NASA Integrated Communications Services (NICS) 2.0

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is issuing this sources sought synopsis as a means of conducting market research to identify parties having an interest in and the resources to support this requirement for Enterprise Communications Services. This acquisition will be a follow-on procurement to the current NASA Integrated Communications Services (NICS), contract # NNM11AA04C. The result of this market research will contribute to determining the type and method of procurement. The applicable North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) code assigned to this procurement is 541512, Computer Systems Design Services; under this NAICS code a business is considered small if its annual revenue is less than $27.5M. NASA is seeking capabilities from all categories of Small Businesses and HBCU/MSIs for the purpose of determining the appropriate level of competition and/or Small Business and HBCU/MSI subcontracting goals for this requirement. This synopsis is for information and planning purposes only and there is no solicitation at this time. This request for capability information does not constitute a request for proposals and submission of any information in response to this market survey is purely voluntary. The government assumes no financial responsibility for any costs incurred and the respondents will not be notified of the results of the evaluation. If a solicitation is released it will be synopsized in beta.SAM.gov. Information regarding this opportunity can be found at beta.SAM.gov and https://procurement.jsc.nasa.gov/nics2/. It is the potential offeror's responsibility to monitor these sites for the release of any solicitation or synopsis. Background Information The current NICS contract was one of the NASA IT Infrastructure Integration Program (I3P) contracts. I3P was developed to transform NASA's IT Infrastructure services from a Center-centric model to an enterprise-centric model. I3P entailed consolidation and central management of IT services in the areas of Tier 1 service desk and ordering, web services and technologies, enterprise business and management applications, integrated network/communications services, end user services, and data center services. The primary purpose of the NICS contract was to transform, manage and operate an end-to-end seamless communications network and infrastructure that encompasses both NISN Wide-Area Networks (WAN) and Center Local Area Network (LAN) services at NASA centers and associated component facilities. The NICS contract was awarded on April 19, 2011 for a total potential contract value of $1,172,716,489.00 with performance starting June 1, 2011. Requirement The NICS 2.0 contract will continue NASA's communications transformation through deployment of network technologies enabling Zero Trust solution deployments and advanced network automation and segmentation to improve security and reduce operational cost. The NICS 2.0 contract will enable the Artemis program and other NASA missions through increased mission engagement and deployment of innovative solutions that improve NASA's ability to seamlessly and securely collaborate with its commercial, educational, and International Partners. The major elements of the Statement of Work for the potential follow-on procurement may include, but is not limited to the following: Contract Management Enterprise Services a. Corporate and Mission Network, Voice, Data, Collaboration, IT Security, Management and Operations Services, Video Content Delivery Network b. Customer Relationship Management c. Cable Plant Services d. VOIP/Telephone Services Communications Infrastructure Projects Special Purpose Communications Services a. Russia Communications and IT Services b. NASA National Security Systems Service IT Support c. Digital Television Engineering d. Huntsville Operations Support Center (HOSC) Network Support IT Security Services a. Infrastructure and Network Security b. Cyber Security For additional reference information only, a copy of the current Performance Work Statement has been attached to this announcement. If your organization has the potential capacity to perform some or all contract services listed above, please provide the following information to the best of your ability. Partial responses are also accepted. Organization name, address, email address, Web site address, telephone number, CAGE code, and size and type (large, small, women-owned) of ownership for the organization, and the number of years in business. Discuss your company's ability to perform each of the services listed above. If subcontracting or joint venture is anticipated in order to deliver technical capability, organizations should address the anticipated administrative and management structure of such arrangements (if this information is known at this time). Also address what elements of work would be performed by the prime or joint venture and which elements would be performed by subcontractors. The government will evaluate market information to ascertain potential market capacity to: 1) provide services consistent in scope and scale with those described in this notice and otherwise anticipated; and, 2) determine whether to conduct a competition with full and open competition or through a small business set-aside. In addition to the information requested above, interested parties may also provide any additional comments regarding this potential acquisition regarding, but is not limited to proposed contract type, incentive arrangements, evaluation criteria, or performance metrics. Specifically, interested parties are requested to address the following items: NASA is considering separating management and operations of security infrastructure (e.g., firewalls, intrusion detection, etc.) from communications infrastructure. How would this work in practice? Provide examples from other agencies if applicable. What were the lessons learned? What are industry best practices? NASA sees a number of IT infrastructure components being critical for a successful Zero-Trust deployment, including security policy and governance, identity credentialing and access management (ICAM), data center systems and applications, as well as communications infrastructure. Which of these elements do you see as critical to include in the NICS 2.0 contract? What elements can be separated contractually, and what methods would you recommend be included in the contract requirements to ensure effective contractor collaboration and integration? How can NASA optimize software defined networking to take advantage of cloud computing capabilities? Please provide your ideas for how the NICS 2.0 contract requirements may be best structured to enable future implementation of cloud/enterprise applications as it relates to zero trust architecture. What are the major business and/or technology innovations on the horizon that interested parties foresee over the next 10 years and how would the government ensure/incentivize the contractor to provide such continuous improvement/innovation to the Government. Are there any Government regulations or policies in place that may inhibit NASA from obtaining the most current/innovation IT solutions? What are some industry best practices for scoping these kinds of requirements so that, they can be provided on a fixed price basis? While the current NICS contract largely focused on administrative and mission support communications, NASA is looking to strategically employ the NICS 2.0 contract to encourage better mission utilization by providing innovative solutions that enable the NASA Mission. Please provide your ideas for how to best structure the contract to enable this shift. If the Government issues a Request for Proposal (RFP), the government reserves the right to restrict the procurement to small businesses. Telephone inquiries will not be accepted or acknowledged, and no feedback or evaluations will be provided to companies regarding their submissions. NASA Clause 1852.215-84, Ombudsman, is applicable. The Center Ombudsman for this acquisition can be found at http://prod.nais.nasa.gov/pub/pub_library/Omb.html. Submission Instructions: Interested parties who consider themselves qualified in one or more elements of the Statement of Work are invited to submit a response to this Sources Sought Notice by 4:00 p.m. CST on Friday, January 17, 2020. All responses under this Sources Sought Notice must be emailed to the Contracting Officers, Janet Arkinson at janet.g.arkinson@nasa.gov and Michelle Berdux at michelle.l.berdux@nasa.gov, and not exceed 20 pages. Please reference 80JSC20NICS2 in any response. An Interested Parties List will be compiled and posted to allow potential offerors the opportunity to network. Companies that are interested in being included on the list should send the following information to the Contracting Officers: Company Name, Address, Contact Name, Phone, E-mail. Organization Conflicts of Interest (OCI) In addition to the information requested above, NASA is requesting information from industry regarding potential OCI arising from the NICS 2.0 acquisition. The nature of the work anticipated under the NICS 2.0 contract may create the potential for OCI as currently described in FAR Subpart 9.5. Each interested party should review FAR Subpart 9.5 in light of NASA's anticipation of OCI issues and consider carefully the extent to which an OCI may arise before making the decision to compete for NICS 2.0. Specifically, NASA anticipates that the effort under NICS 2.0 will include the following types of tasks which could lead to potential OCI issues: The contractor may be asked to gather and or write Information Technology Security requirements for the implementation of security plans and controls in compliance with NASA policy and regulations. A potential for an unequal access OCI has been identified in performing this work. A link to the NASA Guide on Organizational Conflicts of Interest has been attached to this announcement. Please reference this document for additional information about NASA's policies with respect to OCI issues. You are requested to provide electronic responses via e-mail to the Contracting Officer listed at the end of this synopsis. Your response is requested by 4:00 p.m. CST on Friday, January 17, 2020. Interested parties are requested to address the following questions: What type(s) of OCI issues would your company or potential team identify, if any, should you choose to propose on the NICS 2.0 contract? What strategies would you anticipate proposing to mitigate the OCI issues that you identified (if any)? Please provide strategy details, previous examples/experience with other contracts with NASA or other agencies, etc. Are there any other types of potential OCI issues with the proposed NICS 2.0 contract that were not identified in this RFI? Does your company foresee any OCI issues associated with the NICS 2.0 that would cause you to decide not to propose on the potential NICS 2.0 RFP? If so, please explain. NASA will review any responses received regarding potential OCI and each offeror's proposed OCI mitigation strategy. NASA will respond to each company who submits an OCI mitigation strategy. NASA's response will simply be an attempt to examine circumstances which might lead to or eliminate an OCI and is not intended to serve as a confirmation that, in fact, all potential OCI issues have been identified, that an OCI will ultimately exist, or that an interested party is capable of successfully eliminating or mitigating an identified OCI. NASA's response is also not intended to encourage or discourage any interested party from responding to an RFP issued for NICS 2.0 in the future. Furthermore, NASA's response in no way alters or interprets FAR 9.5 as it applies to a final statement of work or a final proposal submission, should an interested party elect to submit a proposal to an RFP for NICS 2.0. Subsequent to the initial OCI submission and NASA's response, the Government will not consider further information as it relates to this RFI. The Contractor will still be required to comply with the RFP OCI requirements and its submission will be considered in accordance with the RFP. OCI Submission Instructions: Interested parties who would like to submit OCI information are invited to submit a response to this Sources Sought Notice by 4:00 p.m. CST on Friday, January 17, 2020. All responses under this Sources Sought Notice must be emailed to the Contracting Officers, Janet Arkinson at janet.g.arkinson@nasa.gov and Michelle Berdux at michelle.l.berdux@nasa.gov, and not exceed 5 pages. This page count is exclusive of the page count noted above. Please reference 80JSC20NICS2 in any response. The documents on the NASA procurement website are for information and planning purposes, to allow industry the opportunity to comment, and to promote competition only. NASA will not affirmatively release any information received in response to this RFI to the public, but may use information received in developing the best approach for a contract strategy, and therefore such information may be recognizable to the interested party who submitted it. The Government intends to release the names, addresses, and points of contact of all respondents unless specifically requested not to do so by the respondent. All questions should be directed to the point of contact identified below. In accordance with FAR 15.201(e), responses to this notice are not offers and cannot be accepted by the Government to form a binding contract. The Government is under no obligation to issue a solicitation or to award any contract on the basis of this RFI. The Government will not pay for any information solicited under this RFI. No solicitation exists; therefore, do not request a copy of a solicitation. If a solicitation is released it will be synopsized in beta.SAM.gov. It is the interested party's responsibility to monitor these sites for the release of any solicitation or synopsis. Modification 1: You are notified that the following changes are made: The "OCI Submission Instructions" paragraph was added. The due date for responses is not extended. Modification 2: You are notified that the following changes are made: The title of the procurement is changed from NICS 2.0 to AEGIS, and the solicitation number is changed from 80JSC020NICS2 to 80JSC020AEGIS. The due date for responses is not extended.