SOLICITATION NOTICE
A -- Information Systems Technology Test Broad Agency Announcement (BAA)
- Notice Date
- 12/20/2004
- Notice Type
- Solicitation Notice
- NAICS
- 541512
— Computer Systems Design Services
- Contracting Office
- 53560 Hull Street Bldg A33 Rm 1602W, San Diego CA 92152-5001
- ZIP Code
- 92152-5001
- Solicitation Number
- N66001-05-X-6026
- Response Due
- 2/4/2005
- Archive Date
- 3/6/2005
- Point of Contact
- Point of Contact - Esther E Christianson, Contract Specialist, 619-553-4333; Joye Socha, Contract Officer, 619-553-7515
- E-Mail Address
-
Contract Specialist
(esther.christianson@navy.mil)
- Small Business Set-Aside
- N/A
- Description
- The Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center, (SPAWARSYSCEN) San Diego, in support of the Office of the Secretary of Defense, Director of Operational Test & Evaluation (DOT&E), is seeking proposals for the Information Systems Technology Test (ISTT) Focus Area for the Test and Evaluation / Science and Technology (T&E/S&T) Program. A two-step process is established for offerors contemplating submission of a proposal under this BAA. Proposals may be for projects or investigations that can be completed within a year of award, or for multiple year projects as long as each subsequent phase can be funded as individual options with clearly defined milestones and deliverables. DOT&E strongly encourages well-coordinated, interdisciplinary research and development activities that take into consideration previous and current relevant work, and significant and relevant engineering tradeoffs and optimizations. The ISTT focus area emphasizes the development of advanced test technologies to enable non-intrusive testing and evaluation of future warfighting information systems in complex network-centric environments. The major components of information systems technology being addressed by the ISTT focus area are: · Communications Networks · Composable Data Sources and Network Interactions · Information Assurance · Decision Making o Applications o Collaboration o Human-Computer Interfaces. The ISTT program has a specific interest in, but is not limited to, the following technical areas: 1. Interoperability of network devices in large, complex network architectures. Methods and instruments are needed to evaluate the end-to-end connectivity, interoperability, and capability of secure and non-secure systems-of-systems communications networks. Test technologies should assist in assessing the ability to provide services to and accept services from other systems, units, or forces; and to use those services to operate effectively together. Network performance is affected by applications-generated traffic, which in most cases, can be measured and evaluated. These results are difficult to scale in large military networks when ten's or hundred's of participants are engaged in distributive, collaborative planning. Methods and tools are needed to effectively and realistically scale up and synthesize the participants of large military networks and evaluate the impact of their simultaneous multiplayer activities on the network. 2. Composable data sources and network interactions. Warfighters operating in a Network-centric environment will be able to compose the Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (C4ISR) elements at their disposal. This composable environment enables discovery and utilization of web-based services and sources of data as well as to plug-and-play new hardware and software. Composability will permit creation of new functional capabilities that meet emergent warfighting requirements. Communities of interest will be formed consisting of multiplayer simultaneous activities. The supporting networks will be seamless, secure, self-organizing, and self-healing. As these networks recompose, network scalability becomes an issue. Non-intrusive methods and tools are needed to evaluate the performance of composable networks including scalability, self-organization, and self-healing. 3. Effectiveness of information assurance. Information Assurance (IA) protects computer networks, information, and information systems, ensuring availability, integrity, authentication, and confidentiality. Evaluation of IA products and systems requires techniques to generate realistic data that is representative of DoD networks. This includes operation under nominal conditions, crisis induced congestion, and the influence of realistic attacks. Technologies are needed to assess the effectiveness of information assurance capabilities on large system-of-systems and composable networks. 4. Decision-making systems, including the actions of intelligent agents. a. Evaluations of systems in the decision making process. Such evaluations can rarely be performed with the granularity necessary to determine the value of individual components and the information that they contribute to the decision process. This is particularly true of automation intended to support higher-level decision-making that doesn't have a strong repetitive nature. The current state of the practice for evaluating decision support technology is to use techniques that originated in the behavioral sciences. This approach allows the human-computer team to be evaluated using a new technology and their performance compared to teams that do not use the technology under consideration. This is an expensive and tedious process and can rarely be used to evaluate all of the components of a complicated system. Methods to instrument and measure the individual contributions of a system are needed to allow more specific results to be obtained. b. Testing the functions of command and control and decision support systems including the actions of intelligent agents. Thorough testing of command and control and decision support systems prior to release to Warfighters is a critical aspect of high-quality system design. The inability to accomplish this task may lead to the dangerous, and potentially fatal, condition of Warfighters relying on systems whose outputs may have a significant amount of uncertainty. Thorough testing requires a great deal of effort and is a difficult job because tools necessary to facilitate such testing are not well developed. This problem is compounded with the requirement to test intelligent agents, whose ability to "learn" makes it difficult to predict their future performance. Technologies are needed to assess the effectiveness of command and control and decision support systems including the actions of intelligent agent capabilities in large system-of-systems networks. Additional background information can be viewed at the SPAWAR E-Commerce Central (SPAWAR E-CC). The URL for this site is https://e-commerce.spawar.navy.mil (note that this does not include a "www" prefix) under the BAA number. Proposed efforts should offer the potential for a significant impact on the current technology and have bearing on issues confronting our Defense and National Security. BAA INFORMATION This announcement will be open through 04 February 2005. The Government reserves the right to award contracts, grants, cooperative agreements or other transactions. Proposed efforts should be phased in 12-month segments with specific capability goals to be achieved at the end of each segment. Funding of approximately $1.0M total is expected, but not guaranteed, for awards in FY05. Multiple awards are possible and the funding level is anticipated to increase modestly in the out years. Offerors should be aware that there is no certainty in the funding level or level of effort. A two-step process is established for offerors contemplating submission of a proposal under this BAA. The process will begin with the submission of a 6-page (single-sided) abstract. Specific instructions relating to submission and content of the abstract can be viewed at the SPAWAR E-Commerce Central (SPAWAR E-CC). The URL for this site is https://e-commerce.spawar.navy.mil (note that this does not include a "www" prefix) under the BAA number. These abstracts will be evaluated using a reduced set consisting of criteria 1 through 5 in descending order of importance, of the criteria listed below. Based on this evaluation, the Government will notify offerers as to possible interest in their proposals and request full proposals be submitted. A debrief will not be available for abstracts submitted. Each proposal will then be evaluated using the full set of criteria listed below in descending order of importance: 1. Overall scientific or technical merit of the proposal, 2. Effort is an advanced science or technology development that satisfies a militarily relevant test and evaluation need, 3. Potential for technical success, 4. Potential for transition to a Department of Defense test capability, 5. Value of the project to the T&E/S&T program, 6. The offeror's capabilities, plan of execution, and facilities, 7. Realism of the proposed cost. All program participants will be expected to share technical information, subject to non-disclosure requirements, with all other T&E/S&T program participants. Offerors are advised that certain individuals from Scientific Research Corporation, CNS Technologies, Inc and Newtech may assist the Government as subject matter experts (SME) in performing evaluations of the abstracts and proposals submitted under this announcement. These SMEs will be authorized to access portions of the proposal data and engage in discussions that are necessary to enable them to provide specific advice on specialized matters or on particular problems. The SMEs will not rank offerors' proposals. Any objection to disclose information to these SMEs should be provided in writing BEFORE the date set for receipt of proposals and shall include a detailed statement for the basis of the objection. Any objection to disclosure could affect the results of the evaluation. Administrative questions for both abstracts and proposals may be addressed to Ms. Esther E. Christianson at (619) 553-4333 or e-mail at esther.christianson@navy.mil or mailed to SPAWARSYSCEN, Attn: Esther E. Christianson, Code 226, 53560 Hull St., San Diego, CA 92152-5001. Technical questions may be submitted, by email only, to Mr. Robert Kolesar, e-mail Robert.kolesar@navy.mil with a copy to Esther Christianson. The answer to the two most frequently asked questions, "Is this of interest?" or "Is this within scope of the BAA?" will be answered by, "An abstract must be submitted in order to answer your question." The Government reserves the right to select for award all, some, or none of the abstracts/proposals received in response to this announcement. The Government may also only select specific tasks within a proposal for award. This notice constitutes a BAA as contemplated in FAR 6.102(d)(2). The BAA Attachment provides submittal instructions and other information. A formal request for proposal (RFP) or other solicitation regarding this announcement will not be issued. Interested parties are invited to respond to this synopsis. The Government will consider all submissions from responsible parties. NOTE: THIS NOTICE WAS NOT POSTED TO WWW.FEDBIZOPPS.GOV ON THE DATE INDICATED IN THE NOTICE ITSELF (20-DEC-2004); HOWEVER, IT DID APPEAR IN THE FEDBIZOPPS FTP FEED ON THIS DATE. PLEASE CONTACT fbo.support@gsa.gov REGARDING THIS ISSUE.
- Web Link
-
Click on this link to access the SPAWAR Solicitation Page
(http://www.eps.gov/spg/DON/SPAWAR/SPAWARSYSCEN_San_Diego/N66001-05-X-6026/listing.html)
- Record
- SN00723948-F 20041222/041220211815 (fbodaily.com)
- Source
-
FedBizOpps.gov Link to This Notice
(may not be valid after Archive Date)
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