Agency: U.S. Department of Agriculture/Food Nutrition Services Project Name: National Agency Clearinghouse (NAC) Development Maintenance and Enhancement (DME) NAICS: 541512, Computer Systems Design Services The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Food Nutrition and Consumer Services (FNCS) is seeking information from qualified source(s) or other knowledgeable parties to follow on and continue services (development, maintenance, and enhancement) in support of the National Agency Clearinghouse (NAC) Development Maintenance and Enhancement (DME) in July of 2024. Please see the attached NAC DME PWS. Comments on the Draft PWS will also be accepted and are highly encouraged. Please be advised that your participation in this Sources Sought is not required to ensure participation in future solicitations and contract awards. Sources Sought responses are not offers and cannot be accepted by the Government to form a binding contract. Participation to this Sources Sought is voluntary, and the Government will not reimburse participants for any expenses associated with their participation to this Sources Sought or contract for services. Additionally, there is no commitment by the Government to issue a solicitation as a result of this Sources Sought. The intent of this Sources Sought is to gauge industry's interest and capabilities to perform the services as described in the attached NAC DME Performance Work Statement (PWS). The results of this Sources Sought will assist USDA/FNCS in determining if a set-aside is feasible, to determine which, if any, socioeconomic program to use for this acquisition, and to determine if there are existing contract vehicles (GSA Schedule, GWAC, Multiple Award Contract, etc.) that could be utilized for solicitation. Background The mission of the USDA FNCS Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) is to offer nutrition assistance to millions of eligible, low-income individuals and families while ensuring program integrity in partnership with state agencies. In furtherance of that mission and to meet the requirements of the Agriculture Improvement Act of 2018 (the 2018 Farm Bill), FNCS established an interstate data system, known as the National Accuracy Clearinghouse (the NAC), to prevent individuals from receiving SNAP benefits in more than one State at the same time (interstate duplicate participation) and promulgated regulations through an interim final rule (87 FR 59633) to establish the requirements of the NAC matching program. The NAC computer matching program is intended to (1) enhance Program integrity by providing State agencies with a tool to screen for duplicate participation and take timely action to reduce improper payments and (2) improve Program access and customer experience by facilitating State-to-State communication to help State agencies promptly and accurately process SNAP recipient moves from one State to another. The core purpose of the NAC system is to serve as a tool to help State agencies meet the requirements of the NAC matching program. FNCS is seeking a contractor to continue development of the NAC system (and perform all related activities for operating and maintaining the system) and to support State agencies through successful implementation of the NAC matching program, including both technical and business process aspects of each State's implementation project. The 2018 Farm Bill requirement grew out of an earlier State-run pilot, also called the National Accuracy Clearinghouse (NAC pilot) in which five States participated in a consortium that showed the feasibility of sharing information about participants to prevent duplicate participation between those States. While FNCS incorporated several best practices and lessons learned from the NAC pilot in designing the national version, the new NAC is a separate, newly built Federal system of records (88 FR 11403), wholly owned and operated by FNCS that all States will be required to use by October 2, 2027, to comply with the NAC regulations. SNAP understood that building an interstate system would be a major multi-year endeavor that would rely on all 53 SNAP State agencies, consisting of all 50 States, the District of Columbia, and the U.S. territories of Guam and the U.S. Virgin Islands, to develop connections from their unique State eligibility systems to the NAC system. To that end, FNCS entered into an inter-agency agreement with GSA's 18F to build a minimum viable product (MVP) and to procure an initial development and State support vendor on a short term (2 year) contract with the understanding that the short-term contract would enable FNCS to develop and learn the best methods for managing the multi-year NAC project. The NAC will assist SNAP in fulfilling its mission, by enabling state agencies to prevent duplicate participation and to discover and eliminate existing duplicate participation through the following primary functions: - The system will be populated with information about active SNAP participants provided by all 53 state agencies. - State agencies will match against the SNAP participant information provided by all other participating State agencies to discover and prevent duplicate participation while making eligibility determinations. - The system will facilitate State to State communication to promote the timely resolution of data matches. - The system will conduct monthly automated comparisons of SNAP participant information provided by all States to discover existing duplicate participation to allow States to take timely action to resolve these cases. The NAC obtained an authority to operate (ATO) and was deployed to the FNCS production environment in February 2023 with system enhancement released in August and October. The first two States are expected to use the system to launch the NAC matching program in December 2023, with several more states launching in the first half of 2024. Therefore, the incumbent NAC development vendor has pivoted their attention from beyond developing the minimum viable product (MVP) to developing many of the features needed to put the NAC into full use. In addition, the incumbent vendor is managing state technical issues and state program issues that arise as states begin interacting with the NAC. Detailed Submission and Instructions for Responding to this Sources Sought: Firms interested in responding to this Sources Sought shall, at a minimum, submit responses to the questions numbered items below: 1. Name of Company, Address, and POC Information. Please include Unique Entity ID (UEI), and your current Small Business (SB) size status (if any). 2. Details concerning contracts currently held to include GSA Schedule(s), Government Wide Acquisition Contracts (GWACs), and any other existing ordering vehicles (whether thru GSA or otherwise) that may possibly be used to award this effort. Please only describe the ordering vehicles of your firm's involvement if you believe this effort would be in scope and the contract would still be a valid ordering vehicle. 3. Would you make any changes to the Deliverables (Section 10.0) and Operating Constraints (Section 11.0) outlined in the PWS? 4. In Section 4 of the PWS, we have identified what tasks the USDA believes should be Firm-Fixed-Price (FFP) and Labor Hour (LH). Do you agree with the hybrid contract pricing arrangement as indicated in the PWS? 5. If you do not agree with the pricing arrangement in Section 4 of the PWS, please provide how you would like the tasks in Section 4 priced out. 6. Please name a few projects you have worked on were FISMA compliant in the last 5 years? 7. Did you achieve an ATO for a FISMA compliant high value asset (HVA) containing Personally Identifiable Information (PII) in the last 5 years? 8. Share some experiences in dealing with State administered Federal benefits program in the last 5 years. 9. Indicate how much time would be required, after notification of award (estimated to be early June 2023), to fully provide the services described in the PWS. 10. Contractor's statement indicating a level of interest in providing a quotation to a solicitation as a result of this Sources Sought? DEADLINE FOR SUBMISSIONS: All interested firms may respond to this Sources Sought by e-mail to timothy.randall@usda.gov by 29-Dec-2023 @ 12:00 PM Eastern Time. Attachments: 1. National Agency Clearinghouse Development, Maintenance, and Enhancement PWS
