The Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Customs and Border Protection (CBP), Cargo Systems Program Directorate (CSPD) has an ongoing requirement for cargo systems applications development and operation and maintenance support.

Customs Modernization is an enterprise-wide program for meeting the strategic goals and objectives of Customs and its Communities of Interest. It includes the planning, definition, development, implementation, and support of an integrated set of modern automation systems that will use state-of-the-practice technologies and processes to help Customs achieve its strategic goals and objectives. These systems must satisfy Customs commitments to the enforcement, analytical, and trade policy requirements of other Government agencies (OGAs).

Through this Agency-wide Modernization effort, Customs also seeks to establish state-of-the-practice, cost-effective management and technical processes that will implement the Enterprise Life Cycle Methodology (ELCM) for acquiring, developing, and maintaining systems and infrastructure in concert with the needs of the Customs enterprise and its strategic goals. The Modernization Program is designed to improve efficiency, increase effectiveness, and reduce costs for Customs and all of its Communities of Interest. In order to accomplish this, Customs must:

• Re-engineer many of its core business processes
• Adopt best practices from government and private sectors
• Support the Investment Management Process (IMP)
• Design, implement, and maintain an enterprise-wide system architecture
• Develop new systems and acquire the necessary hardware and software
• Test the new systems
• Plan to support each new system after it has been deployed
• Train its personnel in how to use each new system
• Deploy and integrate each new system
• Operate and support each new system
• Evaluate performance of each new system against its objectives
• Address the performance anomalies of each new system
• Engage in continuous process improvement

ACE is a computer system that tracks consumer products as they are imported into the US. This system is designed to reduce paperwork and speed up Customs clearance of imported goods, especially for routine shipments.

• The scope of the support required for this contract shall include but, is not limited to, Collections Features, Cargo Release/SE Features, Post Release Features, ITDS Single Window Features, Manifest Features, and cargo export functionality. The scope also includes cross-functional support for the Agile Teams.  This Statement of Work (SOW) describes the work to be performed, specific timeframes, and required deliverables under a T&M contract vehicle.
• The Contractor shall perform the tasks defined in Section 4.0 and produce and provide the Government with the deliverables identified in the individual task orders executed under this contract and work products defined in Section 9.2.
• Contractor resources will be used by the Government to staff multiple Development Teams, and other teams identified by the Government.
  • The Development teams will be composed of developers and testers/analysts with sufficient expertise to fully develop and test working software in an agile environment.
  • These Development Teams will be led and directed by the Government to deliver integrated and tested software in time-boxed Sprints. In addition to the Development Teams, a Support Team will be provided by the Contractor composed of specialists who support all the Development Teams in particular areas of expertise.
  • The sections below provide details on the Development Team and Support Team composition; the number of teams; the schedule to establish the teams; and the team objectives.
• Contractor Development Teams
  • The Contractor shall provide the personnel resources required to staff various Development Teams upon initial award. Each of the Development Teams shall be composed of full time team members including: full time lead agile developer; full time experienced agile developers; and full time experienced agile testers / analysts. The composition of skills on the Development Team may be altered with Government approval if the Contractor can demonstrate the need to alter the skill mix based on the type of work in user stories being addressed in upcoming development.  At the optional discretion of the Government, additional Development Teams of the same size and composition outlined above may be added.
  • The incremental Development Team growth shall be dictated by the pace and success of the ongoing Development Teams and rate at which the features on the product backlog are being developed.  The Government may also elect to decrease the number of Development Teams or not exercise its option to increase the number of Development Teams in accordance with the anticipated schedule above.
  • Contractor Support Team
  • In addition to the Development Teams, the Contractor shall provide a single Support Team composed of full time equivalents that support all the Development Teams. On the Support Team the Contractor shall provide specialist skills needed to support the Development Teams in areas of expertise such as data architecture; development of data interchange specifications (XML, current CBP EDI specifications, etc.); system interface development; system architecture; etc. The composition of skills on the Support Team may be altered with Government approval if the Contractor can demonstrate the need to alter the skill mix based on the type of work in user stories being addressed in the upcoming development.
  • At the optional discretion of the Government, additional full time personnel may be added to the Support Team.
  • The incremental Support Team growth shall be dictated by the pace and success of the ongoing Development Teams and rate at which the features on the product backlog are being developed.  The Government may elect to decrease the work load placed on the Support Team or exercise its option not to increase the work load on the Support Team thereby impacting the number of resources required on the Team.
  • The Contractor Development Teams and Support Team shall assist the CBP CSPD in accomplishing the nine objectives, in three areas, described below:
  • Achieve high stakeholder satisfaction through agile development and delivery of valuable software features, to include:
    • Regular demonstration and delivery of newly developed software functionality at the user story, feature, and release level.
    • Successful implementation of the agile planning, development, testing, communication, and organizational practices described in this document as the means to develop and deliver software.
    • Responsiveness to changes in priorities and requirements.
    • Effective collaboration with business and technical stakeholders.
  • Optimize cargo systems applications for operational utility and cost efficiency, to include:
    • Delivery of high-quality applications that maximize system maintainability, reliability, availability, and other quality attributes.
    • Problem resolution accuracy and completeness without introduction of application defects or system degradation.
    • Automate test, integration, and deployment
  • Enhance Program decision making at CSPD, by providing:
    • Transparent communication of Contractor progress in building valuable features using agile communications media such as burn down charts, task boards, etc. with agile lifecycle management tools provided to the Contractor (i.e. Atlassian).
    • Advice and recommendations on architectural and technical improvements to the existing and evolving system.
  • The Contractor shall provide technical and management support services with the associated skills and qualifications which are needed to enable the CSPD transformation objective and to demonstrate the success of that transformation by developing applications to meet specified mission goals.
• TASK 1: Contractor Transition In
  • The Contractor transition in period will begin upon receipt and acceptance of the contractor’s Transition Plan by the Government.  The transition in period shall cause no disruption in development and especially O&M services.
  • The approved transition in plan and schedule (updated to reflect any agreements made at the Kickoff Meeting) shall be submitted within 10 days after Kick Off meeting unless otherwise directed by the Government. The Contractor shall account for 3 working days of Government review and approval of the transition backlog prior to executing the transition. The proposed transition in plan shall be submitted in accordance with the proposal.
  • The Transition Plan shall:
    • Establish transition roadmap
    • Identify transition risks and risk mitigation
    • Define roles and responsibilities
    • Define a knowledge transfer approach
    • Provide checklist
    • Transition milestones
    • Schedule of events
  • The transition progress shall be provided in the monthly status report (CDRL XXX) and provide information on all of the activities in the transition plan.   The Government reserves the right to call meetings at any time during the transition in period to review all transition activities.
• TASK 2: Contractor Transition Out
  • At the completion of performance of this contract the Contractor shall fully support the transition of the Contractor’s work that is turned over to another entity, either Government or a successor offeror(s). The Contractor shall assist with transition planning and shall comply with transition milestones and schedule of events.
  • The Contractor shall be responsible for the implementation of the transition and application cutover activities.
  • The Contractor shall be responsible for the transition of all technical activities identified in this task order.  As part of the transition, the Contractor shall be responsible for:
    • Inventory and orderly transfer of all Government Furnished Property (GFP), to include hardware, software, and licenses, Contractor Acquired Government Property, and Government Furnished Information (GFI) to include
    • Transfer of documentation currently in process
    • Transfer of all software code in process
    • Certification that all non-public DHS information has been purged from any Contractor-owned system
    • Exchange of accounts to access software and hosted infrastructure components
    • Participate in knowledge transfer activities in accordance with the transition plan
    • Provide members to and participate in transition management
    • Identify transition risks and risk mitigation
  • The Contractor shall submit a Transition Plan. The Transition Plan shall include support activities for all transition efforts for follow-on requirements to minimize disruption of services.  The Transition Plan shall:
    • Identify equipment, hardware, software, documents and other artifacts that are included in the transition
    • Establish roadmap and backlog
    • Identify transition risks and risk mitigation
    • Define roles and responsibilities
    • Define transition approval authorities and lines of communication
    • Define a knowledge transfer approach
    • Define a property inventory and transition approach
    • Create bi-party or tri-party agreements
    • Provide checklists
    • Transition milestones and schedule of events
  • A Transition Plan shall be delivered 120 days prior to the task order expiration date.  The Contractor shall account for a 10 business day Government review process prior to executing the transition.  Upon award of a follow-on contract, the incumbent Contractor will work with the new Contractor to provide knowledge transfer and transition support, as required by the Contracting Officer’s Representative (COR) and Program Manager (PM).
• TASK 3: Cargo Systems Application Development
  • The Contractor shall develop features in accordance with the ACE product backlog, as specifically defined in each incremental development plan deliverable.  These features will be incorporated into Potentially Shippable Increments of Software (PSI) and will be developed with Agile development teams.  The Contractor shall provide the Agile development teams with proven Agile development expertise and skilled technical development resources, along with automated testing engineers and continuous integration engineers who have working knowledge and understanding of the CBP ETA and development environments.  (See Attachment E for a listing of Cargo Applications.) The task shall provide, but not be limited to, the following functions as prioritized by the Government:
    • Development of features that will be incorporated into PSIs, using Agile development teams.
    • Fully exercise all tools and methodology components for Agile software development, including Agile Lifecycle Management (ALM) tools, continuous integration (CI) tools, automated testing tools, and stakeholder collaboration methods available within the CBP ETA.
    • Develop, validate, and tailor a system lifecycle development process and artifacts in conjunction with the Government, and in accordance with DHS and CBP Agile Systems Engineering Lifecycle (SELC) methodologies.
    • Support data center / cloud migration efforts for CSPD applications and services:
      • design and build applications and services in a consistent, standard, reliable, and portable manner to enable future transition to a cloud platform
      • provide recommendations and technical advice for data center / cloud migration efforts
      • innovate and modernize the way software is built, deployed and managed
    • Mandate test automation
    • Mandate compliance with automated standards for test coverage and code quality
    • The practice of Extreme Programming (XP) concepts and techniques should be used when developing or maintaining all applications unless specified otherwise. This should include but not limited to:
      • Test Driven Development,
      • peer programing,
      • adherence to coding, testing, and release standards,
      • automated unit, integration, and regression testing,
      • automated code builds and deployments,
      • small releases, and
      • design simplicity.
• TASK 4: Dev/Ops Configuration and Release Management
  • The Contractor shall provide Dev/Ops Configuration and Release Management support services to perform tasks that include but, not limited to:
  • Manage and maintain the release process, to include making any necessary improvements based on policy or technology.
    • Support the day to day software release process (Dev/Ops) for CSPD from configuration management to Production release that includes:
    • Software and Database configuration management
    • Version control
    • Release management
    • Management of software builds and deployments
    • Promotion to all environments
    • Implement and maintain scalable build, test, staging and deployment tools, and automation that allows integration with various Continuous Integration (CI) tools, Artifact Repositories and sub systems.
    • Coordinate with functional (development/testing, deployment, systems/infrastructure) and development teams to ensure continuous operation for configuration management and release management.
    • Maintain the configuration management data base (CMDB).
• TASK 5: IT System Security Analysis
  • Contractor shall provide IT system security analysis and current operational procedures to determine compliance gaps; monitors and reports on POAM (Plan of Action and Milestones) and CAP (Corrective Action Plan) resolution status; collect information requested by internal and external auditors; assist in developing narrative to support security documentation; and monitor operational procedure compliance through collection of evidentiary documentation. Contractor shall provide skills in applying analytical techniques to the collection, summary and analysis of information concerning enterprise, program and project issues and applying those skills to developing draft plans and recommendations to enhance project-level security programs for management evaluation.
• TASK 6: Operations and Maintenance
  • The Contractor will be required to Operations and Maintenance of the systems identified in this SOW (See Attachment E for a listing of Cargo Applications) and develop continuous integration, automated testing, automated configuration, automated deployment, and capture of automated metrics.  These metrics will capture both the health of the deployment infrastructure in terms of its responsiveness to identifying defects early, and in terms of the cycle time to produce potentially deployable code.
    • Application Development for Enhancements, Refactoring, and Defects
    • Enhancements and Refactoring
    • Defects
    • Continuous Integration (CI)
    • Automated Testing
    • Automated Deployment
    • Support Software
    • Key Libraries and Frameworks
    • Development and Support Tools
    • Application Software
    • Performance Monitoring and Support
    • Information System Security Support
    • Security Engineering
    • System Engineering Support
• ON-DEMAND SERVICES
  • Based on the nature of the software development and O&M environment, dependent on requirements and available funding, the Government may require an increase in support provided by this contract. This increase is dependent on mission need and priorities. If it is determined a Surge Requirement as previously defined exists, the Government may exercise the surge CLINS as identified in the task order which will be separately priced and inserted on the Optional Surge CLINs via modification to the Task Order.
  • A Surge Requirement is defined as any additional work that can be performed under the scope of this SOW resulting from additional functionality that may be required by ACE to perform. A Surge Requirement can result from either statutory or regulatory mandate as well as new or improved functionality that has been determined is needed in ACE.
  • ACE functionality and associated funding for Surge Requirements will be reviewed and approved by CSPD leadership and submitted to the contractor for their review and proposal. Work will not commence for On-Demand Services until the Government reviews and accepts a contractor proposal for a specific Surge Requirement and funding placed on the applicable CLIN.