D -- Comprehensive Large Array-Data Stewardship System (CLASS) IT Services Acquisition

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service (NESDIS) will be conducting competition to enter into a performance-based contract to support the development, engineering, integration and test, operations and maintenance, and evolution of the Comprehensive Large Array-data Stewardship System (CLASS) program, and an Archive, Access and Distribution System (AADS). This requirement will be a Small Business Set-Aside using NAICS code 517110 with a size standard of 1,500 employees. This requirement was previously cancelled from COMMITS NexGEN program (Request for Solution T3-0005). A draft solicitation may be released as early as two weeks from the post date of this synopsis. This Program will enable NESDIS to better meet NOAA’s responsibility for long-term archiving of the Nation’s environmental data. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is responsible for archival storage and management of environmental data and information, and has hundreds of millions of environmental observations stored on a variety of media dating back as far as the mid-1899s. These data support the Nation’s ability to ensure human safety and welfare, sustain economic stability and growth, and maintain environmental integrity. The ability to archive, integrate, access, and distribute environmental data and information is critical to the fulfillment of NPAA’s strategic goals. Today, there are demands on virtually all of NOAA’s programs to provide information on the health of the environment in real-time. The CLASS program is NOAA’s major initiative to re-engineer, modernize, and enhance the current suite of National environmental archive and access services to better serve the current and future environmental data and information needs of the Nation. Meeting requirements for a highly reliable and evolutionary environmental archival and distribution system of the CLASS magnitude is a very large task. A key element in this effort is the understanding that contractor provided Information Technology (IT) and related services can provide an important infrastructure for the CLASS program business functions. In addition, the performance-based arrangement envisioned provides for the contractor’s payment and incentives to be based on meeting service levels necessary to efficiently and economically support NESDIS in maintaining and evolving CLASS. NESDIS seeks a contractor that will bring a mission focus providing highly effective, secure and reliable computing and telecommunications resources. Further, the successful contractor must also continuously identify methods for applying information technology to improve NESDIS' mission performance and reduce total program costs. NESDIS seeks a contractor that brings proven expertise to identify, implement, and manage effective and efficient application and use of information technology to meet the CLASS mission. NESDIS is anticipating a best-value procurement emphasizing a stable cost environment with a potential term of ten (10) years.