RFI DHS PIL Knowledge Management Systems

THE PURPOSE OF THIS NOTICE IS TO CONDUCT MARKET RESEARCH: The Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Procurement Innovation Lab (PIL) is issuing this Request for Information (RFI) to assist with market research on a Knowledge Management System. The PIL is a virtual lab which provides a safe space for procurement teams across DHS to test the use of Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) flexibilities to award contracts in an effort to manage risk, shorten time to award, reduce barriers to competition, and to provide better mission outcomes. We focus on the "obtain" phase of the procurement process: Solicitation --> Evaluation --> Award. The PIL is not a tiger team--we do not take over a procurement. Instead, a procurement team volunteers to step into the PIL where they are assigned a PIL Coach who serves as a resource and champion for the team. Coaches engage their assigned teams on at least a bi-weekly basis to discuss accomplishments, goals, and challenges. Coaches also provide solicitation documents to teams from other PIL projects. Coaches engage in coaching sessions outside of their regular bi-weekly meetings with procurement teams CURRENT STATE: Currently, PIL Coach engagements with teams are tracked on an individual basis by each coach. Some documents collected by teams for future reference and use are sometimes stored on a Sharepoint site if the coach remembers to upload them. FUTURE STATE: The PIL is researching the market availability of a Knowledge Management System which doubles as a Workload Management System and a Data Management System. An intuitive, easy-to-use system will allow PIL Coaches to manage workload in a consistent manner in order to make it easy to quickly find other PIL projects and documents while also allowing for comprehensive data analysis and the ability to run visually engaging reports on that data. USERS: PIL Coaches at first (a team of 5 or 6 individuals). Needs to be scalable to coaches at other DHS components and then, eventually, coaches at other federal government agencies outside of DHS. DOCUMENTS: Very few documents are captured from procurement teams when PIL Coaches engage with them. Only 1 document is required from a team at the start of engagement: a PIL 1-pager. Afterwards, a PIL Coach may collect a solicitation, source selection plan, final award, and maybe one or two advisory notice letters. Overall, a PIL Coach probably captures less than 10 final-version documents from any procurement team we coach. OTHER DATA TO CAPTURE: If you look at the attachment, you will see that we also capture process improvements. We also manage the workbook associated with our PIL Boot Camp Workshops and PIL Coaching Clinics. We also manage our own Digi-Badge micro-credential program. Currently, the process of issuing digi-badges is very manual and time-consuming. COMMON MISCONCEPTION: We are not seeking a system that allows PIL Coaches to conduct document collaboration with their assigned teams nor to simply find documents. We are not interested in a system that only stores documents or allows for document collaboration. PREFERENCES: PIL Coaches do not always coach from their desk. Sometimes they are in the field at a procurement team's office. Would a cloud-based solution would be feasible for remote access. When a PIL Coach engages with a team on a bi-weekly meeting, the coach wants to be able to record who attended, their role on the team (contracting officer, procurement attorney, program manager, etc), and notes about what was discussed. We also want to be able to keep track of important email exchanges with teams as those sometimes contain documents which require our feedback. A system that could collect a PIL 1-pager from a Microsoft Outlook inbox and automatically create a new entry/team in a knowledge management or workload management solution would be ideal if it is possible. We want an easier way to manage and issue micro-credentials. Currently, we have to pull names from a spreadsheet to create and send an email containing a person's digi-badge. This whole process is very much a schoolhouse function, but it is one we need to be able to manage. If a person has engaged the PIL on 4 projects and also attended a PIL Boot Camp, it would be great if the system automatically recognized that through data captured on the PIL 1-pager or bi-weekly engagements and the PIL Boot Camp roster and could automatically issue that person their earned digi-badge. RFI ATTACHMENT: Attached to this RFI announcement is an Adobe PDF presentation providing background information on the PIL, how it captures data, what kind of data it captures, and what type of reporting we are typically required to do. PLEASE ANSWER THE FOLLOWING QUESTIONS: Company Name: DUNS Number: Point-of-Contact Name, Phone, and Email: Business size and any special classifications: Is your company on any GSA Schedules or GWACs? Which ones? Do you have a single commercially available system that can perform these functions or is it a combination of systems? If so, what is the name of the system or systems? Can your company provide this solution on your own or would you partner with another company? Is your company the owner of this solution or are you an authorized reseller? Can this system be scaled for users outside of DHS across any government agency? Please explain how since each agency has its own special requirements regarding IT security: Is this a cloud-based solution? If so, how do you ensure it is secure? What is the estimated cost for 5 or 6 users? What do the costs look like as it scales to over 100, 500, or a 1,000 users?: Are you interested in providing a market research product demo either in-person in the Washington, DC, region or virtually via a DHS-compatible meeting platform using your own subscription? ------------------------------------------------- **** 09.21.20 Update*** Based on responses received to this RFI and additional market research conducted by our team, the PIL has decided to procure a Microsoft solution through existing DHS contract vehicles. As a result, we will not be issuing a solicitation for this requirement. We appreciate industry taking the time to respond to this RFI.