Loren Data's SAM Daily™

FBO DAILY ISSUE OF AUGUST 05, 2011 FBO #3541
DOCUMENT

D -- E-Discovery - Attachment

Notice Date

8/3/2011
 

Notice Type

Attachment
 

NAICS

541511 — Custom Computer Programming Services
 

Contracting Office

Department of Veterans Affairs;Technology Acquisition Center;260 Industrial Way West;Eatontown NJ 07724
 

ZIP Code

07724
 

Solicitation Number

VA11811RI0588
 

Response Due

8/17/2011
 

Archive Date

8/31/2011
 

Point of Contact

Contract Specialist Brian Klug
 

E-Mail Address

cting
 

Small Business Set-Aside

N/A
 

Description

1.0 Program Background: The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is seeking to change the way it identifies, collects, preserves, searches, processes, reviews, and produces Electronically Stored Information (ESI) in connection to litigation. VA has identified the need for an Electronic Discovery (eDiscovery) environment compliant with Federal Rules of Civil Procedures 26 and 34 (as attached to this RFI). The Agency's objective is to create a contractual vehicle with the flexibility to satisfy the eDiscovery obligations and challenges normally encountered when VA either reasonably anticipates litigation or is involved in the same. To that end, VA's Office of Acquisition Logistics (OAL), at the request of VA's Office of the General Counsel (OGC), is conducting market research to determine potential vendors with the requisite capabilities to establish and sustain an enterprise-level eDiscovery environment and would like to solicit input based on the requirements and questions contained within this RFI. This RFI does not constitute an Invitation for Bids, Request for Proposal (RFP), or Request for Quote (RFQ), nor does the issuance VA's acquisition approach. Any information received is considered market research and may be utilized by VA in developing its Acquisition Strategy, Performance Work Statement (PWS) and performance specifications and metrics. This market research will be used to assess the availability and adequacy of potential sources prior to issuing an RFP. The contract vehicle for this effort has not yet been determined. VA will not respond to or conduct formal debriefings to businesses as a part of this RFI. In accordance with FAR 15.202(e), responses to this notice are not offers and cannot be accepted by VA to form a binding contract. Responders are solely responsible for all expenses associated with responding to this RFI. Responses to the RFI will not be returned. The North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) code for this IT services acquisition effort is code 541512; Small Business size standard is $25M. Please provide any relevant information VA should consider along with that requested below. The purpose of publicizing notices for potential actions is to increase competition, to broaden industry participation in meeting Government requirements, and to assist small businesses in general in obtaining contracts and subcontracts. Firms responding to this announcement should indicate their business size/socioeconomic status for NAICS code 541512, particularly if they are small business. "Small business" means small business, veteran-owned small business, service-disabled veteran-owned small business, small disadvantaged business, women-owned small business, and HUBZone small business. HUBZones: " Must be located in an "historically underutilized business zone," " It must be owned and controlled by one or more U.S. Citizens, and " At least 35% of its employees must reside in a HUBZone. While one purpose of market research is to determine small business capability and whether the requirement should be "set aside," it is also used to determine general industry capability and interest. All businesses under NAICS 541512 who are capable of performing the requirement are encouraged to respond. How to calculate average annual receipts and average employment of a firm can be found in 13 CFR § 121.104 and 13 CFR § 121.106, respectively. 1.1Program Objective. VA is seeking to develop and implement an enterprise-level eDiscovery Environment that will enable the identification, collection, preservation, search, processing, review, and production of ESI. 1.2Description of Products and Services. This RFI seeks industry input to concepts stated in Section 1.1 above. This core service shall allow Users throughout the Agency spread across multiple locations the ability to leverage ESI for use by various offices within VA's Office of the General Counsel (OGC) to achieve specific objectives in support of litigation. VA OGC requires an e-Discovery environment that will access, analyze and process ESI across the entire Department. 2.0 Functional Capabilities & Requirements Concepts and Strategies. Respondents should discuss concepts and strategies in the following areas, and specifically how the respondent would provide a system and/or supporting services to successfully provide an enterprise-level eDiscovery Environment. 2.1 Management of Litigation Holds Concept: Ensuring that ESI is protected against inappropriate alteration or destruction through notification of information custodians. Enabling Capabilities: 1.Quickly and easily notify holders of ESI, through litigation hold notices, to suspend routine retention/destruction practices; 2. Document and track recipients of litigation hold notices to include, at a minimum, all individuals identified as having custody, possession, or control of ESI; Document both receipt and acknowledgments of litigation hold notices; 3.Verify suspension of retention/destruction practices; 4.Routinely monitor, and affirmatively verify implementation of, outstanding litigation hold notices; and 5.Track and notify the status of litigation holds. 2.2 Identification Concept: Locating potential sources of ESI and determining its scope, breadth and depth. Enabling Capabilities: 1.Identify specific repositories (e.g., networks, databases, locations) where potentially responsive information may be found; 2.Identify individuals with the custody, possession or control of the ESI to include records custodian, network administrator, and other individuals; 3.Search for ESI anywhere VA has custody, possession or control of ESI to include all VA computer systems, networks, devices, and databases on and off the VA network; 4.Search for ESI online, near-line, and offline storage including but not limited to hard drives in personal computers, network servers, Blackberries, PDA's, external hard drives, floppy disks, flash drives, compact discs, and back-up tapes; 5.Search for ESI in both structured data to include databases and other structured formats and unstructured data to include individual ESI objects to include folders, subfolders, and individual files; 6.Search for ESI using individual concept searches, search terms, search phrases, or Boolean expressions; 7.Search for ESI in file and document contents and metadata, regardless of file type or format; 8.Bulk decrypt ESI to enable precise and efficient identification and search of relevant material Search for ESI in encrypted and digitally signed documents, including the ability to run search terms against encrypted emails and documents attached to both unencrypted and encrypted e-mails and the ability to automatically decrypt the email; 9.Conduct initial search for ESI within 96 hours; 10.Provide a comprehensive audit trail and record of searches conducted with information about the search including search terms, the person conducting search, locations searched, and search results. 2.3Collection Concept: Gathering ESI for further use in processing, reviewing, and analysis and production Enabling Capabilities: 1.Collect ESI in its native file format, including legacy systems, with all associated metadata; 2.Within the context of email, retain all attachments in context of message and include attachments within searchable ESI collection; 3.Capability to retain native file formats for email, voicemail, instant messaging dialogs, word processing documents, spreadsheets, power point presentations, personal/shared calendars, databases of a technical, scientific, financial, or human resources nature, webpages, and online/social networking sites; 4.Capability to bulk decrypt and save in unencrypted form all previous encrypted documents with known public/private keys; 5.Deliver collected ESI in native file format with all associated metadata to appropriate VA officer for processing; 6.Document all actions taken by specific individuals to identify, preserve, and collect potentially relevant ESI, to include specific locations searched, search terms or phrases used, and results of the action(s). 7.Rapidly load ESI onto an appropriate review platform. 2.4 Preservation Concept: Ensuring that collected ESI maintains accountability, security and integrity. Enabling Capabilities: 1.Document and preserve chain of custody; 2.Retain all metadata if necessary to litigation; and 3.Maintain security and integrity of collected ESI through secure storage. 2.5Processing, Review, and Analysis Concept: Reducing the volume of ESI and converting it, if necessary, to forms more suitable for review and analysis. Enabling Capabilities: 1.Evaluate ESI for relevance and privilege; 2.Present each document individually; 3.Bulk decryption of encrypted ESI provided with public/private keys; 4.Full text indexing; 5.Evaluate and organize the ESI for content and context, to include key patterns, topics, people, and discussion; 6.Enable Optical Character Recognition for all documents to facilitate rapid attorney review. In particular, custodian names need to be reliably searchable; 7.Ability to deduplicate and hash documents found in multiple locations or in the possession of multiple custodians, or progressive email threads, to expedite attorney review. 8.Ability to "near" deduplicate and perform similarity hashing; 9.Enable efficient redaction of privileged or protected material, whether within a particular page of a document or page by page; 10.Minimize attorney review time through automated culling of irrelevant material that happens to contain search terms; 11.Enable automatic generation of privilege log based on attorney comments and notes written contemporaneously at time of review; 12.Enable a reviewer to set default tags for particular types of documents or documents from a particular custodian, such as "not relevant" or "privileged; 13.Enable a reviewer to view any type of document in image view; no documents need to be independently converted to PDF or printed in order to be reviewed; and 14.Enable a reviewer to undo highlighting or other native attorney work product appearing on documents 2.6Production Concept: Production of responsive ESI in form agreed upon to meet discovery obligations. Enabling Capabilities: 1.Capability to produce different types of files in native, near-native, image, and paper formats; 2.Hashing of ESI prior to production; 3.Maintain searchable text of ESI produced; 4.Support for collection from and export to HTML, EDRM/XML and all common web formats; 5.Redaction of privileged or protected information, including support for produced redactions, where text is secured from unauthorized display, search, and review; 6.Ability to organize production and collected sets using a folder-based structure; 7.Support for custom header, footer, and watermark labeling of documents in image-based production; 8.Support for Bates stamping or unique file identifiers for native files; 9.Tracking of production status and chain of custody; 10.Quality control and validation - support to produce an audit trail, logging administrative and user actions such as login, logout, search, tag, print, and export; 11.Ability securely store and maintain copies of all ESI produced; and 12.Ability to describe the security of data transferred to and from outside counsel such as usernames, passwords and any data that might be transferred between a server and client. 2.6Compatibility with Current and Future VA Systems Concept: Ability to maintain continuity of operation regarding archived email regardless of the technical features of the email archiving solution employed by VA. Enabling Capabilities: 1.Ability to search, collect, process, and analyze ESI found on multiple disparate current email archives and exchange servers 2.Ability to search, collect, process, and analyze ESI from any future universal email archiving solution implemented by VA 2.7Litigation Support 2.7.1Litigation Support Team. Additional resources in the form of a specified amount of legal professionals must be available to assist with VA efforts to cull through large amounts of discovery requested for production and collected from outside counsel under an eDiscovery request. Enabling Capabilities: 1.Properly licensed team of legal professionals, paralegals, and admin staff possessing proper certification. 2.Ability of team members to obtain proper VA security certification for access to ESI; 3.Ability of team members to travel to VA sites and alternate off-site locations as necessary; 4.Ability of team members within 96 hours notice; and 5.Ability to provide the technical support necessary to assist in use of any e-discovery tools, capable of responding to questions both in the ordinary course of business and in a time-sensitive litigation context. 2.8Training. Training must be available to VA OGC and various officers with regard to the provided services. 2.9Ongoing Support and Maintenance. VA will require continuous monitoring of all critical storage resources including dedicated, shared, and core infrastructure components for data produced in response to an eDiscovery request and data collected from outside counsel. Enabling Capabilities: 1.Notification of any planned maintenance, emergency maintenance, outages, configuration changes, or replacements of any equipment involved in the delivery of services for the purpose of awareness regardless of whether such activities impact the operational availability or performance of the production applications or not; 2.Notification of subcontractors who will be performing any duties outlined within the RFI and assurance that all VA privacy requirements will be met prior to subcontractor accessing any VA information; 3.Process for requesting configuration changes to any equipment used to deliver, store, or collect eDiscovery documents and files; 4.Ability and agreement to conduct disaster recovery (DR) testing in regularly occurring cycles; and 5.Ability to ensure that all resources involved in eDiscovery service delivery are properly/fully licensed and maintain active vendor support. 3.0Contents of the Response 3.1 Submission Instructions. Respondents shall submit a twenty (20) page maximum response describing how the respondent can satisfy the requirements described in this RFI. The responses should be formatted on 8.5 x 11 inch paper in Microsoft Office 2007 and Adobe Acrobat v8 or lower; foldouts and attachments are permitted, but will be assessed towards the total page count. Cover pages will not be counted against the twenty (20) page limit. Company brochures will not be considered adequate responses. Pages shall be single-spaced, single-sided. The font shall be Times New Roman and the font size shall be no less than twelve (12) point. Respondents shall use at least 1-inch margins on the top and bottom and ¾ inch side margins. Information must be in an acceptable Adobe version and MS office products version. Responses are due not later than 3:00pm EST on August 17, 2011. The Government will not accept late submissions or extend this deadline. Send responses electronically to Contract Specialist Brian Klug, email: Brian.Klug@va.gov; and Contracting Officer David Nostrant, e-mail: David.Nostrant@va.gov. 3.2Capability Statement. As this is an RFI document, initial prospective business responses should be in the form of a Capability Statement. The Government recognizes that proprietary data may be submitted as part of this effort. If so, clearly mark such restricted or proprietary data. The Capability Statement should include the following elements: 1.Respondent's Business Identification 2.Company Name, Cage Code and DUNS Number 3.Address 4.Phone Number 5.Fax Number 6.E-mail 7.Contracting Officer Counterpart Point of Contact Information 8.A website address that provides additional information about the prospective business 9.The highest security clearance the respondent currently holds 10.Verify your status as a Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned Business 3.3Status. Identify business size/socio-economic status and provide any other information that the VA should consider in reviewing the response. 3.4Existing Contracts. Identify if the respondents products or services are available through existing VA, other Government Wide Acquisition Contracts (GWACs or GSA Federal Supply Schedules and contracts) and include contract numbers and expiration dates. 3.5Subcontractors. Identify if the respondent is considering a partnership, teaming arrangement, and/or sub-contracting efforts. 3.6 Past Performance. Provide a brief history of the respondent's business, its experience and innovative approaches in providing the products and services specified above. Provide information on up to three clients the respondent is currently providing or has provided services to that is similar to the size and scale of this effort. Give priority to those clients within the Federal Government and more particularly within the VA. For each client, provide the total number of users supported and the ratio of technicians to users supported.
 

Web Link

FBO.gov Permalink
(https://www.fbo.gov/notices/ce48e8ad2cf07c53ff8c1d74488eb0ce)
 

Document(s)

Attachment
 

File Name: VA118-11-RI-0588 VA118-11-RI-0588.doc (https://www.vendorportal.ecms.va.gov/FBODocumentServer/DocumentServer.aspx?DocumentId=226789&FileName=VA118-11-RI-0588-000.doc)

Link: https://www.vendorportal.ecms.va.gov/FBODocumentServer/DocumentServer.aspx?DocumentId=226789&FileName=VA118-11-RI-0588-000.doc

 

File Name: VA118-11-RI-0588 FRCP 26 34.DOCX (https://www.vendorportal.ecms.va.gov/FBODocumentServer/DocumentServer.aspx?DocumentId=226790&FileName=VA118-11-RI-0588-001.DOCX)

Link: https://www.vendorportal.ecms.va.gov/FBODocumentServer/DocumentServer.aspx?DocumentId=226790&FileName=VA118-11-RI-0588-001.DOCX

 

Note: If links are broken, refer to Point of Contact above or contact the FBO Help Desk at 877-472-3779.
 

Record

SN02521228-W 20110805/110804000434-ce48e8ad2cf07c53ff8c1d74488eb0ce (fbodaily.com)
 

Source

FedBizOpps Link to This Notice
(may not be valid after Archive Date)

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