MODIFICATION
A -- Integrated Command & Control
- Notice Date
- 8/29/2013
- Notice Type
- Modification/Amendment
- NAICS
- 541712
— Research and Development in the Physical, Engineering, and Life Sciences (except Biotechnology)
- Contracting Office
- Department of the Air Force, Air Force Materiel Command, AFRL/RIK - Rome, 26 Electronic Parkway, Rome, New York, 13441-4514, United States
- ZIP Code
- 13441-4514
- Solicitation Number
- BAA-10-01-RIKA
- Point of Contact
- Lynn G. White, Phone: (315) 330-4996
- E-Mail Address
-
Lynn.White@us.af.mil
(Lynn.White@us.af.mil)
- Small Business Set-Aside
- N/A
- Description
- The purpose of this modification is to republish the original announcement, incorporating all previous modifications, pursuant to FAR 35.016(c). This republishing also includes the following changes: (a) Section I: Added new Focus Area for FY14; (b) Section II: Added information about the rights to select or not select based on funding; (c) Section III.3: Deleted CCR information and added new SAM requirements; (d) Section IV.1: Added new URL for BAA Guide to Industry; (e) Section IV.6 and VII: Changed technical point of contact; (f) Section IV.7: Added information about possible compromise of classified information; (g) Section VI.3: Added Data Rights information; and (h) Changed all "rl.af.mil" email addresses to "us.af.mil" to reflect new changes to the standard Air Force email addresses. No other changes have been made. NAICS CODE: 541712 FEDERAL AGENCY NAME: Department of the Air Force, Air Force Materiel Command, AFRL - Rome Research Site, AFRL/Information Directorate, 26 Electronic Parkway, Rome, NY, 13441-4514 TITLE: Integrated Command & Control ANNOUNCEMENT TYPE: Initial announcement FUNDING OPPORTUNITY NUMBER: BAA 10-01-RIKA CFDA Number: 12.800 I. FUNDING OPPORTUNITY DESCRIPTION: Meeting the demands of assigned missions requires unprecedented amount of coordination and synchronization of military resources across all organizations and all echelons of command in all levels of war. It is command and control (C2) that provides the means by which a commander synchronizes and/or integrates force activities in order to achieve the commonly recognized objectives in one unity of effort. These activities require key decisions within the strategy, planning, scheduling and assessment phases of the command and control process. These decisions are made by humans and are supported by computer technology so it is in these areas that information technology contributes the most to ameliorating human capabilities and transforming how the Air Force commands and controls. The goal of the Integrated C2 program is to lead the discovery, development and integration of revolutionary warfighting information technologies that enable continuous and distributed, planning, execution, and assessment of resources across the cyber, air and space domains to achieve commander's intent. Air Force Research Laboratory is seeking innovative white papers to address the following thrusts: • Strategy Development. The functional translation of a commander's conceptual vision and guidance into potential solutions via an adaptive planning capability that supports the generation of a plan of action and seeks to answer the questions of what is to be done and how. By monitoring the plan and operating environment, adapt to evolving situations and represent the necessary actions which incorporate all means available across each of the warfighting domains of the Air Force (air, space and cyber). A key challenge is to understand the complex relationships and dependencies that exist across these domains. Specific areas of interest include but are not limited to: machine reasoning with uncertain, erroneous, and incomplete information; dynamic causal modeling and multi-criteria analysis summarization; computational efficient mixed initiative planning that balances cognitive and machine load; incorporation of analogical/experiential reasoning (fusion of distributed experiences, capturing knowledge & experience of the past, determining relevancy of past situations); and asynchronous planning on plan fragments versus synchronous "lock and work" planning over multiple iterations. • Synchronized/Integrated Planning. Produce a logistically feasible plan of action to solve the problem, fully integrating subordinate action plans with a description of the role of the other elements of national power in conjunction with military activities. Synchronized/integrated planning includes requests for actions and describes the role of military activities in achieving the desired effects. The integrated "battle" plan enables warfighters to coordinate and synchronize all available forces, kinetic and non-kinetic, to achieve the desired outcomes and exploit opportunities as they present themselves. Specific areas of interest include but are not limited to: a living plan with "on the fly" action plan/course of action adaptation/mutation that addresses changing conditions of the operational environment; identification, correlation, and advisement on mitigation of external events affecting the processes and mission; continuous adaptive planning; and comprehensive mission-driven situation awareness sharing. • Continuous Assessment. Full spectrum analysis of the attainment of mission objectives at all levels of the campaign (tactical to strategic). At the plan's inception, conduct rigorous examinations of the alternatives and the desired and undesired consequences of each action leading to valuable insight into the actions, causal mechanisms, and effects that support the accomplishment of the objective. Leading indicators or clues can be explicitly identified with their timing which then can be used as a measure of progress towards accomplishing the desired objectives providing the means by which each player understands what is necessary to achieve the overall objectives and the ramifications of their individual actions. Such insights serve to highlight key challenges in sustaining a campaign's progress and are important for synchronizing the force. Specific areas of interest include but are not limited to: non-deterministic, non-linear causal analysis with reasoning through uncertainty and ambiguity; projective/forward looking analysis through modeling and simulation; use of belief networks within a decision-making environment and how beliefs influence a decision/assessment; dynamic assessment of a-priori and a-posteriori achievement of commander's intent; deliberate causal analysis that identifies key missing data that can be used as information requests; and optimized presentation of complex heterogeneous data. Specific Focus Areas for 2011 Effects Assessment Methodology : Investigate quantitative analysis techniques that aid operational assessors' ability to link actions to effects to desired objectives. The specific goals of this effort are to 1) Explore and assess the mathematical techniques that can be applied to improve the performance of the weighted-additive model under conditions of missing data. Within the additive model the scores produced are directly influenced by the data consumed. Missing data will produce erroneous scores and provide misleading analyses and 2) Investigate techniques that demonstrate invariance under conditions of missing data and identify their utility in operational effects assessment. There may be instances where the derivation or estimation of missing data may not be feasible or appropriate. In addition, weighted-additive models have no ability to detect conditions where the data is erroneous. White papers for this topic will be due by: 23 Jun 2010. Awards will not exceed 36 months with dollar amounts ranging from $350,000-$400,000. N-Dimensional Effects-Based Assessment Tools : The objective is to provide operational-level assessors the capability to rapidly develop indicators that assess the Measures of Performance (MoPs) and Measures of Effectiveness (MoEs) of a given plan. The indicators must span the spectrum from strategy-to-task planning, the warfighting domains (air, cyber, and space), and support the near-continuous assessment of effects. Specific goals include: (1) The use of case based reasoning with search algorithms and guidance templates to provide an automated means to assist warfighters in selecting suitable indicators, and (2) The use directed graphs to represent the alignment of operational objectives and effects to assess the achievement of the end-states to provide an intuitive user interface for indicator selection/management and visualizing the assessment. The metrics for this program will include the accuracy and completeness of the set of indicators recommended, improvement in the speed of the process (Δt), and overall quality of the resulting operational assessment. White papers for this topic will be due by: 23 June 2010. Awards will not exceed 24 months with dollar amounts ranging from $500,000 - $1,000,000. COA Analysis Simulation (CASIM): The objective is to provide the ability to quickly develop simulations to analyze COAs and evaluate capabilities across multiple domains. The goals within this effort are to 1) Integrate disparate models and analysis tools within a federation and 2) Advance and employ an integrated composable modeling and simulation capability to create realistic cyber warfare operational scenarios for course of action (COA) exploration. These goals are to be accomplished while taking into consideration the number of COAs analyzed/day, the breadth of effects considered, model integration and setup time, number of models integrated and entities run. The models and simulations are to be focused on Cyber COA development and decision support tools. White papers for this topic will be due by: 21 Jun 10. Awards will range 12-24 months with dollar amounts ranging from $100,000 - $865,000. Specific Focus Areas for 2012 User-Defined Force Presentations: The Air Force needs a powerful and agile method for building new visualization constructs without the long lead time of traditional software development; particularly in cases where non-geospatially based data (data not containing information mapping it to the surface of the Earth), and geospatial data that is better visualized non-geospatially, is becoming more important to the warfighter. The process of traditional application development is slow and laborious, making it ineffective at responding to the pace of technology, imagination, and most importantly, the enemy's evolving modes of warfare. This work will provide a composable visualization capability akin to the Air, Space, and Cyber User Defined Operational Picture (ASC-UDOP), and will also require leveraging of the JView graphical tool set. The specific objectives are to 1) define and develop new rendering constructs that can be instantiated at run-time by operators through a graphical user interface (GUI), and to 2) create ways that allow a user to define components within an application to interact with one another based on event triggers, both those originating from the user and from changes in system state, and to do so dynamically at execution time. White papers for this topic will be due by 13 July 2011. Awards will not exceed 24 months with dollar amounts ranging from $350,000-$1,000,000. Synchronized Mission Optimization and Assembly Service : This focus area seeks novel research and development efforts that will result in a prototype capability that will utilize search-optimization algorithms to automatically assemble missions optimized against warfighter defined needs, constraints, and rules of engagement that are coordinated and synchronized across USAF mission elements (air, space, etc.) into unities of effort based on available resources. It will result in a command and control capability that will be able to handle increases in complexity, mitigate uncertainty and increase ops tempo. The Government is anticipating, but not mandating, technical solutions in three main components for this effort. The first of these components will be a dynamic constraint space that will represent asset limitations, warfighter defined needs, priorities and rules of engagement. Every scenario that mission planners encounter is unique. Furthermore, it is typical for conditions to change after task execution has commenced thereby necessitating a change to the constraint space. As a result, the constraints that shape the mission assembly process are complicated, context-sensitive, and change chaotically/asynchronously. In order to truly represent the limitations and boundaries that shape mission and task planning the constraint space will need to be a dynamic, living entity. The second of these components will be the optimization capability that will be used along with the constraint space to build missions that are coordinated, optimized and synchronized across the USAF mission elements. Each optimization approach that has been developed thus far has strengths and weaknesses. Therefore, it is likely that the strongest performing optimization approach will be a hybrid that incorporates as many of the strengths and as few of the short comings of existing approaches as possible. The third component involves how the resultant overall capability will fit into the bigger picture. Bidders should be conscious of our increasing focus on service oriented architectures, and the need to leverage the Cornerstone plan representation and services. Offers should demonstrate an understanding of service development and, to the extent reasonable and possible, propose deliverables that are readily deployed as services (i.e., discoverable, well-defined, self-contained modules that are independent of state or context of other services). White papers for this topic will be due by 13 Jul 2011. Awards will not exceed 36 months. Individual awards will normally range between $100K to $1.0M per year. Experience Based Adaptive Replanning: Planning for military operations is notoriously difficult; initial plans rarely survive first contact with the enemy. The Air Force requires technologies that will enable commanders to continuously monitor and adjust plans during their execution as the situation evolves and more relevant and timely information becomes available. To achieve these objectives, we require methods of determining that the executing plan is deviating from its expected performance, establishing deviation thresholds upon which replanning actions should be undertaken, and performing rapid adaptive replanning as necessary to reduce the differential between current state and some desired outcome. Planning under this program is viewed as a sequential decision-making process that iteratively modifies states in a state space. Because we are measuring the current world state, this lends itself towards framing it as a Markov Decision Process (MDP). A MDP is represented as a 4-tuple (S, A, T, R), where: S is a set of state variables, A is a set of actions, T is a transition function, and R is the reward function. The state variables comprising S are a set of features representing the world state in which the plan is being executed. The two specific objectives of this focus area are 1) to develop a method of measuring the distance between the state variables and between two or more world states. This is critical for determining whether the plan is going as expected, or deviating from expected performance. 2) to develop a methodology for establishing thresholds for adaptive replanning. Given a method for measuring the deviations in actual plan performance against expected plan performance, the challenge then becomes determining how much of a deviation should be allowed before replanning takes place. This work will research, implement, analyze and compare various methods for achieving these objectives utilizing the Air Force Research Laboratory's Distributed Episodic Exploratory Planning research platform. White papers for this topic will be due by: 1 Aug 2011. Awards will not exceed 24 months with dollar amounts ranging from $200,000-$300,000. Specific Focus Areas for 2013 The Machine Intelligence for Mission-Focused Autonomy (MIMFA) program will research technologies that enable distributed autonomous assets to make intelligent coordinated adaptations to plans/policies that optimize mission performance in dynamic and realistically complex domains. Emphasis is placed upon autonomous techniques which enable faster, more efficient understanding for complex, multi-modal military data. Our FY13 Focus Areas for MIMFA, with award details, are: Collaborative Agency for Shared Awareness : The objective of this effort is to advance the state of the art related to the tasking, coordination, and negotiation of distributed, heterogeneous agents in complex and/or communication-denied environments. Our domains of interest are high-tempo, data-rich military decision-making situations where the collection, planning, processing, analysis and dissemination of military information leads to decision speed advantage. Target capabilities include the ability to assign software agents to information collection/analysis tasks, share information and conclusions among agents to build team understanding, and self-direct efforts to meet overall mission goals. More specifically, we are interested in answering the following questions: 1. What is the proper way of representing sub-tasks for agents to effectively self-assign to them while ensuring that overall task complexity is properly addressed? 2. What is an effective feedback mechanism to influence autonomy in a positive way? How do agents learn better task selection behavior based on user feedback? 3. What if a user does not agree with a given set of results? 4. What is an effective presentation to a user that will convey a sense of understanding of how an autonomous system is reaching a decision? 5. Can we provide a user with a capability that both increases user effectiveness and increases trust in the autonomous system? White papers for this topic only will be due by: 20 Aug 2012. It is anticipated that awards for this particular topic will range from 9 to 24 months with dollar amounts nominally up to $500,000 per award. Please email your white papers to: gennady.staskevich@us.af.mil. Classification and State Based Reasoning : The objective of this effort is to develop advanced techniques to focus human attention and machine reasoning on the most important aspects of massive, heterogeneous, or partially observed data sources. This is particularly important for high-speed decision-making environments, such as military intelligence, command and control, planning, and operational scenarios. Our goal is to aid human and machine reasoners to1) Identify and reason over the most significant and discriminating features in that data; 2) Recognize trends and correlations, 3) Robustly handle uncertainty and present information to the user intuitively; 4) Account for changes over time; 5) Present diverse perspectives and interpretations of the data, and 6) Derive dynamic abstractions of state and action spaces while learning a solution to an overall problem. The purpose of this research is to improve the robustness of human understanding and enable more intelligent and faster mission-focused decisions; currently made in a "fog of information," under varying degrees of uncertainty and trust, and with unquantified risk. Some of the approaches of significant interest include: multi-agent approaches to data mining, evolutionary and bio-inspired approaches, information theoretic techniques, supervised and unsupervised learning, reinforcement learning, dynamic Bayesian networks, analyzing competing hypothesis from agent perspectives, and the subsequent evaluation of cost functions which are derived from the consideration of multiple approaches for processing the data simultaneously. White papers for this topic only will be due by: 20 Aug 2012. It is anticipated that awards for this particular topic will range from 12 to 36 months with dollar amounts nominally up to $500,000 per award. Please email your white papers to: Misty.Blowers@us.af.mil. Specific Focus Area for 2014 This topic announcement describes a research project titled Transfer Learning Approaches for Increased Operational Autonomy, to be executed under the Machine Intelligence for Mission Focused Autonomy (MIMFA) Program for the Air Force Research Laboratory. The overall objective of this project is to develop transfer learning methods to robustly accomplish the transfer of knowledge from previously collected or readily available sources to actively learning agents in multi-agent and dynamic environments. This will speed up the fielding of autonomous intelligent agents capable of performing tasks related to the PCPAD process with less human involvement. The submission of proposals, their evaluation and the placement of research grants and contracts will be carried out as described in the Broad Agency Announcement. Our FY14 Focus Area for MIMFA, with background and award details, are: Intelligent multi-agent systems can be employed to learn and perform various tasks in the Planning and Direction, Collection, Processing and Exploitation, Analysis and Production, and Dissemination (PCPAD) process; however, this ability is limited in adversarial contested environments because of time and environmental data constraints. To address these challenges, we require the capability to use knowledge acquired from previous learning activities to hasten learning of an agent that can perform similar, but different tasks. In order to make such problems more tractable, we believe that a learning technique known as Transfer Learning can be applied. In order for a successful knowledge transfer to take place in multi-agent, contested environments, three broad technical challenges must be addressed: (i) selecting appropriate prior knowledge to learn from, (ii) relating experience to the current situation, and (iii) applying it to the situation at hand. By developing autonomous technologies that meet these challenges, we anticipate that can move towards a fully autonomous process of producing mission capable multi-agent systems and lower the "manpower to value of work" ratio. There have been a number of programs and studies interested in Transfer Learning, the 2005 DARPA Transfer Learning program [1] showed some initial results in speeding up reinforcement learners; however, no methods were applied to the contested or dynamic multi-agent settings that we consider in this project, nor have any of the efforts structured their research around the three steps of knowledge transfer outlined below. The 2005 NIPS workshop and 2006 ICML workshop explored RL techniques that use transfer. A comprehensive survey on transfer between RL tasks is provided by Taylor and Stone [2]; it also acknowledges the need to explore applications of Transfer Learning to multi-agent systems [3]. The transfer of knowledge between learning tasks generally follows the following steps outlined by Taylor and Stone [4], and will be referred to as the "steps of knowledge transfer": a. Given a target task, select an appropriate source task or set of tasks from which to transfer. b. Learn how the source task(s) and target task are related. c. Effectively transfer knowledge from the source task(s) to the target task. Depending on the level of autonomy, an agent must be able to perform all or a subset of these steps and given a set of assumptions from which to operate. In order to improve the "manpower to volume of work" ratio, we will aim for the highest practical level of autonomy that empirical testing will find useful. White papers for this topic only will be due by: 1 Oct 2013. It is anticipated that awards for this particular topic will range from 9 to 24 months with dollar amounts nominally up to $1,000,000 per award. Please email your white papers to: edward.verenich.2@us.af.mil. References [1] DARPA. Transfer learning proposer information pamphlet, BAA #05-29, 2005 [2] M. Taylor, P. Stone. Transfer learning for reinforcement learning domains: a survey. Journal of Machine Learning Research, p 1634, 2009. [3] M. Taylor, P. Stone. Transfer learning for reinforcement learning domains: a survey. Journal of Machine Learning Research, p 1675, 2009. M. Taylor, P. Stone. Transfer learning for reinforcement learning domains: a survey. Journal of Machine Learning Research, p 1635, 2009. All other information remains the same. II. AWARD INFORMATION: Total funding for this BAA is approximately $43.2M. The anticipated funding to be obligated under this BAA is broken out by fiscal year as follows: FY 11 - $3.7M; FY 12 - $7.6M; FY 13 - $12.1M; FY 14 - $11.4M; and FY15 - $8.4M. Individual awards will not normally exceed 18 months with dollar amounts normally ranging between $100K to $1.0M per year. There is also the potential to make awards up to any dollar value. Awards of efforts as a result of this announcement will be in the form of contracts, grants or cooperative agreements depending upon the nature of the work proposed. The Government reserves the right to select all, part, or none of the proposals received, subject to the availability of funds. All potential Offerors should be aware that due to unanticipated budget fluctuations, funding in any or all areas may change with little or no notice. III. ELIGIBILITY INFORMATION: 1. ELIGIBLE APPLICANTS: All foreign allied participation is excluded at the prime contractor level. 2. COST SHARING OR MATCHING: Cost sharing is not a requirement. 3. System for Award Management (SAM). Offerors must be registered in the SAM database to receive a contract award, and remain registered during performance and through final payment of any contract or agreement. Processing time for registration in SAM, which normally takes forty-eight hours, should be taken into consideration when registering. Offerors who are not already registered should consider applying for registration before submitting a proposal. 4. Executive Compensation and First-Tier Sub-contract/Sub-recipient Awards: Any contract award resulting from this announcement may contain the clause at FAR 52.204-10 - Reporting Executive Compensation and First-Tier Subcontract Awards. Any grant or agreement award resulting from this announcement may contain the award term set forth in 2 CFR, Appendix A to Part 25 http://ecfr.gpoaccess.gov/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=ecfr&sid=c55a4687d6faa13b137a26d0eb436edb&rgn=div5&view=text&node= 2:1.1.1.41&idno=2#2:1.1.1.4.1.2.1.1 IV. APPLICATION AND SUBMISSION INFORMATION: 1. APPLICATION PACKAGE: THIS ANNOUNCEMENT CONSTITUTES THE ONLY SOLICITATION. WE ARE SOLICITING WHITE PAPERS ONLY. DO NOT SUBMIT A FORMAL PROPOSAL AT THIS TIME. Those white papers found to be consistent with the intent of this BAA may be invited to submit a technical and cost proposal, see Section VI of this announcement for further details. For additional information, a copy of the AFRL "Broad Agency Announcement (BAA): Guide for Industry," May 2012, may be accessed at: https://www.fbo.gov/index?s=opportunity&mode=form&id=e68f832abb3a7341bb7328547c0e19c0&tab= core&_cview=0 2. CONTENT AND FORM OF SUBMISSION: Offerors are required to submit 3 copies of a 3 to 5 page white paper summarizing their proposed approach/solution. The purpose of the white paper is to preclude unwarranted effort on the part of an offeror whose proposed work is not of interest to the Government. The white paper will be formatted as follows: Section A: Title, Period of Performance, Estimated Cost, Name/Address of Company, Technical and Contracting Points of Contact (phone, fax and email)(this section is NOT included in the page count); Section B: Task Objective; and Section C: Technical Summary and Proposed Deliverables. Multiple white papers within the purview of this announcement may be submitted by each offeror. If the offeror wishes to restrict its white papers/proposals, they must be marked with the restrictive language stated in FAR 15.609(a) and (b). All white papers/proposals shall be double spaced with a font no smaller than 12 pitch. In addition, respondents are requested to provide their Commercial and Government Entity (CAGE) number, their Dun & Bradstreet (D&B) Data Universal Numbering System (DUNS) number, a fax number, an e-mail address, and reference BAA 10-01-RIKA with their submission. All responses to this announcement must be addressed to the technical POC, as discussed in paragraph six of this section. 3. SUBMISSION DATES AND TIMES: It is recommended that white papers be received by the following dates to maximize the possibility of award: FY 11 should be submitted by 1 Oct 2010; FY 12 by 3 Oct 2011; FY 13 by 1 Oct 2012; FY 14 by 1 Oct 2013 and; FY 15 by 1 Oct 2014. White papers will be accepted until 2pm Eastern time on 30 Sep 2015, but it is less likely that funding will be available in each respective fiscal year after the dates cited. This BAA will close on 30 Sep 2015. FORMAL PROPOSALS ARE NOT BEING REQUESTED AT THIS TIME. 4. FUNDING RESTRICTIONS: The cost of preparing white papers/proposals in response to this announcement is not considered an allowable direct charge to any resulting contract or any other contract, but may be an allowable expense to the normal bid and proposal indirect cost specified in FAR 31.205-18. Incurring pre-award costs for ASSISTANCE INSTRUMENTS ONLY, are regulated by the DoD Grant and Agreements Regulations (DODGARS). 5. All Proposers should review the NATIONAL INDUSTRIAL SECURITY PROGRAM OPERATING MANUAL, (NISPOM), dated February 28, 2006 as it provides baseline standards for the protection of classified information and prescribes the requirements concerning Contractor Developed Information under paragraph 4-105. Defense Security Service (DSS) Site for the NISPOM is: http://www.dss.mil. 6. OTHER SUBMISSION REQUIREMENTS: DO NOT send white papers to the Contracting Officer. All responses to this announcement must be addressed to ATTN: Mr. Michael Seifert, AFRL/RISB, 525 Brooks Road, Rome NY 13441-4505 Electronic submission to Michael.Seifert@us.af.mil will also be accepted. In the event of a possible or actual compromise of classified information in the submission of your white paper or proposal, immediately but no later than 24 hours, bring this to the attention of your cognizant security authority and AFRL Rome Research Site Information Protection Office (IPO): Bob Kane 315-330-2324 0730-1630 Monday-Friday 315-330-2961 Evenings and Weekends Email: Robert.Kane.7@us.af.mil V. APPLICATION REVIEW INFORMATION: 1. CRITERIA: The following criteria, which are listed descending order of importance, will be used to determine whether white papers and proposals submitted are consistent with the intent of this BAA and of interest to the Government: 1) The extent to which the offeror's approach demonstrates an understanding of the problem, an innovative and unique approach for the development and/or enhancement of the proposed technology, its application and appropriate levels of readiness at yearly levels. 2) Related Experience - The extent to which the offeror demonstrates relevant technology and domain knowledge. 3) Openness/Maturity of Solution - The extent to which existing capabilities and standards are leveraged and the relative maturity of the proposed technology in terms of reliability and robustness. 4) Reasonableness and Realism of Proposed Costs - The overall estimated costs should be clearly justified and appropriate for the technical complexity of the effort. No further evaluation criteria will be used in selecting white papers/proposals. Individual white paper/proposal evaluations will be evaluated against the evaluation criteria without regard to other white papers and proposals submitted under this BAA. White papers and proposals submitted will be evaluated as they are received. 2. REVIEW AND SELECTION PROCESS: Only Government employees will evaluate the white papers/proposals for selection. The Air Force Research Laboratory's Information Directorate has contracted for various business and staff support services, some of which require contractors to obtain administrative access to proprietary information submitted by other contractors. Administrative access is defined as "handling or having physical control over information for the sole purpose of accomplishing the administrative functions specified in the administrative support contract, which do not require the review, reading, and comprehension of the content of the information on the part of non-technical professionals assigned to accomplish the specified administrative tasks." These contractors have signed general non-disclosure agreements and organizational conflict of interest statements. The required administrative access will be granted to non-technical professionals. Examples of the administrative tasks performed include: a. Assembling and organizing information for R&D case files; b. Accessing library files for use by government personnel; and c. Handling and administration of proposals, contracts, contract funding and queries. Any objection to administrative access must be in writing to the Contracting Officer and shall include a detailed statement of the basis for the objection. VI. AWARD ADMINISTRATION INFORMATION: 1. AWARD NOTICES: Those white papers found to be consistent with the intent of this BAA may be invited to submit a technical and cost proposal. Notification by email or letter will be sent by the technical POC. Such invitation does not assure that the submitting organization will be awarded a contract. Those white papers not selected to submit a proposal will be notified in the same manner. Prospective offerors are advised that only Contracting Officers are legally authorized to commit the Government. All offerors submitting white papers will be contacted by the technical POC, referenced in Section VII of this announcement. Offerors can email the technical POC for status of their white paper/proposal no earlier than 45 days after submission. 2. ADMINISTRATIVE AND NATIONAL POLICY REQUIREMENTS: Depending on the work to be performed, the offeror may require a Top Secret facility clearance and safeguarding capability; therefore, personnel identified for assignment to a classified effort must be cleared for access to Top Secret information at the time of award. In addition, the offeror may be required to have, or have access to, a certified and Government-approved facility to support work under this BAA. This acquisition may involve data that is subject to export control laws and regulations. Only contractors who are registered and certified with the Defense Logistics Information Service (DLIS) at http://www.dlis.dla.mil/jcp/ and have a legitimate business purpose may participate in this solicitation. For questions, contact DLIS on-line at http://www.dlis.dla.mil/jcp or at the DLA Logistics Information Service, 74 Washington Avenue North, Battle Creek, Michigan 49037-3084, and telephone number 1-800-352-3572. You must submit a copy of your approved DD Form 2345, Militarily Critical Technical Data Agreement, with your Proposal. 3. Data Rights: The potential for inclusion of Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) or data rights other than unlimited on awards is recognized. In accordance with (IAW) the Small Business Administration (SBA) SBIR Policy Directive, Section 8(b), SBIR data rights clauses are non-negotiable and must not be the subject of negotiations pertaining to an award, or diminished or removed during award administration. Issuance of an award will not be made conditional based on forfeit of data rights. If the SBIR awardee wishes to transfer its SBIR data rights to the Air Force or to a third party, it must do so in writing under a separate agreement. A decision by the awardee to relinquish, transfer, or modify in any way its SBIR data rights must be made without pressure or coercion by the agency or any other party. Non-SBIR data rights less than unlimited will be evaluated and negotiated on a case-by-case basis. Government Purpose Rights are anticipated for data developed with DoD-reimbursed Independent Research and Development (IR&D) funding. 4. REPORTING: Once a proposal has been selected for award, offerors will be given complete instructions on the submission process for the reports. VII. AGENCY CONTACTS: Questions of a technical nature shall be directed to the cognizant technical point of contact, as specified below: TPOC Name: Mr. Michael Seifert Telephone: (315) 330-4758 Email: Michael.Seifert@us.af.mil Questions of a contractual/business nature shall be directed to the cognizant contracting officer, as specified below: Name: Lynn White Telephone (315) 330-4996 Email: Lynn.White@us.af.mil The email must reference the solicitation (BAA) number and title of the acquisition. In accordance with AFFARS 5301.91, an Ombudsman has been appointed to hear and facilitate the resolution of concerns from offerors, potential offerors, and others for this acquisition announcement. Before consulting with an ombudsman, interested parties must first address their concerns, issues, disagreements, and/or recommendations to the contracting officer for resolution. AFFARS Clause 5352.201-9101 Ombudsman (Apr 2010) will be incorporated into all contracts awarded under this BAA. The AFRL Ombudsman is as follows: Ms. Barbara Gehrs AFRL/PK 1864 4th Street Building 15, Room 225 Wright-Patterson AFB OH 45433-7130 FAX: (937) 656-7321; Comm: (937) 904-4407 All responsible organizations may submit a white paper which shall be considered.
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