Summary:

The Contractor will be responsible for the tactical planning of the administrative and operational objectives towards the accomplishment of OCIO strategic goals. These services will be responsive to mission needs and continuously monitored for performance and improvement.

This procurement shall:

• Promote the alignment of IT programs across the organization in support of the OCIO strategic goals,
• Integrate organizational priorities into working activities and making decisions aligned with OCIO requirements,
• Continuously measure progress in achieving these strategic goals and objectives to ensure improvement, address issues, and correct duties as necessary,
• Provide OCIO with the standards, tools, and technology direction, as needed, that promote enterprise services that ensure interoperability and mission readiness and that covers the tasks and performance objectives of this contract,
• Continuously assess OCIO operations, and seek solutions to automate routine manual processes to improve organizational efficiency,
• Take advantage of emerging and transformative technologies to actively collaborate on solutions, and include them in adaptive strategies,
• Continuous improvement of the decision framework, planning, executing, measuring performance and outcomes, and conducting lessons learned to identify and integrate program improvements and efficiencies,
• Provide first level customer support in administrative areas designated in requirements.

Requirements:

4.1   Requirements Common to All Functions

• Data Calls Support. These may be from HHS, OMB or from OCIO to the ICs in response to data gathering needs for parent HHS data calls. This includes managing and follow up with an action tracker for all such requests.
• Alignment of OCIO OD Strategies and Goals to Tactical Implementation of Objectives and Milestones with regular Performance Monitoring and Enhanced Accountability.
• Create or maintain a management dashboard for decision support.
• High level management reporting on program and budget performances as needed for OCIO. Reports should be focused, objective, data driven, and support leadership decision making.
• Support the Deputy CIO and CIO by responding to adhoc requests for information and tracking and reporting high-level organizational activities.
• Advance current reporting and analysis processes and create an OCIO Executive Dashboard with real-time reporting functionality with all relevant and available data collected from programs, processes, and systems as necessary.
• Track and report on the operational budgets to facilitate decision making and to improve accountability.
• Manage administration of SharePoint sites facing internal NIH staff as well as public. This includes content creation, updates, running reports and analytics, and publishing as per OCIO guidance.
• Support administrative workflows, potentially on ServiceNow and MS365 platforms for OCIO administrative work and automation.
• Strategic and operational support of OCIO FITARA activities including but not limited to budget preparation, FITARA Scorecard, IT Acquisition Reviews, acquisition forecasting and planning, and related functions.
• Support procurement and deployment administrative efforts of IT Hardware and Software.
• Logistical support for OCIO administrative, governance, or policy meetings. The major non-governance IT groups supported by OCIO are:
  • IT Management Council
  • Information Security initiated activities
  • Project Management Community
  • 508 Advisory Group
  • The Contractor shall create and maintain
  • Listserv lists and communications distributed through the Listserv
  • Maintain various OCIO distribution lists
  • Monitor and respond as appropriate from shared mailboxes
  • Maintain and update Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) and manuals
  • Update Knowledge Base and Wiki pages as requested
  • In addition, the Contractor shall resolve issues reported via other ISAO mailboxes or Distribution lists as necessary.

4.2   Technology Strategy, Innovation & Architecture

4.2.1         Enterprise Architecture

• The Contractor shall provide specialized enterprise architecture expertise to assist in the planning, development, and execution of the NIH Enterprise Architecture (EA) consistent with EA guidance supplied by the government (e.g., FISMA, OMB, NIST etc..) and consistent with the industry standards prevalent at the time. EA support shall cover the six sub-architecture domains – Strategy, Business, Data, Applications, Infrastructure, Security.
• Establish and maintain a line of sight from the strategic goals to infrastructure solutions.
• Develop and maintain Enterprise Architecture Repository for NIH. Currently, NIH does not have a software tool dedicated to managing the EA Repository. It is desirable to get recommendation from the Contractor if we need additional tools or leverage M365 Apps for this purpose.
• Develop enterprise architecture roadmaps and IT strategic plans for OCIO programs.
• Update and maintain NIH data submission in HHS EA Repository as needed.
• Develop standards documentation, guidance documentation, manuals and training materials as needed for the standard technology stack proposed in the EA repository.
• Setup a functional EARB in NIH OCIO that can review and help adoption of new technologies trans-NIH. The review objectives are to ensure NIH mission and goals alignment, reduce technical debt over long term with a view of industry trend in specific technology domains and provide actionable recommendations to the requesting program.
• Provide a cloud-smart approach to all architecture initiatives for OCIO and trans-NIH activities. NIH has a large consumer base of both AWS and Azure. Therefore, platform flexibility is anticipated.

4.2.2         Business Architecture

• Conduct assessments of as-is business processes to identify and analyze alternatives and provide recommendations for target state architectures.
• Explore architecture alternatives towards business process improvements and optimal returns on investments.
• Business case development (optional task)

4.2.3         Solution Architecture

• Validate that a proposed architecture will fit within the overall IT vision of NIH and assist by recommending adjustments to either applications or architecture frameworks as needed.
• Support automation of OCIO Business Processes by collaborating with implementation teams and providing guidance on technology stack and to-be architecture. This includes implementation of proof-of-concepts on low-code platforms such as but not limited to SharePoint Online, Microsoft Teams, Power Apps, Flow and Qlik Suite of Products among others, obtaining data from various NIH enterprise data sources including but not limited to NBS, nVision, available Microsoft Dataverse repositories.
• Provide alternative analysis for competing products, technologies, and platforms for adopting a solution to an identified business need. The solution must align with NIH OCIO mission and goals.

4.2.4         Information Architecture (IA)

• Develop and support IA strategy that prioritizes information initiatives enabling business capabilities and driving business outcomes.
• Collaborate with IA stakeholders to define the formal IA function and determine whether the IA practice’s organizational design will be centralized, decentralized, or distributed.
• Partner with data and analytics, business, and IT leaders to determine the needs and activities in IA. For example, Splunk application monitoring.
• Develop IA standards to promote efficiency.

4.2.5         Data Architecture, Analytics & Visualization Support Services

Data analytics support focuses on facilitating, enhancing, or enabling data users to draw insights from data by providing them with both facts and tools, and/or drawing the insights for them. Required Contractor tasks may include discovery and communication of meaningful patterns and trends; building simple-to-use models in which customers may select data layers to visualize on a base map in various combinations; and application of data science to select and combine appropriate datasets from a variety of sources to create new insights (e.g., use of crop yield data to predict mortgages that may become subject to risks). Additionally, since elements of data analysis intersect significantly with data science and business intelligence, Contractor tasks in these areas may be required.

• Provide data analytics and reporting as needed for decision support.
• Recommend data storage technologies and repository architectures as needed. This includes creation and maintenance of an enterprise data lake to collect operational data useful for OCIO business operations.
• Information analysis and insight generation from structured and unstructured data available in OCIO or collected from other ICs.

4.2.6         Technology Strategic Plan and Roadmap Development (Optional Task)

A strategic plan defines the roadmap of initiatives and portfolio of investments required to execute the strategic actions in the business strategy.

4.2.7         Inter-agency & Trans-NIH Support

• Support federal staff in preparing materials and action items from HHS EARB.
• Support development of enterprise standards for OCIO to be promoted across the NIH ICs. This demand may arise as a result of the establishment of an Information Technology Management Council (ITMC) initiative where multiple IC representatives establish a need or a problem to be solved for NIH at the enterprise level. These ITMC initiatives may create specific workgroups to cover specific technology and business areas. This contractor shall support such initiatives providing technology assistance, report creation, survey creation and presentation material.
• Support the current ITMC Subcommittee Working Group for Identity Control and Access Management (ICAM) by providing technology assistance, documentation, standards development, and related activities as they are designated as EA Team responsibilities.
• The Contractor will also support any future ITMC Subcommittee and Working Group as they are created because of identified priorities in NIH at the enterprise level.
• Support OCIO initiative of an enterprise NIH Technology Availability Guide (NTAG). NTAG provides the NIH community with a list of NIH-approved and available software, collaboration tools and cybersecurity technologies that meet NIH’s scientific and business needs. The contractor shall support maintaining NTAG repository and improving the list. Activities include collecting all implementation documentations for these technologies, security guidance and documentation, business cases for using them and related information compilation.

4.2.8         Analysis of Alternatives (AoA) (Optional Task)

This task will be performed on an adhoc basis as priorities dictated by NIH ITMC and Architecture Subcommittee. The objective is to provide recommendations on solving a business problem using industry standard products and services that aligns with NIH IT mission and goals as well as existing technical infrastructure.

4.2.9         Key Personnel

While the requirements for key personnel covered in section 7 applies, the following specific requirements apply to the key personnel supporting this section of the requirements:

• Contractor shall designate at least one key person to support this section of requirement with expertise in Enterprise Architecture.
• The designated key person must be a technology SME on the architectural domains described in the requirements.

4.3   IT Policy, Governance & Compliance

• Provide support for operational, analytical, and budgetary of the activities for NIH IT governance groups such as Enterprise Information IT Council (EIT), IT Budget Advisory Committee Council (ITBAC), and the IT Management Council (ITMC).
• Evaluate the optimization of the NIH investment portfolios by leveraging outcome driven metrics, linking risk to value to validate portfolio decisions for achieving desired business outcomes
• Facilitate functional budget reviews across the OCIO that shall include reporting execution metrics (e.g., budget to plan and plan to actuals)
• Support the review, development, collaboration, analysis, interpretation, and issuing of NIH IT policy, standards, procedures, and other guidance in response to new Federal or HHS requirements.
• Provide high level support to advance NIH’s IT workforce as required by OMB, HHS, and to support NIH’s FITARA maturation.
• Provide guidance on 508 (ADA) policy and standards, best practices, facilitate 508 Advisory Group meetings.

• Support coordinating with other related groups, supports the 508 inbox and responding to 508 inquiries, NIH Accessibility testing lab, collects and reports 508 requirements as needed.

4.3.8         Capital Planning and Investment Control (CPIC)

• Support NIH’s IT Investment Portfolio to ensure ongoing compliance with GAO, OMB, HHS and NIH federal policies for Capital Planning and Investment Control (CPIC), including Technology Business Management (TBM) requirements.
• Prepare and distribute collection tools, guidance, and reporting tools for NIH IT Investment budget reporting requirements.
• Work directly with NIH ICs, Enterprise Systems, and Major Investments to collect and report IT Investments, including TBM requirements.
• Enter NIH IT Investment budget data in tools/systems as required by NIH, HHS, OMB and/or other federal entities.
• Conduct quality assurance reviews and analysis of submitted materials for NIH IT Investment budgeting and reporting.
• Coordinate NIH Investment related IT data calls from NIH, HHS, OMB, and other federal entities.
• Prepare reports, summaries and presentations of NIH Investments and IT Portfolio related information for senior management.
• Review NIH investment assessments and reports from GAO, OMB, and HHS and collaborates with investment managers to provide responses as appropriate.
• Support strategic planning and innovative approaches to address the evolving needs of the NIH IT Investment Portfolio, including such things as tools, processes, and systems.
• Provide strategic and staff support to CPIC-related committees, governance groups, and working groups.
• Contractor shall designate a key person to support CPIC with expert level knowledge on government CPIC processes.

4.4   OCIO Administrative and Business Operations

The objective of this Task Area is to support executive management reporting and other integrated operational services.  This primarily includes streamlining the budget accounting procedures, modernizing data-collection, and reporting processes, and coordinating program office communications.  The contracted services shall include:

• Measure and report on KPIs on dashboards. KPIs will be derived from contracts, program and project performances, budgeting, and allocations with their outcome effectiveness.
• Amend the OCIO Project Portfolio Reporting process to effectively assess critical project metrics with key process indicators.
• Serve as Tier 1 Help desk for administrative functions for OCIO, handling a wide variety of telephone calls and professional inquiries, including dealing by telephone and email with high-level managers and technical experts. Refer callers to appropriate staff member or provide requested materials whenever possible.  Serve as a primary contact point for an office and exhibit a professional and courteous demeanor.  May serve as an administrative assistant for an office by keeping calendars, scheduling meetings, preparing for meetings, maintaining office supplies, and initiating procurement requests; and make travel arrangements as necessary.
• Initiates/processes purchase requests. This includes gathering working with technical staff to gather requirements, contacting vendors for quotes, drafting supporting documentation, (CIT checklists, Task Order Request Forms, etc.), and entering orders into NIH POTS (Purchasing Online Tracking System)
• Prepares training requests using the online NIH Integrated Training System (NIHITS).
• Prepares government travel requests and travel reimbursements using online.
• Primary Branch Timekeeper using the NIH Integrating Time and Attendance System.
• Submits Facility Work Requests for building repair/maintenance/access, telephone service requests, and key requests, etc. coordinating with CIT and Lincoln properties.
• Assists technical staff to collect and analyze data for use in performance metrics and agency data call submissions
• Property Custodian – tracking, issuing, and retrieving property. Monitoring the inventory.
• On and offboarding employees and contractors; Entering NED records (NED System); and providing automation to current processes.
• Inputting Mobile Orders and reporting

4.4.13     Cybersecurity Administration and Logistics

• The Contractor shall provide strategic support to ISAO Program Areas by recommending new business processes or re-engineering existing processes, such as automation of existing data collection processes to reduce current manual efforts.
• Provide administrative support for the NIH Information Security (InfoSec) Program Areas. Activities shall include, but are not limited to, creating, maintaining, and monitoring communications received via the InfoSec Mailbox, creating tickets in ServiceNow, routing issues to appropriate Program Areas and coordinating to resolve them.
• Provide meeting management support for ISAO initiatives, as necessary, for ISAO Program Areas. In addition to providing the meeting logistics, the Contractor shall facilitate the meetings; document, edit and distribute meeting minutes; administer polls; monitor attendance and usage, collate and report on participation records; organize content and presentation decks; distribute pre-meeting decks; display meeting artifacts and ensure audience accessibility.
• Create, coordinate, distribute and publish periodic communications from ISAO Program Areas to the larger NIH IT Community such as the weekly NIH Information Security Program Update to communicate important announcements to CIOs and ISSOs, in addition to ad hoc communications.
• Provide support to the CISO’s Office such as daily management of ISAO Action Trackers to accurately reflect updates, deadlines, and priorities; coordinate periodic and ad hoc requests and reports for senior leadership; collect and distribute meeting artifacts; schedule meetings and maintain calendars.
• The Contractor shall assist Program Areas with the acquisition of security tools. Activities include, but are not limited to, processing security tools procurements into NIH Financial systems.

4.4.14     OCIO Communication and IC Outreach

Provides plans for communicating information on IT programs, projects, and services that identify target audiences, appropriate messaging, and resources needed for effective communication, management of expectations and to disseminate project progress.

4.4.15     OCIO Strategic Management Support

• Provide overall Communications support for OCIO leadership and its functional divisions. This includes a range from high level strategy documents, internal IC facing communication, and tactical communication support to advance OCIO’s mission.
• Support the overall program planning process by providing logistical and scheduling support to the Deputy CIO and senior managers. This includes helping to identify and incorporate annual strategic priorities, initiatives, and project to support Leadership direction. This includes developing internal OCIO policies and mandates and a strategic approach to manage and communicate their progress.
• Support planning, reporting, and monitoring of OCIO budget activities that include the Central Services Supply Fund (SSF), Director’s Supply Fund (appropriated), and the Capital Investment Fund (CIF).
• Report on Functional Budget Reviews and Execution Metrics: e.g., Budget to Plan and Plan to Actuals.