SOURCES SOUGHT
99 -- Collaborative Tools (Sandbox)
- Notice Date
- 10/26/2010
- Notice Type
- Sources Sought
- NAICS
- 541512
— Computer Systems Design Services
- Contracting Office
- Department of Veterans Affairs;VHA Service Center (VSC);Building 3, Second Floor;10000 Brecksville Road;Brecksville OH 44141
- ZIP Code
- 44141
- Solicitation Number
- VA70111RI0003
- Response Due
- 11/8/2010
- Archive Date
- 1/7/2011
- Point of Contact
- Anthony Wilson
- Small Business Set-Aside
- N/A
- Description
- This Sources Sought Notice is for information and planning purposes only at this time and shall not be construed as a solicitation or as an obligation on the part of the Department of Veterans Affairs. The Department of Veterans Program Contracting Activity Central (VA-PCAC) is seeking interested sources (contractors) for a near-future solicitation and procurement to acquire tools and services to provide a collaborative environment called the 'Innovation Sandbox.' 1.The Innovation Sandbox will be a virtual and transparent environment, eventually accessible to any VA employee or Contractor with a network account. The Innovation Sandbox will be used for a range of activities including collaborative development of ideas, requirements, models and software. The virtual nature of the Innovation Sandbox will support communities of interest, irrespective of organizational alignment or physical location, and strengthen early idea sharing and maturation leading to the identification of promising solutions to business concerns and requirements definition that represent enterprise needs. 2.The collaborative tools are expected to provide the environment necessary to support the following activities: a.Self-organization and sustainment of communities of interest; b.Full lifecycle management of idea management, knowledge sharing; c.Distributed software development management (e.g., configuration management, issue tracking, assignment tracking and bug reporting. NOTE: The operating platform (e.g. hardware, operating system, software development accounts) for the Innovation Sandbox and associated infrastructure and engineering and operations are out of scope as are software development tools such as code generators and requirements repositories. 3.In addition to providing and maintaining an environment as described in 2.above, the Government will also require services such as defining a governance plan for collaborative tools use and administration, developing standard operating guides and increasing program awareness through a variety of communication methods. 4.The Innovation Sandbox will be introduced in stages. The first phase will be a pilot with a limited number of users and projects and is expected to last approximately four months. In preparation for the pilot, the software tools will be installed and configured, governance will be established, and users and pilot projects will be identified. Ongoing support for the pilot will afford VHA an opportunity to improve and enhance the environment before transitioning it to production status. The production phase is expected to begin approximately six months after contract award. 5. The Contractor shall supply collaborative tools software and services to provide, administer and sustain an integrated collaborative environment. The Contractor will also assess and document opportunities to expand and strengthen the administration and operation of the program. 6. The following task areas reflect the categories of work that will be done to provide and sustain the operational environment. d.Self-organization and sustainment of communities of interest; e.Full lifecycle management of idea management, knowledge sharing; f.Distributed software development management (e.g., configuration management, issue tracking, assignment tracking and bug reporting); and g.Assessment and documentation of administrative and operations opportunities such as development of standard operating guides and increasing program awareness through a variety of communication methods. 7.VHA has established a high-level Capability List for the Innovation Sandbox program. Paragraph 6 expands upon this list with a set of Core Goals. The numbers in parentheses in the list below represent a mapping to the Core Goals in paragraph 6. The desired Capabilities are as follows: a.Ability to support self-organization. This includes functions such as finding individuals with similar professional interests, discovering and joining communities, structuring and governing projects and/or teams. (Core Goal 1) b.Ability to support 'bottom up' innovation. This ability includes open opportunity submission, discovery, assessment, and collaborative maturation to improve processes, services, and products used by VHA. (Core Goal 1) c.Ability to support 'top down' innovation. This ability includes scheduled or urgent executive management "innovation challenges". (Core Goal 1) d.Ability to spotlight successes and support incentives to encourage user participation in the Innovation Sandbox. (Core Goal 1) e.Ability to allow assessments of innovative work efforts. Includes transparent commenting, voting, and popularity rankings tracked overall and by communities. (Core Goals 1, 2) f.Ability to identify isolated work efforts, discover commonalities, and realign or merge redundant tasks or groups. (Core Goals 1, 2, 10) g.Ability to support work efficiency within the Innovation Sandbox. This includes structured assessments, workflow, communication, and scheduling of activities. (Core Goals 1 -3) h.Ability to support knowledge sharing. This ability allows users to contribute, search, browse, analyze and maintain the innovation knowledge base. (Core Goals 1 -5, 8) i.Ability to support knowledge sharing. This ability allows users to contribute, search, Ability of the integrated architecture and artifacts (design, content, data, and metadata files) to contribute to overall flexibility: create anywhere, use anywhere, evaluate and trace. (Core Goals 1 - 6, 9 - 11) j.Ability to support the following types of roles: (Core Goals 1- 10) i."Guest" for general read privileges; ii."Registered User" to additionally include interactive privileges; iii."Authorized User" to additionally include special permissions (e.g., to a specific project); iv.Traditional "Administrator"; and v.Traditional "Sys Op." k.Ability to support transparency and traceability. This ability includes visibility of changes to social (e.g., ideas, suggestions, comments, questions, issues, and actions) and project artifacts (e.g., requirements, tasks, files, especially documents, code, and other "digital products" created via software, rich media including audio and video, and other project-focused artifacts of interest) throughout the environment. Core Goals 1 - 10) l.Ability to generate summarized and detailed reports (e.g., usage and status) for a variety of administrative and functional areas. (Core Goals 2, 10) m.Ability to support distributed development management. This ability includes software project functions such as configuration management, file release management, issue tracking, assignment tracking and bug reporting. (Core Goals 3, 4) n.Ability to support rapid user proficiency (usability, cognition, efficiency). (Core Goal 9) o.Ability to continuously adapt and extend as technology and VHA business needs change. (Core Goals 10, 11) p.Ability to provide a variety of administrative and operations support for the Innovation Sandbox such as standard operating guides and communication materials. (Core Goal 12) 6.VHA has expanded upon the high-level capability goals with the following set of 12 Core Goals that detail the desired capabilities. Core Goals 1 - 11 are focused on capabilities the toolset is expected to provide; Core Goal 12 speaks to capabilities the Contractor team must have in order to support the administrative and operational aspects of the environment. The Contractor is encouraged to leverage its experience in proposing solutions that may exceed VHA's stated goals and objectives or provide desired functionality capabilities in a more user friendly, efficient manner than what is expressed in this document. Core Goals: 1. Ability to support collaborative innovation. 2. Ability to support governance. 3. Ability to support collaborative software development. 4. Ability to support source code management. 5. Ability to support traceability among and between various types of artifacts. 6. Ability to support a variety of canned and ad hoc queries. 7. Ability to selectively support specific and restricted communications. 8. Ability to support custom knowledge management capabilities. 9. Ability to support rapid user proficiency and efficiency. 10.Ability to support environment administrators. 11.Ability to support security and other non-functional features. 12. Contractor ability to support a variety of administrative and operational needs. Because this is a Sources Sought, no evaluation letters and/or results will be issued to the respondents. No solicitation exists. Therefore, do not request a copy of the solicitation. Respondents will not be notified of the results of the evaluation. The Government reserves the right to consider a small business, SDVOSB, VOSB or 8(a) set-aside based on responses hereto. 4. SUBMITTAL INFORMATION: All responses must include the following information: Company name, cage code, CCR number, Dunn & Bradstreet number, company address, Point-of-Contact name, phone number, fax number, and e-mail. The subject line of the correspondence should clearly display the RFI number. Also please provide the following information in your response; a. The type of work your company has performed in the past in support of the same or similar requirement. -Please list 3-5 contracts of similar scope and value and provide a brief discussion. b. Whether your company can provide the toolset only, services only, or both? c. Whether your company has been awarded a prime contract for a project of this nature before. If so, did the contract contain ISO requirements or similar type of controlled environment? d. Respondents shall provide the company's resumes, not to exceed two (2) pages each for key people that would be involved in the project and their respective roles. e. Please identify your company's number of years in business; affiliate information, parent company, and joint venture partners. f. Experience managing a team of subcontractors, if subcontractors will be used. g. Describe specific technical skills your company possess which ensure the capability to perform the described tasks. h. Provide company business size as designated by the NAICS association and the U.S. Small business Administration and status (i.e., Large Business, Small Business, Service-Disabled Veteran Owned Small Business, Small Disadvantaged Business, Women-Owned Small Business, Hub Zone Small Business, etc.). 5. It is requested that interested contractors submit a response (electronic submission) of no more than 5 pages in length, single spaced, 12 point font minimum that addresses the above information. Be sure to include the Sources Sought Number in the Subject Line of the email. Submissions (responses) shall be received by no later than 4 P.M., Eastern Standard Time on 11/08/2010. Submittals received after this date and time will not be accepted. At this time, no solicitation exists. Therefore, DO NOT REQUEST A COPY OF THE SOLICITATION. Contractors having the skills and capabilities necessary to perform the stated requirements should forward an e-mail only to the primary point of contact listed below. Contracting Office Address: Department of Veterans Affairs - PCAC 10000 Brecksville Rd. Bldg 3 2nd flr. Brecksville, Ohio 44141 Primary Point of Contact: Anthony Wilson, Contract Specialist E-Mail: Anthony.wilson3@va.gov
- Web Link
-
FBO.gov Permalink
(https://www.fbo.gov/spg/VA/ISC/OISC/VA70111RI0003/listing.html)
- Place of Performance
- Address: Department of Veterans Affairs;Processing Contract Activity Central;10000 Brecksville rd;Brecksville, Oh 44141
- Zip Code: 44141
- Zip Code: 44141
- Record
- SN02316916-W 20101028/101026233917-2e045d30c9c12479a1053b5d29593f70 (fbodaily.com)
- Source
-
FedBizOpps Link to This Notice
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