SPECIAL NOTICE
R -- Carahsoft and Aysling Sole Source Procurements
- Notice Date
- 9/24/2010
- Notice Type
- Special Notice
- NAICS
- 541611
— Administrative Management and General Management Consulting Services
- Contracting Office
- Department of Transportation, Office of the Secretary of Tranportation (OST) Procurement Operations, OST Acquisition Services Division, 1200 New Jersey Ave, Washington, District of Columbia, 20590
- ZIP Code
- 20590
- Solicitation Number
- DTOS59-10-R-00316
- Archive Date
- 6/30/2011
- Point of Contact
- James H Mowery III, Phone: 202-366-4959, James H Mowery III, Phone: 202-366-4959
- E-Mail Address
-
james.mowery@dot.gov, james.mowery@dot.gov
(james.mowery@dot.gov, james.mowery@dot.gov)
- Small Business Set-Aside
- N/A
- Description
- Part A : Summary. On a SOLE SOURCE basis, the U. S. Department of Transportation's Research and Innovative Technology Administration (RITA) plans to award the two separate but closely related projects described below to Carahsoft Technology Corporation and to Aysling Digital Media Solutions, respectively, as two separate contract awards. Nevertheless, any person or organization OTHER THAN Carahsoft or Aysling may---- not later than 4:15 PM Eastern Time on October 14, 2010-----e-mail, to james.mowery@dot.gov and to Raymond.Keng@dot.gov, a Statement of Qualifications attempting to prove that the submitter is fully capable of performing the Carahsoft project, or the Aysling project, or both of those projects, at the high level of quality indispensable to RITA. No interested party is to contact Mr. Keng concerning this Special Notice, except for the limited purpose of including him as an addressee on any e-mail transmitting a Statement of Qualifications to James Mowery. Any Statement of Qualifications addressing only ONE of the projects shall also explain in detail how the submitter would COORDINATE its project-work with any SEPARATE entity which might hereafter be performing the OTHER project. Part B : The Carahsoft project. The remaining text within this Part B describes the Carahsoft project. "Purchase of Acquia Government at Carahsoft technical support, professional services and training for Proof-of-Concept of the RITA Content Management System solution" NOTE: Two separate vendors (Carahsoft and Aysling Digital Media) are required to perform the Proof-of-Concept. (Procurement Request No. 11-40-0001) 1. Identification of Agency Research and Innovative Technology Administration (RITA), U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT),1200 New Jersey Avenue, S.E., Washington, DC 20590. 2. Description of Action A proposed one-time, firm-fixed-price contract for the activity referenced in the heading above. The estimated total price of the contract is $36,440.05. 3. Description of Services to Be Provided Exception to the fair opportunity process to procure technical support, training and integration services for the proof-of-concept evaluation of the Woodwing Enterprise publishing system connector to the Acquia Drupal Content Management System. The proposed contractual action entails the procurement of professional services, training and annual technical support on a Firm-Fixed-Price Basis via a Purchase Order. The services and software will be acquired via Purchase Order, with a period of performance approximately two (2) weeks from date of award. This proposed acquisition is to provide professional services, training and annual technical support to DOT/RITA to fully evaluate and utilize the capabilities of the Woodwing Enterprise publishing system connector to the Acquia Drupal Content Management System (CMS) and the administration and use of the Drupal CMS for DOT/RITA Web Operations. This Proof of Concept will provide Government JumpStart services to enable the DOT/RITA Web Team to develop their Acquia Drupal solution and configure it for running RITA's web sites. RITA is also implementing a pilot instance of Woodwing software and would like to integrate a pilot Drupal instance with data captured via Woodwing. Acquia will provide on-site Consulting Services to work directly with RITA's Web Team and Woodwing's integrator (Aysling Digital Media Solutions) to configure a pilot Drupal instance to accept data from the Woodwing system and display the data to end-users via Drupal. These services include labor, training and travel expenses. It is intended for the period of performance to start approximately two weeks from date of award. 4. Identification of Statutory (and Other) Authority Permitting Other than Full and Open Competition The statutory authority for a sole-source award to the Acquia Government at Carahsoft is 41 U.S.C. 253(c)(1), which states that "An executive agency may use procedures other than competitive procedures only when----(1) the property or services needed by the executive agency are available from only one responsible source and no other type of property or services will satisfy the needs of the executive agency...". That statutory authority is implemented (i.e., referenced) in section 6.302-1(a)(1) & (2) of the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR). 5. Demonstration that the Proposed Contractor's Unique Qualifications or the Nature of the Acquisition Requires Use of the Authority Cited A formal seven-week assessment of RITA's web presence with the purpose of proposing a Content Management System (CMS) to manage, improve and automate RITA's web content generation was performed in March 2010. After carefully considering RITA's leading business, technology and budgetary requirements for a CMS, it was determined that the best CMS choice for RITA was the Acquia Drupal Content Management System (provided by Acquia Government at Carahsoft ) coupled with a cross-media publishing system. Since nearly 80% of RITA's current web content is comprised of manually-converted and complexly-formatted BTS statistics tables, the coupling of a print publishing system with a CMS like Acquia Drupal was paramount. No CMS currently available on the market (open-source or proprietary) can handle the difficult formatting of the BTS tables from print to the web and vice versa without a fundamental change in how these tables are produced. The Acquia Drupal CMS coupled with a cross-media publishing system meets most of RITA's leading requirements which are: Overall Usability, Accessibility, Support for Complex Table Generation, Web to Print/Print to Web Capability, Data Mashup Capability, Support for Social Media/Web 2.0, Strength of Community Support, and Overall Cost. Acquia Drupal can also be rapidly implemented with little upfront and recurring costs. Acquia Government at Carahsoft is the only commercial distributor of the Drupal Content Management System. The latest release of Acquia Drupal is also the only version of the open-source CMS Drupal that has been successfully vetted within the Federal Government and which can offer SLA-based 24/7 technical support to its customers. Other comparable Drupal vendors do not offer 24/7 based technical support which is essential to the operations of an enterprise-wide CMS which RITA requires. Acquia Government at Carahsoft will work side-by-side with the RITA Web team providing mentoring and development and also has a unique fixed-price Government JumpStart Program to help RITA define its technology strategy, architect a scalable, secure CMS solution and provide training to RITA Web personnel on how to use Drupal to achieve its CMS goals. No other Drupal vendors provide these services. The adoption of an open-source CMS inherently presents risks to RITA. These risks are substantially mitigated by using the products, services, and technical support of Acquia Government at Carahsoft. Acquia Government at Carahsoft also provides an on-ramp to some of the best, most essential software from the Drupal community, assembled in a convenient package for easy installation. Their Acquia Network also provides an operations portal to deliver technical support and site monitoring services to maintain trouble-free Acquia Drupal websites (if needed). Finally, by offering commercial grade support from Acquia's Technical Assistance Center, RITA can be assured it will be able to implement Drupal with confidence and keep costs down. 6. A description of efforts made to ensure that offers are solicited from as many potential sources as is practicable, including whether a notice was or will be publicized as required by subpart 5.2 and, if not, which exception under 5.202 applies. The proposed contract action is here being synopsized on the World Wide Web. Specifically, this synopsis (Special Notice) is being published on the Government's Electronic Posting System (also known as Federal Business Opportunities, or "FedBizOpps") at http://www.eps.gov. This Special Notice states DOT's belief that a sole-source award should be made to Acquia Government at Carahsoft, but invites any other interested organization to submit a Statement of Qualifications to DOT. 7. A determination that the anticipated cost to the Government will be fair and reasonable. Products and services by Acquia Government at Carahsoft are published on GSA Schedule 70 (No. GS-35F-0131R). 8. A description of the market research conducted (see FAR Part 10 Market Research) and the results or a statement of the reason market research was not conducted. Acquia Government at Carahsoft is the only commercial distributor of the Drupal Content Management System. The latest release of Acquia Drupal is also the only version of the open-source CMS Drupal that has been successfully vetted within the Federal Government and which can offer SLA-based 24/7 technical support to its customers. Other comparable Drupal vendors do not offer 24/7 based technical support which is essential to the operations of an enterprise-wide CMS which RITA requires. Additionally, while it is impracticable and costly for RITA to build a Federal version of Drupal from scratch using the freely downloadable Community version of Drupal, Acquia Government at Carahsoft can provide a fully tested and installable version of Drupal that will perform consistently and reliably to RITA's CMS requirements and mandated Federal IT Security standards. IT Secuity for RITA's CMS will be supported by Acquia's IT Security Team through a paid subscription to their network service (which is listed in their quote.) Lastly, the agency knows of no other source that has the aforementioned specialized capabilities possessed by Acquia Government at Carahsoft that can meet RITA's complex table-oriented print-to-web integration and overall CMS requirements. Considering the aforementioned specialized nature of the required work and software, and the vendor's unique qualifications and formal partnership with Aysling Digital Media Solutions (Publishing System vendor), no formal market research, other than the publishing of this Special Notice in FedBizOpps, is required. 9. Any Other Facts Supporting the Use of Other than Full and Open Competition Due to the specialized nature of the required work and software, and the vendor's unique qualifications to meet RITA's immediate CMS requirements, no other facts are needed. 10. A listing of sources, if any, that expressed in writing, an interest in the acquisition. If any sources timely submit a Statement of Qualifications for this Carahsoft project in response to this Special Notice, each such timely-submitted Statement of Qualifications will be evaluated by RITA before any contract award is made for the Carahsoft project. 11. A statement of the actions, if any, the agency may take to remove or overcome any barriers to competition before any subsequent acquisition for the supplies or services required. Because the agency knows of no barriers to competition, there is no known need to remove or overcome any such impediments. The DOT knows of no laws or governmental policies restraining such vendors from competing in the future for work such as that described herein and would welcome such bids in the future. Moreover, a notice of any proposed subsequent acquisition will be widely published as an invitation to such organizations for future acquisitions and related professional services regarding the RITA CMS. Part C. The Aysling Project. The remaining text within this Part C describes the Aysling project. "Purchase of Woodwing software and Aysling Digital Media Solutions professional services and training for Proof-of-Concept of the RITA Content Management System solution" NOTE: Two separate vendors (Carahsoft and Aysling Digital Media) are required to perform the Proof-of-Concept. (Procurement Request No. 11-40-0002) 1. Identification of Agency Research and Innovative Technology Administration (RITA), U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT),1200 New Jersey Avenue, S.E., Washington, DC 20590. 2. Description of Action A proposed one-time, firm-fixed-price contract for the activity referenced in the heading above. The estimated total price of the contract is $22,700.00. 3. Description of Services to Be Provided Exception to the fair opportunity process to procure support services and software for the proof-of-concept evaluation of the Woodwing Enterprise publishing system connector to the Acquia Drupal Content Management System. The proposed contractual action entails the procurement of professional services and temporary software licenses on a Firm-Fixed-Price Basis via a Purchase Order. The services and software will be acquired via Purchase Order, with a period of performance approximately two (2) weeks from date of award. This proposed acquisition is to provide professional services and temporary software licenses to DOT/RITA to fully evaluate the capabilities of the Woodwing Enterprise publishing system for automating the RITA Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS) print-to-web process into the RITA Content Management System (Acquia Drupal). This Proof of Concept will cover a basic installation of Woodwing Enterprise products including Woodwing Enterprise v7 Server, Smart Catalog Enterprise, Smart Connection and Content Station Pro with a basic integration into the Acquia Drupal Content Management System. Services will include: 1) Pre-site evaluation to confirm hardware availability and minimum specifications, software requirements and personnel availability; 2) Systems design and configuration to design, configure and test software systems; 3) Setup and installation of the Woodwing Enterprise server and client applications; 4) User training which will include training of the basic features of Smart Catalog, Smart Connection and Content Station; and 5) Go-live and post-site evaluation. These services include labor, training and travel expenses. It is intended for the period of performance to start approximately two weeks from date of award. 4. Identification of Statutory (and Other) Authority Permitting Other than Full and Open Competition The statutory authority for a sole-source award to the Woodwing vendor, Aysling Digital Media Solutions is 41 U.S.C. 253(c)(1), which states that "An executive agency may use procedures other than competitive procedures only when----(1) the property or services needed by the executive agency are available from only one responsible source and no other type of property or services will satisfy the needs of the executive agency...". That statutory authority is implemented (i.e., referenced) in section 6.302-1(a)(1) & (2) of the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR). 5. Demonstration that the Proposed Contractor's Unique Qualifications or the Nature of the Acquisition Requires Use of the Authority Cited Nearly 80% of RITA's current web content is comprised of manually-converted and complexly-formatted BTS statistics tables. No Content Management System (CMS) currently available on the market (open-source or proprietary) can handle the difficult formatting of the BTS tables from print to the web and vice versa without a fundamental change in how these tables are produced by BTS and/or extensive customization to a CMS. The publishing of BTS' tables and their varied formats to the web presents a unique challenge and complex requirement that is typically not addressed in the feature portfolio of many Content Management Systems available today. During the RITA CMS assessment process, it was determined that a third-party publishing system coupled to the RITA CMS would be needed to meet this leading and important requirement. The use of a COTS publishing system that supports Adobe InDesign plug-ins would be necessary for the complex formatting, XML conversion and importation of the BTS Tables into the RITA CMS. Thus, the leading requirement to support this internal business need was augmented to include CMS compatibility with a cross-media publishing system. The Woodwing Enterprise cross-media publishing system uniquely meets the aforementioned leading requirement and ships standard with an out-of-the-box integration module allowing users to instantly work with the Acquia Drupal open-source Web content management system. This unique connector allows web authors to preview content using RITA/BTS live templates before they are published. The combination of WoodWing and Acquia Drupal will provide RITA/BTS publishers with a unique, dynamic, innovative, and cost effective multichannel workflow solution to streamline their print-to-web processes into the RITA CMS. The vendor, Aysling Digital Media Solutions is uniquely qualified to perform the required task of setting up and integrating the Woodwing Enterprise connector to the Acquia Drupal Content Management System. This integration will ensure that the majority of RITA's web content will be accurately and successfully migrated to the new CMS and maintained in a cost-saving and timely manner. 6. A description of efforts made to ensure that offers are solicited from as many potential sources as is practicable, including whether a notice was or will be publicized as required by subpart 5.2 and, if not, which exception under 5.202 applies. The proposed contract action is here being synopsized on the World Wide Web. Specifically, this synopsis ("Special Notice") is being published on Specifically, this synopsis (Special Notice) is being published on the Government's Electronic Posting System (also known as Federal Business Opportunities, or "FedBizOpps") at http://www.eps.gov. This synopsis states DOT's belief that a sole-source award should be made to Aysling Digital Media Solutions, but invites any other interested organization to submit a Statement of Qualifications to DOT. 7. A determination that the anticipated cost to the Government will be fair and reasonable. RITA has investigated this matter and has concluded that any sole-source contract that might hereafter be awarded to Aysling would have a price which would: (a) be fair and reasonable; and (b) be advantageous to RITA. DOT is not divulging the details of that investigation because pricing data not published on any GSA Schedule are generally considered to be proprietary. 8. A description of the market research conducted (see FAR Part 10 Market Research) and the results or a statement of the reason market research was not conducted. The Woodwing Enterprise system comes complete with a full Drupal CMS integration connector standard out-of-the-box. The system also allows seamless updates for the incorporation of Adobe product upgrades and "live" links to various data sources such as MS Excel spreadsheets and proprietary databases (i.e., Oracle, SQL etc.) RITA's BTS print-to-web workflows require the capability to pull table data from various data sources, maintain a "live" link to those table data sources, formatting and layout of the table data using Adobe products (i.e., InDesign) and seamless integration of the data into the database of the Drupal Content Management System (CMS) for online viewing. The closest comparison to the Woodwing Enterprise System in functionality and cost structure is the Vjoon K4 Publishing System (formerly known as Softcare.) While an excellent product and used extensively in the publication industry, the K4 System does not offer "live" links to connected data sources nor does it come complete with an out-of-the-box integration connector to the Drupal CMS. More importantly, the K4 System does not support the ingest of complex table data out-of-the-box which is a leading RITA print-to-web requirement. However, the K4 System and its associated connector modules can be customized to perform this function for RITA but at increased cost and over an extended period of time. The Woodwing Enterprise System provides this as a built-in feature and is available immediately with little configuration. Lastly, Woodwing Enterprise supports multiple database formats while K4 currently only supports its own proprietary database, PrimeBase. The agency knows of no other source that can provide a readily available print-to-web solution that provides the aforementioned specialized capabilities and services possessed by the Woodwing Enterprise System and Woodwing's integrator, Aysling Digital Media Solutions which meet RITA's print-to-web integration requirements, respectively. Considering the aforementioned specialized nature of the required work and software, and the vendor's unique qualifications and formal partnership with Acquia/Carahsoft (CMS vendor), no formal market research, other than the publishing of this Special Notice in FedBizOpps, is required. 9. Any Other Facts Supporting the Use of Other than Full and Open Competition Due to the specialized nature of the required work and software, and the vendor's unique qualifications to meet RITA's immediate print-to-web requirements, no other facts are needed. 10. A listing of sources, if any, that expressed in writing, an interest in the acquisition. If any sources timely submit a Statement of Qualifications for this Aysling project in response to this Special Notice, each such timely-submitted Statement of Qualifications will be evaluated by RITA before any contract award is made for the Aysling project. 11. A statement of the actions, if any, the agency may take to remove or overcome any barriers to competition before any subsequent acquisition for the supplies or services required. Because the agency knows of no barriers to competition, there is no known need to remove or overcome any such impediments. The DOT knows of no laws or governmental policies restraining such vendors from competing in the future for work such as that described herein and would welcome such bids in the future. Moreover, a notice of any proposed subsequent acquisition will be widely published as an invitation to such organizations for future acquisitions and related professional services regarding the RITA CMS. Part D. Conclusion. Based on the facts and circumstances mentioned above, RITA believes that the Carahsoft project should be awarded to Carahsoft on a sole-source basis, and RITA believes that the Aysling project should be awarded to Aysling on a sole-source basis. Nevertheless, any person or organization OTHER THAN Carahsoft or Aysling may---- not later than 4:15 PM Eastern Time on October 14, 2010-----e-mail-----to james.mowery@dot.gov and to Raymond.Keng@dot.gov,------a Statement of Qualifications attempting to prove that the submitter is fully capable of performing the Carahsoft project, or the Aysling project, or both of those projects, at the high level of quality indispensable to RITA. No interested party is to contact Mr. Keng concerning this Special Notice, except for the limited purpose of including him as an addressee on any e-mail transmitting a Statement of Qualifications to James Mowery. Any Statement of Qualifications addressing only ONE of the projects shall also explain in detail how the submitter would COORDINATE its project-work with any SEPARATE entity which might hereafter be performing the OTHER project.
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