Description
Brand Name of Equal Justification In accordance with FAR 6.302-1 the following brand name justification is provided. It is requested that sufficient documentation be provided to allow evaluation of the proposed solution to meet the Governments requirements. Please include a list-price model based on the information provided herein, inclusive of the cost of maintenance and support. A list of resellers and any Government contracts (NASA, GSA, DOD, ect.) is also requested. Responses to this posting will be evaluated to determine if full and open competition shall be provided. The resulting solicitation will be posted for competition on the NASA SEWP IV contract. 1. Contracting Activity Department of Veterans Affairs Office of Acquisition and Materiel Management Center for Acquisition Innovation - Austin 1615 Woodward Austin, TX 78772 2. Nature of Action Being Approved: This justification and approval sets forth the facts and requests approval for the issuance of a Purchase Order (PO) for software (to include FileNet, SYSBACK, Active PDF, etc) with EPOCH Concepts, a veteran owned small business to procure various software components essential in the maintenance of the Virtual VA electronic document management system. 3. Description of Service and Supplies: The web-based, Virtual VA Electronic Documents Management system has been VBA Compensation & Pension Services paperless processing tool, supporting various pilot programs since FY2000. In FY2008, the Paperless Processing of Veterans Claims initiative led by VBAs Office of Business Process Integration (OBPI) greatly accelerated various paperless processing pilot programs within C&P. This was in response to the VA Deputy Secretarys mandate for all of VBA to be operating in a paperless environment by 2012. Virtual VA has grown from just under 400 users in FY2000, to over 13,000 users today and is instrumental in supporting various paperless initiatives. While the VA has hired a Lead Systems Integrator to design an enterprise electronic document management system, it is likely 2 years a more before a product will allow for the sunset of the current application. Virtual VA will continue to act as the bridge application to a paperless environment for C&P Service and has become a mission critical application in servicing many C&P claims. As such, various software upgrades are required to support the current and anticipated growth into the system. Additionally, Virtual VA has a document capture and scanning solution that will be expanded in key areas defined by VBA. The capture solution is composed of hardware and software where each instance requires the appropriate licensing. The software identified in this procurement supports this accordingly. The specific software seeking immediate procurement approval is: Active PDF Portfolio v3.8 Professional (Active PDF Portfolio comes with 2 threads) Active PDF Server 3-thread upgrades IBM TIVOLI STORAGE MANAGER FOR SYSTEM BACKUP AND RECOVERY 10 PROCESSOR VALUE UNITS (PVUS) LICENSE + SW SUBSCRIPTION & SUPPORT 12 MONTHS IBM FILENET CAPTURE PROF-MED VOL DEVICE LIC + SW MAINT 12 MONTHS IBM FILENET CAPTURE DESKTOP - ADDL DOC ENTRY DEVICE LIC + SW MAINT 12 MONTHS IBM FILENET CAPTURE-DOC PROCESSING LICENSE + SW MAINT 12 MONOTHS 4. Statutory Authority: FAR 11.105(1) the particular brand name, product or feature is essential to the Governments requirements, and market research indicates other companies similar products do not meet, or cannot be modified to meet, the agencys requirement because, substantial duplication of cost to the Government would occur that cannot be recovered through competition. 5. Rationale Supporting Use of Authority Cited Above: Active PDF The Active PDF software suite is the only software that meets all of the requirements of document conversion to a non-editable format. With the volume of documents inserted through BFI anticipated rise up to 250,000 documents per week and up to 7,500,000 pages per week, no other software can meet these volume and conversion requirements. Additionally, the Active PDF software is already integrated into the Virtual VA suite of applications. If an alternative product where available, it would be costly to integrate a new product into an established solution, and would result in further delays to the paperless program. Active PDF Portfolio v3.8 and Active PDF Server software are essential products in supporting two critical functions of Virtual VA. Batch File Import (BFI), is the engine which receives feeds from legacy systems, contract imaging initiatives, and other VA output engines, reducing manual printing and dependency on paper documents. It also allows for user desktop inserts of electronic documents. Both are converted into non-editable PDF documents accessible within the Virtual VA system. IBM Tivoli Storage Manager is essential in the completion of back-ups of the Virtual VA IBM DR550 and is the only product certified to provide a comprehensive back-up and restore solution. As IBM is the manufacturer of the hardware, the software package is tightly integrated as part of the overall solution. Tivoli Storage Manager has already been procured to support the Virtual VA program. This procurement is for additional licenses to be fully compliant with all hardware components. IBM FileNET Capture Professional, Capture Desktop, and Doc Processing are already integrated into the Virtual VA solution. These licenses are required to support the expansion of Virtual VA capture and the forward movement of paperless processing. VBA uses FileNet as their proprietary software for electronic document management and currently has an enterprise license for other FileNet components. As this system is already in production operations for Virtual VA, any replacement product would require extensive customization to meet current VA requirements. If the VA business lines were required to rehost these critical applications into another imaging products, the impact to the processing of veterans entitlement claims would be substantial. The Clinger-Cohen Act of 1996 manadates that the government us COTS software which requires the last amount of costumization to meet the necessary business requirements. The products listed above, are already part of the Virtual VA solution and thus represent the least amount of coustomization required to meet the needs of the organization. 6. Description of Market Research: Internet searches, research on GSA schedules, and discussions held with commercial companies were held. Research indicated that no other products in the market place can be identified to meet the Governments requirements identified above. 7. Determination of Fair and Reasonable. Award will be issued as firm fixed priced off of the previously negotiated NASA SEWP IV contract. Price competition is expected from authorized resellers. 8. Other Supporting Data: N/A 9. Other Interested Sources: None 10. Future barriers to competition: VA has to solicit for only the specific brand names/models already in place in the OneVA network infrastructure at this time. Future requirements developed as a result of the Paperless Initiative intend to remove barriers to competition by ensuring VA has data rights in order to maintain software internally or receive maintenance externally with knowledge of functional requirements.