2. All institutions engaged in human subject research, to include subcontractors, must have a valid assurance. In addition, personnel involved in human subject research must document the completion of appropriate training for the protection of human subjects. 3. For all research that will involve human subjects in the first year or phase of the project, the institution must submit evidence of a plan for review by an institutional review board (IRB) as part of the proposal. The IRB conducting the review must be the IRB identified on the institution's Assurance of Compliance. The protocol, separate from the proposal, must include a detailed description of the research plan, study population, risks and benefits of study participation, recruitment and consent process, data collection, and data analysis. The designated IRB should be consulted for guidance on writing the protocol. The informed consent document must comply with 32 CFR 219.116. A valid Assurance of Compliance and evidence of appropriate training by all investigators should accompany the protocol for review by the IRB. 4. In addition to a local IRB approval, An AFRL-level human subject regulatory review and approval is required for all research conducted or supported by the DoD. The Air Force office responsible for managing the award can provide guidance and information about the AFRL-level review process. Confirmation of a current Assurance of Compliance and appropriate human subjects protection training is required before AFRL-level approval can be issued. 5. The time required to complete the IRB review/approval process will vary depending on the complexity of the research and/or the level of risk to study participants; ample time should be allotted to complete the approval process. The IRB approval process can last between 1 to 3 months, followed by a DoD review that could last 3 to 6 months. No funding may be used toward human subject research until all approvals are granted. Therefore, in their cost proposals offerors should separate human use into a separate option. V. APPLICATION REVIEW INFORMATION: 1. CRITERIA: The following criteria, which are listed in descending order of importance and will be used to determine whether white papers and proposals submitted are consistent with the research areas of interest and expected results within the broad topic areas as described in the Technology Requirements Description section of this BAA and of interest to the Government: a) Overall Scientific and Technical Merit - The extent to which the proposed technical approach to the development and/or enhancement of the propo...