Sitecore Digital Experience Platform Software

INTRODUCTION

THIS IS A PRE-SOLICITATION NON-COMPETITIVE (NOTICE OF INTENT) TO AWARD A CONTRACT OR PURCHASE ORDER WITHOUT PROVIDING FULL OR OPEN COMPETITION (INCLUDING BRAND-NAME). 

The National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), Office of Acquisitions (OA) on behalf of the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK) intends to award a purchase order without providing for full and open competition to Sitecore USA for Sitecore Experience Platform Maintenance for NIDDK/ Computer Technology Branch (CTB) staff.

NORTH AMERICAN INDUSTRY CLASSIFICATION SYSTEM (NAICS) CODE

The intended procurement is classified under NAICS code 513210 with a Size Standard of $47.0 million.

REGULATORY AUTHORITY

The resultant contract will include all applicable provisions and clauses in effect through the Federal Acquisition Circular (FAC) 2025-06 effective October 1, 2025.

This acquisition is conducted under the procedures as prescribed in FAR Subpart 13.106-1(b).

STATUTORY AUTHORITY

This acquisition is conducted under the authority of 41 U.S.C. 1901 – Simplified Acquisition Procedures.

DESCRIPTION OF REQUIREMENT

BACKGROUND

The National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK) within the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has used the Sitecore Digital Experience Platform content management system (CMS) to operate its public website since 2016. The NIDDK public website receives nearly 60 million visitors annually and hosts 4,873 mobile-enabled webpages and 7,813 media library assets. The NIDDK public website performs critical communication functions for the NIDDK, including facilitating biomedical research activities, demonstrating the value of public investment in biomedical research in NIDDK topic areas, and disseminating free health information translated from NIDDK research for the American public.

NIH is currently working to consolidate all its institute/center public sites into a single NIH-wide site as part of federal government-wide communication consolidation efforts. As planning and preparation for this mass migration is underway, the NIH OCPL Digital Council, the body organizing and coordinating this effort, has requested all institutes and centers prepare to maintain operations for their sites for, at minimum, the next 12 months.

Finally, all NIH institute-based Offices of Communication and Public Liaison (OCPLs) were terminated in April 2025 with the exception of the central NIH OCPL per department reduction in workforce directives.

Since then, management of individual institute’s public facing sites has fallen to other remaining offices. At NIDDK, the Computer Technology Branch (CTB) has inherited operations and maintenance responsibilities for the NIDDK public website, including management and renewal of software licenses and products related to the infrastructure and operations of the NIDDK public website.

OBJECTIVE

In order to maintain essential operations and functionality of the NIDDK public website, the NIDDK Computer Technology Branch (CTB) requires the Sitecore Digital Experience Platform software licensing agreement to continue usage of the product and its features.

CONTRACTOR REQUIREMENTS

The Contractor shall provide a one-year renewal of Sitecore Digital Experience Platform content management software featuring:

• SaaS-based composable digital experience platform to ensure optimal page response/load times and modular site development for NIDDK’s 4K+ webpage public website
• Content entry/editing for publishing and updating webpages/content
• Headless content management that allows for reusable content to be published/delivered across the site in a single action to allow for prompt responses to contingencies/data calls and more efficient publishing
• Microsoft technologies and ASP.NET compatibility to align with NIDDK’s existing .NET application development investments
• Support for a multi-team/user development environment so that each site content owner can independently maintain content while requiring fewer software developer resources
• Optimization for MS Azure PaaS to ensure prompt deployment times.
• Support for containerized development and continuous deployments as best practices and to allow for draft content previews for leadership
• Media library capabilities for storing NIDDK’s 7K+ digital assets
• Visitor analytics and personalization tracking to enable content and site performance monitoring/evaluation
• Multi-site environment and multi-language support for representation of a variety of departments and projects represented and Spanish language health content.
• Access to Sitecore Technical Support through the Sitecore Support Portal

TASK AREAS

Task Area 1 – Enterprise Software Licensing

The vendor shall provide 12-month licensing to access and utilize the Sitecore Digital Experience Platform content management software aligning to the requirements outlined above.

Task Area 2 – Software Technical Support

The vendor shall provide 12-month access to technical support for the Sitecore Digital Experience Platform content management software license in the areas of errors or unexpected behaviors (i.e., bugs) and service outages related to Sitecore product installation, development or production tied to this software license in the form of access to the Sitecore Support and Self-Service Catalog Portal, Sitecore Documentation Library and Knowledge Base, and Sitecore Community forum access.

ORDER TYPE

The anticipated purchase order will be a Firm Fixed Price.

PAYMENT TERMS

Payment will be made monthly in arrears.

REVIEW AND ACCEPTANCE

The Project Officer or the Project Officer Supervisor will review and monitor the services provided to ensure services conform with contract requirements.  For Services, invoices will be approved by the program officer and/or the Contracting Officer Representative (COR) according to payment terms above.

PROJECT OFFICER

The following Project Officer(s) will represent the Government for the purpose of this Purchase Order:

                                        Project Officer: TBD

The Project Officer is responsible for: (1) monitoring the Contractor's technical progress, including the surveillance and assessment of performance and recommending to the Contracting Officer changes in requirements; (2) interpreting the statement of work and any other technical performance requirements; (3) performing technical evaluation as required; (4) performing technical inspections and acceptances required by this Purchase Order; and (5) assisting in the resolution of technical problems encountered during performance.

The Contracting Officer is the only person with authority to act as agent of the Government under this Purchase Order.  Only the Contracting Officer has authority to: (1) direct or negotiate any changes in the statement of work; (2) modify or extend the period of performance; (3) change the delivery schedule; (4) authorize reimbursement to the Contractor any costs incurred during the performance of this Purchase Order; or (5) otherwise change any terms and conditions of this Purchase Order.

CLOSING STATEMENT

If the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases’ Sitecore license lapses, the public website would go offline, creating substantial confusion among members of the public leveraging the site’s information/resources and will also make the agency site consolidation effort substantially more challenging and costly.

The federal government’s 10-year investment in no-cost access to health data and resources for the American public such as research tools, videos, etc. would also be impacted by a sudden outage.

This is not a request for competitive proposals.  However, interested parties may identify their interest and capability to respond to this notice.  Responses to this notice shall contain sufficient information to establish the interested parties’ bona-fide capabilities for fulfilling the requirement and include: unit price, list price, shipping and handling costs, the delivery period after contract award, the prompt payment discount terms, the F.O.B. Point (Destination or Origin), the Unique Entity Identifier (UEI), the Taxpayer Identification Number (TIN), and the certification of business size. All offerors must have an active registration in the System for Award Management (SAM) www.sam.gov.

A determination by the Government not to compete this proposed contract based upon responses to this notice is solely within the discretion of the Government.  The information received will normally be considered solely for the purposes of determining whether to proceed on a non-competitive basis or to conduct a competitive procurement.  

All responses must be received by Wednesday, December 10, 2025 at 12:00 PM EST. Responses must be submitted via email to Kimesha Leake, Contracting Officer at Kimesha.leake@nih.gov   

All responsible sources may submit a bid, proposal, or quotation which shall be considered by the agency.