SPECIAL NOTICE
70 -- ILOG JRULES SOFTWARE AND MAINTENANCE
- Notice Date
- 5/13/2008
- Notice Type
- Special Notice
- NAICS
- 511210
— Software Publishers
- Contracting Office
- Department of Veterans Affairs, VA Corporate Franchise Data Center, Department of Veterans Affairs Corporate Franchise Data Center, Department of Veterans Affairs;Corporate Data Center Operations;Austin Information Technology Center;1615 Woodward Street;Austin, TX 78772
- ZIP Code
- 78772
- Point of Contact
- Christie HoneycuttE-mail: christie.honeycutt@va.gov
- Small Business Set-Aside
- N/A
- Description
- Justification for Other than Full and Open CompetitionRequesting Agency: Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Patient Health Care and Enrollment Services 1615 Woodward Street Austin, TX 78772 Contracting Activity: Department of Veterans Affairs Corporate Data Center Operations (CDCO) Austin Information Technology Center (AITC) (200/00D) 1615 Woodward Street Austin, TX 78772 Project Background: In October 1996, Congress enacted the Veteran's Health Care Eligibility Reform Act of 1996, Public Law 104-262, which required Veterans Health Administration (VHA) to implement a priority based enrollment system. The Enrollment program includes functionality to process veteran's applications for enrollment, share veteran's eligibility and enrollment data with all VA health care facilities involved in the veteran's care, manage veterans' enrollment correspondence and telephone inquires, and support national reporting and analysis of enrollment data. The Health Eligibility Center (HEC) Legacy system handles this functionally. In August 2008, ESR 3.0 will replace the legacy system in order to provide greater flexibility to meet critical requirements on a timely basis, better safeguards to meet security requirements, and improved reliability. This program also encompasses Income Verification Matching (IVM) functionality, which verifies certain veterans' self-reported income information with the Internal Revenue Services (IRS) and Social Security Administration (SSA) federal tax information to identify veterans' responsibility for making medical care co-payments and to enhance revenue from first party collections. ESR 4.0 will replace the IVM 2.9 system, and will include a workflow component to create, assign, view, track, and complete work items. This program also encompasses HEC IT Operations support. On July 19, 2004, the VA's Health Eligibility Center (HEC), part of the Veteran's Health Administration (VHA), located in Atlanta, GA, in conjunction with the Office of Information & Technology (OI&T)- Enrollment division purchased these ILOG JRules developmental licenses under Contract GS-35F0330J, Purchase Order 742-A40034 with Immix Technology. Before the procurement execution, HEC and OI&T conducted extensive market research for the best product and value to the Government. A technical evaluation was prepared identifying and recommending the business rules engine for the development of the Enrollment system for the HEC. Two different software products (ILOG - JRules and Fair Isaac - Blaze Advisor) were selected for this technical evaluation. These products were short listed from a larger selection of rules engines. The technical evaluation included the following: a) Implementing the provided business rules (Subset of Eligibility and Enrollment Rules); b) Demonstrating and presenting products using the provided business rules; and c) Evaluating on a set of criteria. The technical evaluation recommended the use of a Business Rules engine over embedding the rules in code for the following reasons: 1) Rules Maintenance; 2) Rules Validation; 3) Rules Development. Nature and/or description of the action: This is a request for a firm fixed priced delivery order under National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Solutions for Enterprise-Wide Procurement (SEWP IV) Government-Wide Acquisition Contract (GWAC) for the following: Procurement of ILOG, Inc. licenses to transition from Enrollment System Redesign (ESR) development licenses to production ESR licenses Procurement of additional licenses for development servers Maintenance of these licenses AITC is directed to procure software on NASA SEWP IV through a memorandum from the Assistant Secretary for Information and Technology dated June 1, 2007 which made the NASA SEWP contract mandatory for all VA offices. A description of the supplies or services required to meet the agency's needs The ESR project is a Java 2 Platform Enterprise Edition (J2EE) modernization, rehosting and re-engineering of the legacy Health Eligibility Center's enrollment application and processes. The VA currently owns ILOG licenses and maintenance support of these licenses which are for a pre-production state that covers software development, testing, and annual maintenance support. This requirement is to procure ILOG Inc., JRules production licenses which transition the Enrollment System Redesign (ESR) version (v) 3.0 software from a pre-production state to a production state. ILOG JRules software is used to create human readable/writable business rules that are translated into Java code. These licenses are perpetual license which means that the VA buys these one time and the licenses are good forever (exclusive of the annual maintenance fee). The manufacturer of this product is ILOG, Inc. and they have numerous resellers of these products. In order to be compatible with the existing ILOG, Inc. installation, only ILOG, Inc. brand name products can be purchased to upgrade to the licenses. No substitution in manufacturer (brand name/or model) is acceptable. The question is not whether another manufacture's product works with ILOG's licenses. ILOG is a business rules engine that works with VA's application. This solicitation is not considered for issuance as brand name or equal. In order to remove these products (licenses) now and use another product, this would require full development cycle replete with recoding, regression testing, user acceptance testing, integration testing, and deployment. This would take up to a year and likely would cost an additional $4,000,000.00. An identification of the statutory authority permitting other than full and open competition. FAR 6.302-1(c) Application for brand name description. Citation: 41 U.S.C. 253(c)(1). A demonstration that the proposed contractor's unique qualifications or the nature of the acquisition requires use of the authority cited. The ILOG JRules software is already installed on the current servers and is highly integrated with the business service layer of the actual ESR v 3.0 code. Selecting a new product at this time would require a complete recoding of the business service layer of the software which easily equates to an additional year of a coding, testing, and software release cycle. Costs associated with this would exceed $4,000,000.00 in resources alone and would delay the release of subsequent, mission critical congressionally mandated software to support the Global War On Terrorism. Therefore, the VA purchased and implemented ILOG Jrules into the Enrollment System Redesign product. Since this product already exists in the VA's system, no other manufacturer's products could be used to upgrade the licenses or provide additional licenses to expand capacity. 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. A notice of this Justification for Other Than Full and Open Competition will be posted to the Federal Business Opportunities System (FedBizOpps). To meet the fair opportunity provisions of the SEWP IV contract, a posting will be publicized on NASA SEWP request for quotations site. A determination by the contracting officer that the anticipated cost to the Government will be fair and reasonable. The anticipated proposed prices are based on previously-negotiated prices under a current government contract which are already determined to be fair and reasonable. A description of the market research conducted (see Part 10) and the results or a statement of the reason market research was not conducted. Market research for ILOG, Inc. resellers on NASA SEWP resulted in two contract holders (GMRI PCMG and Merlin). GMRI PCMG's products/CLINs/part number did not meet the Government's requirements. Merlin's products/CLINs/part numbers did meet the Government's requirements. Market research for ILOG, Inc. resellers for ILOG Jrules on GSA IT 70 contract resulted in one contract holder (immixTechnology). immixTechnology's products/part numbers did meet the Government's requirements. ILOG, Inc. also has numerous partners for open market procurements. Their types of partners include: software (39 partners), service (38 partners), channel (11 partners), technology (5 partners), and association (15 partners). Any other facts supporting the use of other than full and open competition, such as: This information technology (IT) procurement request is integral to the Enrollment System Redesign and the Enrollment program as a whole. These costs are part of the life-cycle costs included in the Enrollment Enhancement OMB exhibit through 2013. The above referenced brand named products available, in the case of this follow-on contract, are part of a major system. This is an upgrade to license status and additional licenses. The substantial duplication of cost to the Government would not be expected to be recovered through full and open competition. In addition, there would be unacceptable delays in fulfilling the agency's requirements. A listing of the sources, if any, that expressed, in writing, an interest in the acquisition. Request for quotation has not been posted yet to NASA SEWP. 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. Continual market research is being conducted by the program office to identify other contractors that can meet the agencies needs. The VA continues to research using brand name or equal on subsequent solicitations. In addition, the VA continues to research the possibilities of procuring the re-procurement rights to the software.
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