CONVERGED NETWORK SERVICES

CONVERGED NETWORK SERVICES

Nature of Requirements: This notice is the long-term Notice of Proposed Procurement for the converged Network Services (CNS) Request for Supply Arrangement (RFSA).

This notice amends and replaces the long-term notice for the Converged Network Services (CNS) Request for Supply Arrangement (RFSA) (Solicitation No. EN994-025224/E) by Public Works and Government Services Canada (PWGSC).

On June 29, 2012 the Shared Services Canada Act came into force. Subsequent to this, PWGSC and Shared Services Canada (SSC) have agreed that SSC will now be responsible for the management of the CNS Supply Arrangements.

This notice

• provides information on Solicitation No. EN994-025224/F, which is the current version of the CNS RFSA.

• reflects the transfer of responsibility for the CNS RFSA and CNS Supply Arrangements from PWGSC to SSC as noted above;

• updates the contact information and the note under item no. 3;

• informs the supplier community that the National Security Exception now applies to all solicitations for procurements related to the CNS Supply Arrangements as described in item no. 4;

• continues to provide an opportunity for interested suppliers to submit their offers in response to the CNS RFSA; and

• does not contain anything new that affects the existing CNS Supply Arrangements.

---------------------------------- Request For Supply Arrangement for the supply of telecommunications Network Services. Please note, the term 'Network Service' is defined as the linking of a variety of technology components (hardware, software and management support systems) to provide a telecommunications service.

1) This Notice of Proposed Procurement (NPP), is issued further to Solicitation No. EN994-025224/C, EN994-025224/D and EN994-025224/E, the notices of which were originally published on September 30, 2003,February 10, 2004, and March 27, 2008 respectively. This is a long term Request For Supply Arrangement which permits:

(a) additional Offerors to submit Offers to become Qualified Suppliers by entering into Supply Arrangements(s) with the Crown, to deliver services described under the CNS RFSA; and

(b) Qualified CNS Supply Arrangement Holders to submit Offers to become Qualified to deliver additional Service Solution Statement of Work (SOW) requirements for which they are not already Qualified.

2) TO REQUEST A COPY OF THE RFSA

For the purpose of becoming a Qualified Supplier pursuant to 1) above, the Crown will accept Offers received in response to Solicitation No. EN994-025224/F on an ongoing basis. Parties interested in receiving an electronic copy of RFSA Solicitation No. EN994-025224/F should contact the following in writing:

Shared Services Canada 180 Kent St. 13th Floor, K134 Ottawa, ON, K1G 4A8

Attention: Ron Carrara Telephone No: 613-697-0150 E-mail: ron.carrara@ssc-spc.gc.ca

NOTE: Any interested parties must use the latest version of the RFSA package, which is available through the above contact, in preparing their responses. The Crown will evaluate Offers received in response to this NPP and its associated RFSA as departmental operational priorities permit. The Crown will not commit to evaluate Offers received in response to this NPP and its associated RFSA within any particular time period. The Crown reserves the right to evaluate Offers concurrently or chronologically as received by the Crown. That is, the Crown may evaluate Offers, or parts thereof, in parallel without regard as to when an Offer was received or the Crown may fully complete its evaluation of an Offer before moving onto evaluating the next Offer received.

3) REQUIREMENT

The RFSA requirements fall under the following service classes. (Note, each Service Class is further broken down by individual Service Solution SOW requirements in the RFSA):

(i) Transport Network Services (TNS)

The TNS Class includes Service Solutions that provide Clients with data transport solutions at both the physical and data link layers.

(ii) Enterprise Network Services (ENS)

The ENS Class includes Service Solutions that enhance network functionality and enable end-to-end management of Network Services. The ENS Class allows Clients to optimize their Network Services by leveraging Contractor expertise and resources.

Note: although the RFSA makes reference to Network Application Services (NAS), the RFSA does not currently provide for these requirements.

Services may be procured on an as-and-when-requested basis by SSC. SSC is a Government of Canada organization with a mandate to provide shared services to its clients from time to time, which include SSC itself, those government institutions for whom the shared services that SSC provides are mandatory, any other person, organization or government for which SSC has been authorized to provide shared services under section 8 of the Shared Services Canada Act and those other organizations for whom the shared services that SSC provides are optional and that choose to use those services from time to time..The services may be required throughout Canada on a Metropolitan, Regional and/or National basis.

SSC may continue to compete individual RFPs under the Supply Arrangements resulting from this RFSA until such time as Canada no longer deems it to be advantageous to do so. However, it is anticipated that any resulting Supply Arrangements will be valid at least until August 5, 2014.

4) RELEVANT TRADE AGREEMENTS

On July 12, 2012, the National Security Exception was invoked in respect of procurements related to the Government of Canada’s email, networks and data centres conducted by Shared Services Canada. As a result, this requirement is subject to the National Security Exception and is, therefore, excluded from all of the obligations of the trade agreements.

5) NOTES OF INTEREST

(i) A contract will not result from this activity. This RFSA Solicitation will not necessarily result in any procurement action and respondents are not to earmark equipment, services or facilities relative to the work described within the RFSA.

(ii) The RFSA evaluation and selection process includes a customer reference and demonstration component.

The evaluation of Offers involves considerable time and expenditure for Canada and, in turn, for Canadian taxpayers. To reduce the impact of time and cost on future CNS evaluations, it is Canada's intention to treat any Offer received after 01 November, 2004 as follows: if the Offer is otherwise compliant, but for any given Service Solution or the General Statement of Work the Offeror's references or demonstrations fail to validate its compliance to two or fewer requirements (i.e., the Offeror's references and demonstrations together validate all requirements for that Service Solution except for one or two), the existing successful reference checks and demonstrations will remain valid for evaluation purposes for a period of two months, during which time the Offeror may:

(a) for the unsuccessful reference check(s), either submit a new reference or perform a demonstration; and

(b) for the unsuccessful demonstration(s), re-perform the demonstration.

Any Offeror who does not, upon the second attempt, validate its compliance through the required reference check or demonstration, shall be required to submit a new Offer if the Offeror wishes to become a Qualified Supplier.

(iii) RFPs contemplated under this RFSA may be subject to Aboriginal Set Aside (procurements reserved exclusively for Aboriginal Suppliers), Land Claim Agreements or other requirements designed to increase Aboriginal business participation in government procurement requirements. Individual RFP(s), therefore, may, for example, identify such applicable requirement(s).