The Department of Veterans Affairs, Office of Acquisition and Logistics, Contracting Office, Technology Acquisition Center (TAC), located at 260 Industrial Way West, Eatontown, NJ 07724 intends to enter into a contract on a basis of other than full and open competition for the Office of Information and Technology (OI&T) Region 4. The TAC intends to award a sole source Firm-Fixed-Priced (FFP) contract to SunGard Availability Services Limited Partnership (LP), 680 East Swedesford Road, Wayne, PA. This action is in direct support of Federal continuity of operations (COOP) requirements that state every Federal agency is required to plan for continuous performance of essential functions and operations in the event of an emergency. This is stated in the Federal Preparedness Circular 65, which is reinforced by the National Security Presidential Directive (NSPD)-51 and Homeland Security Presidential Directive (HSPD)-20. Veterans Healthcare is specifically cited as an essential Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) function. Therefore, the Office of Information & Technology (OI&T) Region 4 has stood up two (2) data centers (one, a VA owned data center located in Brooklyn and the other comprised of the aforementioned split locations in Philadelphia under SunGard) that ensure all essential Veterans Health Information Systems and Technology Architecture (VistA) operations are always functioning. The SunGard facilities are currently Certified and Accredited (C&A) by VA as operational data centers in support of clinical operations throughout the region. C&A is a process that ensures that systems and major applications adhere to formal and established security requirements that are well documented and authorized. C&A is required by the Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA) of 2002. All systems and applications that reside on U.S. Government networks must go through a formal C&A process before being put into production, and every three years thereafter. Since accreditation is the ultimate output of a C&A initiative, and a system or application cannot be accredited unless it meets specific security guidelines, the goal of C&A is to force federal agencies to put into production systems and applications that are secure. Additionally, C&A is a lengthy and costly process. Additional space at an existing VA data center location can leverage the existing C&A, thereby avoiding the duplication of cost and delivery delays. The SunGard facility originally was developed solely for the Veterans Integrated Service Network (VISN) 3 network and has now expanded to cover the entire OI&T Region 4 and continues to expand with a need for renewal of support services for the existing 2,875 square feet as well as an additional 2,500 square feet of floor space, power, heating, ventilation and cooling (HVAC) and support services to be acquired under this effort. A critical technical configuration necessitates that redundant failover data centers must be located within a relatively close proximity to one another in order to ensure latency and data transfer rates meet VA's requirements. In order to achieve synchronous data replication between geographically separate data centers and maintain high availability access, the VA requires a latency not to exceed 4 milliseconds. This means that in the expected configuration, a data center pair must be within 25 to 50 miles of each other. The current data centers host critical clinical applications, such as VistA, which require seamless support in order to ensure continuity of operations to the Veterans Health Administration. Providing seamless support requires that two separate data centers are always functioning simultaneously, thus providing data redundancy in the event that one center goes offline. The statutory authority permitting other than full and open competition is 41 U.S.C.253(c)(1) as implemented by the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) Subpart 6.302-1 entitled, "Only One Responsible Source and No Other Supplies or Services Will Satisfy Agency Requirements." The North American Industrial Classification (NAICS) for this effort is 541513. This notification shall close on Monday, February 28, 2011. All responsible sources may submit a response which shall be considered by the agency. Questions/responses shall be submitted via e-mail to Contract Specialist, Kelly McGirr,
[email protected], with the subject line as the synopsis number, VA118-11-RQ-0170. The Points of Contact (POCs) for this action are Kelly McGirr, Contract Specialist, 732-578-5560 or Kevin Loesch, Contracting Officer, 732-578-5487.