Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), Contracts Management Office (CMO), 3701 N. Fairfax Dr., Arlington, VA 22203-1714

A -- COMMAND POST OF THE FUTURE (CPOF) SOL BAA 98-27 DUE 062298 POC David Gunning,DARPA/ISO, FAX (703) 696-2203 WEB: http://www.darpa.mil (search under solicitation), http://www.darpa.mil. E-MAIL: baa98-27@darpa.mil, baa98-27@darpa.mil. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Information Systems Office is soliciting proposals to develop advanced technology to create an adaptive, decision-centered, visualization environment for the future commander. The Government plans to award multiple contracts for experiment planning, technology development, and system integration. A Proposer Information Package (PIP), as well as a BAA 98-27 FAQ file and supporting documentation are available on the World Wide Web. The PIP and FAQ files may be found by going to the DARPA home page (http://www.darpa.mil) and following the links for "solicitations." General CPOF project information may be found under DARPA's Information Systems Office (ISO) page or by going directly to http://www-code44.spawar.navy.mil/cpof. BACKGROUND: The commander's job, in the future as in the past, will be to make decisions and monitor their execution in the midst of great uncertainty. He will need to assess the changing situation, select the best course of action,and monitor its execution. In the future, his success will depend on using information dominance to increase the speed and precision of those decisions. At the same time, survival will depend on being small and mobile. Large command complexes will not survive in the highly lethal, future battlefield. The commander's portal into this information environment will need to be easily operated by a small, distributed staff. The goal of CPOF is to double the speed and quality of these command decisions while reducing the staff by one half. To achieve this operational goal, the technical objective is to develop the technology necessary to create an adaptive, decision-centered, information visualization environment for the future commander and his immediate staff. Since the primary focus of CPOF is the creation of a new level of visualization and human-systems interaction technology, the development approach will emphasize the creation and continual testing of candidate technologies with prospective users. During thefour-year CPOF project, the first three years (FY99-FY01) will be spent developing, integrating, and testing candidate technologies in a continual series of simulation-based decision experiments at Army and Marine battle labs. In the fourth year of the program (FY02), DARPA intends to demonstrate the best of the resulting technology in an operational field exercise. However, this BAA deals only with the first three years of experimentation. This experimentation phase of CPOF will require three major efforts: experiment planning, technology development, and system integration. AREAS OF INTEREST: Under this BAA DARPA is soliciting work in three areas: experiment planning, technology development, and system integration. (1) Experiment planners are solicited to work with user representatives from the service battle labs to define operationally meaningful test problems and design a series of simulation-based decision experiments to test the effectiveness of the new technology in improving command decisions. (2) Technology developers are solicited to create new visualization, human-systems interaction, and information management technologies. Technology development is solicited especially in the area of human-systems interaction, which is the major technology emphasis of the program, to include work in cognitive engineering, displays and workspace design, visualization, multi-modal user interaction, and dialog management and reasoning. Technology development is also solicited to create the collaboration and workflow management, intelligent decision support, and information management capabilities needed for a future command post. (3) System integration efforts are solicited to select, refine, and integrate individual technologies into a complete CPOF system for testing in the simulation-based experiments. The source selection for these three efforts will be staggered into two phases: (1) a source selection will be conducted to choose experiment planning and technology development efforts; and (2) once those are selected, a source selection will be conducted for systems integration efforts. EVALUATION AND AWARD: Proposals will be selected through a technical/scientific/business decision process with technical and scientific considerations being most important. The evaluation criteria are: (A) The quality and technical merit of offeror's technical solution; (B) The capabilities and experience of offeror to perform the work; (C) The relevance of the proposed CPOF approach to the CPOF program goals and to battlespace awareness missions; (D) The Offeror's approach to technology transfer, and (E) The cost realism and value of proposal to government. Criteria E, the realism of the cost proposal, will be evaluated separately, secondary to the Criteria (A-D) listed above. GENERAL INFORMATION: A meeting with industry will be held on 20 and 21 May 1998 in Washington D.C. area. Interested parties should send email to baa98-27@darpa.mil to register for the conference and to request a place on the agenda (on a first come, first served basis). Detailed information about the time and location of the meeting and related information will be posted not later than 15 May 98 at http://www-code44.spawar.navy.mil/cpof. The intent of the meeting with industry is to: (1) provide background information to industry by DARPA, (2) allow industry to discuss with Government officials one on one, an overview of their experiment planning, technology, or systems integration concepts (20 minutes each), and (3) allow industry to discuss with Government officials one on one their comments on the BAA and suggestions for handling the interface between technology developers and system integrators (as a part of each 20 minute presentation). A second meeting industry will be held on 28 July to brief prospective bidders on the system integration portion of the CPOF effort, which will include briefings by the selected experiment planning and technology development efforts. ORGANIZATIONAL CONFLICT OF INTEREST (OCI): Each proposal shall contain a section satisfying the requirements of the following: Awards made under this BAA are subject to the provisions of the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) Subpart 9.5, Organizational Conflict of Interest. All Offerors and proposed subcontractors must affirmatively state whether they are supporting any DARPA technical office(s) through an active contract or subcontract. All affirmations must state which office(s) the offeror supports and identify the prime contract number. Affirmations shall be furnished at the time of proposal submission. All facts relevant to the existence or potential existence of organizational conflicts of interest, as that term is defined in FAR 9.501, must be disclosed. This disclosure shall include a description of the action the Contractor has taken, or proposes to take, to avoid, neutralize or mitigate such conflict. If the offeror believes that no such conflict exists, then it shall so state in this section. SUBMISSION: Proposals for Technology Development and Experiment Planning are due by 1600 EDT 22 June 1998. Proposals for System Integration are due by 1600 on 28 August 1998. An original and ten (10) copies of the proposal must be submitted to BAA 98-27, DARPA/ISO, ATTN: David Gunning, 3701 North Fairfax Drive, Arlington, VA 22203-1714. PROPOSALS SENT BY FAX OR E-MAIL WILL BE DISREGARDED. Proposers MUST obtain the BAA 98-27 Proposer Information Pamphlet (PIP) which provides further information on the areas of interest, evaluation, funding processes, preparation and formats of full proposals. COMMUNICATING WITH DARPA: All administrative correspondence and questions concerning this BAA must be directed, in writing, to one of the administrative addresses below. Email or fax is preferred. DARPA intends to use electronic mail for most technical and administrative correspondence regarding this BAA. Technical and contractual questions should be directed to baa98-27@darpa.mil. Include the originator's full name and return Email address in the text. These questions will be answered directly by email. AdministrativeAddresses: The PIP and Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) are available at URL http://www.darpa.mil (search under solicitation). Written requests for these documents may be sent by facsimile to 703-696-2203 or by surface mail addressed to DARPA/ISO, ATTN: BAA98-27 INFORMATION, 3701 N. Fairfax Drive, Arlington, VA 22203-1714. These requests must include the name and phone number of a point of contact. (0323) SPONSOR: Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), Contracts Management Directorate (CMD), 3701 N. Fairfax Dr., Arlington, VA 22203-1714. (0121)

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