Loren Data's SAM Daily™

FBO DAILY ISSUE OF MAY 15, 2004 FBO #0901
SOURCES SOUGHT

D -- Request for Information - Army Knowledge Online (AKO) Enterprise Services

Notice Date

5/13/2004
 

Notice Type

Sources Sought
 

Contracting Office

ACA, ITEC4, Directorate of Contracting , 2461 Eisenhower Avenue, Alexandria, VA 22331-0700
 

ZIP Code

22331-0700
 

Solicitation Number

W91QUZ-04-R-AKO1
 

Response Due

5/28/2004
 

Archive Date

7/27/2004
 

Point of Contact

Teresa L. Lukavec, (703) 325-6172
 

E-Mail Address

Email your questions to ACA, ITEC4
(Teresa.Lukavec@itec4.army.mil)
 

Small Business Set-Aside

N/A
 

Description

This is not a Request for Proposal (RFP). The purpose of this Request For Information (RFI) is to solicit industry feedback regarding the development of the acquisition strategy and request for proposal for the Army Knowledge Online (AKO) Enterprise Services acquisition. The purpose of the acquis ition is to consolidate functions now performed under multiple existing contracts, provide the most efficient management construct, and provide continuous system improvements in support of the AKO enterprise. The AKO will be transformed into a best-in-cla ss enterprise infostructure operated and maintained by a single vendor. AKO BACKGROUND: AKO was started as a pilot project in 1997 and was so successful that the Secretary of the Army and Chief of Staff, Army mandated that all data, information and systems be moved behind this portal. The AKO architecture and portal represen t the first step in building the Army intranet that operates within the DoD Global Information Grid Enterprise Service (GIGES) construct and provides Army personnel with access to business related and mission-oriented knowledge in real time. Through AKO-E nterprise Services, disparate and redundant implementations are being transformed into an enterprise infostructure that will ultimately be operated and maintained by a single organization. At present, there are two AKO sites, a Primary site and a Secondar y site, both connected to the unclassified but sensitive Internet protocol router (NIPRNet) and secret internet protocol router (SIPRNet) networks. The Army Office of the Chief Information Officer/G6 is conducting full and open competition to enter into a systems integration contract to operate and maintain AKO as the Enterprise portal that provides universal, secure access for the Army world-wide. T he end state vision for AKO is ??????One Army Web presence providing global secure access to accurate, relevant, and authoritative information at anytime, from anywhere to ensure mission success.????? AKO and AKO-Secure (AKO-S) will be the single point of entry into the Army??????s Intranets for both the business side and the deployed soldiers to achieve reachback to the sustaining base for essential mission, and critical support processes, especially for forces in remote geographic areas such as Bosnia , Afghanistan, and Iraq. ADDITIONAL REFERENCE MATERIAL: An on-line reading room has been established at http://128.190.157.111/akolsi.nsf/main. The user name is: AKOLSI. The Password is: Customer123. The password is case sensitive. The reading room currently contains the fo llowing documents (information only): - SOWs for the current AKO contracts - AKO CPD (Capabilities Production Document) - DRAFT Statement of Objectives (SOO) for the upcoming acquisition - AKO Vision ACQUISITION STRATEGY ISSUES: SCOPE: AKO, the Army??????s enterprise information portal, consists of both a Primary and Secondary site. The successful offeror may have complete program management responsibility at both the Primary and Secondary sites or may have shared responsibilit y between the Primary and Secondary sites with the existing Secondary site contractor. This AKO-Enterprise Services procurement will consolidate four active, independent contracts in support of the AKO effort. The scope includes systems operation and mai ntenance, network and systems engineering support, hardware and software integration, software development and maintenance, application development and maintenance, Army-wide help desk support, and senior level technology and program management support ser vices. Services must be provided, without disruption, on a continuous 24 hours, 7 days a week, 365 days a year basis. The successful offeror will provide the necessary infrastructure and tools to the Active, National Guard, and Reserve soldiers and th eir families; Department of the Army Civilians; and applicable contractors. (Reference: Reading room Statement o f Work documents for more detail) ACQUISITION OBJECTIVES: The objective of this procurement is to obtain a solution that efficiently, effectively, and economically provides and maintains a standard Information Technology (IT) infrastructure to support Army military and civilian employees in meeting AKO??????s mission. As such, the primary objectives of this acquisition are to: 1. Receive a solution that produces a seamless/transparent transition from existing contracts to this contract, enhances performance goals, as well as process standards and procedures. 2. Under a performance-based arrangement, award to a contractor committed to delivering a highly reliable, user friendly, timely, and secure IT solution that meets or exceeds customer requirements and expectations. 3. Establish a partner-focused working relationship with AKO to provide the highest quality, consistent management approach and support of all AKO operations. 4. Receive a solution that provides robust and user-friendly Enterprise Commercial-Off-The-Shelf toolsets capability to integrate best of breed in collaboration suites, content management, search/data retrieval, and taxonomy. 5. Assure AKO services are provided to any connected AKO user anywhere at any time ?????? even in a network-challenged environment. 6. Assure ubiquitous access is provided to DoD and Army-wide Web-based business applications behind AKO. 7. Obtain security compliance/information assurance for AKO, its data, and users. 8. Obtain security architecture that is scalable to the Army. 9. Obtain the single entry point into the Army network allowing common access, security, authentication, and presentation solution (common look and feel) for all Army network services. 10. Ensure AKO Primary and Secondary sites remain operationally effective and without disruption during hardware and software changes and upgrades. 11. Develop robust testing capability to minimize adverse impacts to operations from changes and upgrades. ARCHITECTURAL DEVELOPMENT: The successful offeror will play a significant role in creating the most efficient AKO enterprise. The Government will consider both new and existing system designs in both software and underlying hardware platforms to provid e a continuous high quality service to AKO users. A successful vendor must be able to operate the AKO enterprise as soon as possible after contract award, finish implementing the ongoing system upgrades already in progress, and then transition to a leader ship role in the technical, managerial and organizational evolution of the AKO enterprise without disruption to current AKO services and capabilities. AKO SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT: The AKO Enterprise Services contractor will have significant responsibility for the continued development of AKO functionality. The Government seeks help in identifying AKO user needs, back-end business application needs, and ov erall functional enhancements. The Government also seeks the establishment of strong processes to formalize the development and facilitate the prioritization of AKO improvements. CONTRACT OPTION: The current AKO and AKO-S systems infostructure consists of contractor-owned components located at a primary site, Ft. Belvoir, Virginia and a secondary site at an unnamed remote location. The primary and secondary sites are exact images of each other, each sharing the AKO user load. The Government currently has a contractor in place providing the primary and secondary site platforms, associated systems software and operations as a managed service. In the near-term, it may not be cost effective for the Government to end its contractual relationship with the current contractor for the disaster recovery services. These services represent roughly 2/3 of the total funding expended for the current AKO Enterprise Services. The Government is considering including this work as an option for execution when it can be proven that a new implementation fo r the disaster recovery services is more cost effective than the current approach. The remaining AKO enterprise systems are operating on Government-owned platforms at the Ft. Belvoir, Virginia location. PERFORMANCE-BASED: Proposals will be solicited using performance-based service contracting principles including use of a Statement of Objectives approach for defining the requirements. TERM: The contract term is anticipated to include a base period of one year, with four one-year options to extend the term. QUESTIONS: The Government is interested in obtaining the following information from industry to consider in determining its acquisition strategy and development of the RFP. 1. Is it feasible to include a contract option for consolidating the services currently provided by another contractor ? 2. Is a managed service approach feasible or should the government provide all the hardware/software? 3. What specific detail or additional information is needed in order to bid on this entire requirement? 4. How would you recommend handling software licenses issues? 5. What contractual incentives or disincentives would motivate outstanding performance? In what areas can performance most effectively be incentivized? 6. What type of contract would be most beneficial to both the government and the contractor? 7. How long would it take to transition from the existing contracts to the new contract? 8. What logical portions of work are suitable for small business participation on an effort of this size? 9. What portal and data/content management best practices are used by industry? 10. How does industry leverage portals to ensure effective support to multi-functional elements of the organization, and what lessons learned can they share? 11. What are the industry standards for portal maintenance? What are the cost drivers unique to portal maintenance? SUBMISSION INSTRUCTIONS: Responses to this RFI will be in the form of a White Paper, not to exceed fifteen (15) pages, and supported by a Microsoft Power Point briefing, including notes, not to exceed ten (10) slides. Submit responses , via e-mail, to Jo hn Norway at John.Norway@itec4.army.mil not later than 28 May 2004.
 

Place of Performance

Address: ACA, ITEC4 Directorate of Contracting , 2461 Eisenhower Avenue Alexandria VA

Zip Code: 22331-0700

Country: US
 

Record

SN00585495-W 20040515/040513212228 (fbodaily.com)
 

Source

FedBizOpps.gov Link to This Notice
(may not be valid after Archive Date)

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