Army Declassification Modernization

Active

Contract Opportunity

This is a Request for Information (RFI) (hereinafter Notice). This is NOT a solicitation for proposals, proposal abstracts, request for bids or quotations, nor a promise to issue a solicitation in the future. The purpose of this RFI is for the Government to obtain knowledge and information for project planning purposes only. The Government may schedule one-on-one sessions with industry respondents.

The U.S. Army is responsible for the declassification of records under various laws, statutes, and executive orders. Executive Order (EO) 13526 requires all Federal Agencies conduct a declassification review of all 25-year-old or older classified, permanent historically valuable (PHV) records and declassify unless further protected from declassification by being exempted, excluded, or referred to other agencies. Currently, records exceeding 25 years in age are predominantly maintained in physical formats, including paper, microfiche, and legacy media such as tape drives and audio cassettes. Consequently, Department of Defense declassification programs, including the Army, rely on manual review processes utilizing human reviewers.

Beginning in Fiscal Year 2026, records requiring declassification review will increasingly exist in digital formats, with a corresponding decrease in the volume of physical media. This transition will result in a substantial increase in the volume of digital records requiring review of volume that exceeds the capacity of current manual processes to meet established declassification timelines. Technological solutions will be necessary to facilitate efficient and timely declassification determination.

Work involves classification requirement: Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information.

Governing laws, statutes, regulations, and executive orders, include but are not limited to:

The Atomic Energy Act of 1954 (Public Law 83-703)

The Public Interest Declassification Act of 2000 (Public Law 105-567)

The National Defense Authorization Act 2000 (Public Law 106-65)

Public Law 106-65 Kyl-Lott Amendment Sec 3149

Public Law 105-261 Sec 3161

10 CFR Part 1045.55

32 CFR Part 2001 (Automatic and Systematic Declassification Review)

Executive Order 14036

Executive Order 13392

Executive Order 14066

Executive Order 13921

DoD Manual 5200.01

Army Regulation (AR) 380-5

Requested Information: The U.S. Army is seeking information from industry, academia, and research institutions regarding artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) solutions to assist in the process of making initial determinations for declassification of historically valuable records.

1. Direct Response Related to Modernization against the below items (Companies Familiar with Army Requirements and Environments.)
   
   
   
   
   1. Describe your ability to develop an AI capability to train against classification and declassification guides for use in providing initial declassification determinations.
   
   
   2. Automate the identification and classification of sensitive and non-sensitive content.
   
   
   3. Accurately apply declassification criteria based on regulatory requirements.
   
   
   4. Support bulk document processing for large-scale declassification.
   
   
   5. Integrate with existing Army and National Archives declassification workflows.
   
   
   6. Identify Restricted Data (RD) and Formerly Restricted Data (FRD) to prevent inadvertent disclosure.
   
   
   7. Enhance efficiency while maintaining high accuracy and compliance.
   
   
   
   


2. Additional Information Required for Companies Not Familiar with the Army Requirements and Environments.
   
   
   
   1. What software licensing models do you currently support (i.e. term, perpetual, subscription, etc.)?
   
   
   2. If perpetual licensing, is your company amenable to continue providing perpetual offerings to the Army? Is there a timeline for retiring perpetual, maintenance and support? Please provide details and a timeline that allows for the Army to obtain training for maintenance and support without perpetual maintenance, support, and licensing.
   
   
   3. Address security updates, patches and support for beyond end of life or sale of software within Army Regulations/Requirements.
   
   
   4. Describe and provide specifics related to hardware requirements for your product.
   
   
   5. Confirm software warranty is aligned to standard contractual periods of performance.
   
   
   6. Describe your software distribution approach for customers with and without persistent and reliable internet connection.
   
   
   7. Describe your software distribution approach for version upgrades and security patches for customers with and without persistent and reliable internet connectivity.
   
   
   8. Describe how your company’s solutions can support the Army’s unique and enduring use cases to support global military operations, to include in contested environments.
   
   
   9. Describe how your software supports and integrates virtualization across multiple geographically dispersed data centers and how it supports hybrid cloud and on-premises deployments. Include integration considerations with native cloud capabilities and with multiple Cloud Service Providers. Is there a requirement for on-premises equipment other than workstations.
   
   
   10. Can your company provide a Supply Risk Management Framework Plan? ATO (Authority to Operate)?
   
   
   11. DoD Cloud Security Reference Guide, Federal Risk Authorization Management Program and National Institute of Standards and Technology authorizations. Identify the cybersecurity compliance and authorizations currently in place for your software, solutions, and services.
       
       
       
       1. Can your company provide a Cyber Security Risk Mitigation Plan?
       
       
       2. Include security considerations, ensuring to address the extent to which the hypervisor provides isolation and segregation of processes and data.
       
       
       
       
   
   
   12. Describe how your hypervisor software provides and manages virtual machines; address how it shares and exposes physical components (include CPU, memory, storage, networking, and other resources) to the guest operating systems.
   
   
   13. In addition, describe how your software manages container runtime environments. Provide an estimate of cloud computing costs while executing your solution.
   
   
   14. Describe how the hypervisor integrates multiple physical machines to provide shared resources; address the efficiency of provisioning resourcing, the management of resource pools, and the ability to migrate virtual machines across physical hosts.
   
   
   15. Describe the ability of your software to provide the following: high availability, data center fail-over and recovery, live migration, checkpointing.
   
   
   16. Identify the guest operating systems which are supported. Describe other emulation software and virtualization supported (e.g. network virtualization).
   
   
   17. Describe the user interface, training requirements, and administration necessary to manage the virtualization software; describe other supporting and complimentary software components. Describe the permission levels the organization will have full control over for your solution.
   
   
   18. Identify contract vehicles, including Government Wide Acquisition Contracts (GWAC) and Federal Supply Schedules that would support this possible requirement.
       
       
       
       1. Identify any GWAC contract(s) your company is a prime contractor for that has the scope aligned with description in Section A.
       
       
       2. Subcontracting possibilities, specifically for small businesses. How many resellers do you partner with; provide the number and listing of all subcontractors/reseller.
       
       
       3. Does your company have a single distributor (ex: letter of supply to one company)?
       
       
       4. Identify Government Furnished Information needed on the current Army computing environments, networks and software licensing inventory.
          
          
       
       
       
       
   
   
   
   


3. Information Required by All Respondents.
   
   
   
   1. Respondent’s Unique Entity Identifier (UEI) number, CAGE code, organization name, address, points of contact by role, type of business (large or small) and socio-economic status (e.g., 8(a), HUBZone, etc.) pursuant to the applicable NAICS code.
   
   
   2. Respondent’s technical and administrative points of contact, including names, titles, addresses, telephone and fax numbers, and e-mail addresses.
   
   
   3. Leadership POCs, emails and phone numbers.
   
   
   4. Indicate your company ability to quickly follow-up with the Army regarding migration and environment landscape.
   
   
   
   

4. How to submit a response.

The point of contact for this Notice is:

ESA – RFI Response Team: usarmy.pentagon.hqda-cio.mbx.ESA-RFI@army.mil

Email responses to this Notice shall be sent to the attention of individual(s) listed in this Notice.

Responses should be submitted electronically in PDF format with no more than ten pages including cover sheet and table of contents within 20 business days after RFI release date.

Terms and Conditions regarding this Notice:

This Notice does not oblige the Government to award a contract or otherwise pay for the information provided in response. All costs associated with responding to this Notice are solely at the responding party's expense. The Government reserves the right to use information provided by respondents for any purpose deemed necessary and legally appropriate. Further, the Government may contact the vendor for additional information regarding the information submitted as part of this market research effort. Any organization responding to this notice should ensure that its response is complete and sufficiently detailed to allow the Government to determine the organization’s qualifications to perform the work. Respondents are advised that the Government is under no obligation to acknowledge receipt of the information received or provide feedback to respondents with respect to any information submitted. After a review of the responses received, a pre-solicitation synopsis and solicitation may be published in Government Point of Entry or other similar source (e.g. CHESS, GSA E-buy). However, responses to this notice will not be considered adequate responses to a solicitation.

Responses to this notice are not offers and cannot be accepted by the Government to form a binding contract or agreement. The Government will not be obligated to pursue any particular acquisition alternative as a result of this notice. Responses to the notice will not be returned. Not responding to this notice does not preclude participation in any future solicitation if one is issued.

No proprietary, classified, confidential, or sensitive information should be included in responses to this Notice, unless otherwise appropriately marked by the Respondent. The Government reserves the right to use any non-proprietary technical information received in response to this Notice in any resultant solicitation(s).

Do Not Submit any Proposals/Offers in response to this Notice.

Place of Contract Performance: Fort Belvoir, Virginia and Contractor site.

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