FSA - Testing and Stabilization of Applications (Stress Lab) Support Services

This notice is for informational purposes only and is intended to provide notification of the use of funds authorized under the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act of 2009 on this contract. The United States Department of Agriculture, Farm Service Agency, awarded a contract to Information Technology Experts, Inc. on March 12, 2008 for testing and stabilization of applications (stress lab) support services. This contract is a modification to add Recovery Act funds. This project will: - Improve the delivery of mission critical farm programs by expanding reliability and responsiveness of e-Gov initiatives. - Increase efficiencies in completing activities necessary to support mandated government program to assist farmers/ranchers/borrowers through modern technology. - Identify performance deficiencies found in FSA applications and allow remediation prior to production implementation. - Identify dependencies and record unanticipated impacts. - Implement best business practices in production implementation of new programs. In January 2007, FSA applications delivered on the web experienced extremely poor performance resulting in Service Center employee's inability to deliver mission critical programs to customers. A strategy was defined to support stabilization of FSA web application delivery which included building a separate Stress lab environment, and then performing in-depth stress testing of FSA applications. Stress testing identifies performance deficiencies in the application code, hardware settings, software settings and database queries. The lab provides an environment and resources to simulate a large number of users and determine where changes can best be made to improve speed and reliability of FSA applications. Early identification of improvements providing opportunities to resolve issues will provide greater service to Agency customers by reducing time spent waiting for information to be processed for program participation. This project will allow the FSA the resources needed to continue stress testing applications hosted on the current KC Web Farm, and new farm programs are delivered with improved service levels and reporting abilities. Overall, this will result in improved reliability and responsiveness of FSA farm program applications that are delivered to the FSA Service Centers customers. The award was made as a sole source through the 8(a) STARS GWAC program pursuant to Section 8(a) of the Small Business Act (15 U.S.C. 637(a)) and awarded in accordance with FAR Part 19.8.