Business System Development and Maintenance Support Services   4

The purpose of this effort is for contractor support services for development, maintenance, and management of the non-commercial, Government-owned Platform for Research Administration consisting of two custom business applications, the electronic Biomedical Research Application Portal (eBRAP) and the Electronic Grants System (EGS), sponsored by the Congressionally Directed Medical Research Program's (CDMRP).

This effort will provide specific support for two business systems, eBRAP and EGS which constitute the Platform for Research Administration, a non-commercial system designed and developed over 20 years to meet the unique business processes and activities to support Government sponsored biomedical research funding life-cycle from proposal receipt through awards management and regulatory oversight. These activities relate primarily to the U.S. Army Medical Research and Development Command (MRDC) organizations including CDMRP, Office of Human and Animal Research Oversight (OHARO) and US Army Research Acquisition Activity (USAMRAA) as well as other organizations within DoD. Although separate applications, these systems are interdependent, supporting end-to-end business processes. The systems utilize web-services, common data dictionaries and common data management processes that facilitate data synchronization. Support for these systems under this contract is focused on the tasks identified however multiple service contractors provide various support for the use and management of these systems including information assurance, data management, network, and hosting services.

The Electronic Grants System (EGS)
EGS is a Government-owned, contractor-operated mission-support business system designed to address core functions of biomedical research portfolio and awards management needs for CDMRP and other organizations. It stores biomedical research proposal and award data as well as files including contracting, regulatory, administrative, and other relevant information. EGS has many functional components designed to automate administrative processes including proposal management, awards management, regulatory review, program management, and program evaluation. A number of system-to-system interfaces facilitate interactions and data transfers with external systems owned and operated by contractors and other agencies. It supports multiple electronic/online workflows, including progress report reviews, award negotiations, regulatory review and approval, product management, and website data management. EGS currently supports 550 users and contains 152,000 proposal records, 26,000 award records and over 10,000 regulatory protocols. On an annual basis, an average of 10,000 new proposals are created, 9800 active awards are managed with 1000 new awards initiated.

EGS is a web-based application supported by a database back-end. The primary technologies utilized by EGS are VMWare ESC, Linus OS, Java-JDK, Grails, Hibernate, JavaScript front-end technologies such as Angular and React, PostgreSQL database, and Apache Tomcat-outputting HTML, JSON, XML, CSV, XLS, and static files.

EGS is currently hosted at the DHA Medical Community of Interest (MEDCOI) Network and is accessible only to Government personnel and Support Contractors. It consists of 10 virtual servers comprising production, user acceptance, development and deployment utility. Future plans include migration to a Government-hosted PaaS cloud environment. Hosting costs for EGS are not included as part of this effort and are paid directly to the hosting provider. Any support activities for migration of hosting are not included at this time.

The Electronic Biomedical Research Application Portal (eBRAP)

eBRAP is a Government-owned custom developed system, which allows for research proposal application submission and processing, document collection, and information dissemination. It serves as the front-end portal for the worldwide research community with the CDMRP, USAMRDC and other DoD organizations. eBRAP's primary functionality in in the area of submission of pre-applications, direct submission of intramural DOD proposals, interface with Grants.gov for retrieval, and processing of extramural/intramural applications and administrative review for compliance. It is also the system for submission of award management information and files (e.g. invoices, regulatory documents, technical reports, quad charts) over the lifetime of research awards; eBRAP also interfaces with the back-end business system, EGS (a CDMRP/USAMRDC Government-owned, contractor-operated system). eBRAP currently supports 70,000 users from 110 countries, most of whom are members of the public scientific community including researchers, study personnel and research administrators. On an annual basis, over 150 solicitations for research proposals are released in eBRAP, approximately 15,000-20,000 pre-applications and 8,000-12,000 proposal applications are received.

eBRAP is a web-based application supported by a database back-end. The primary technologies utilized by eBRAP are VMWare ESC, Linus OS, Java-JDK, Hibernate, JavaScript front-end and technologies such as React, PostgreSQL database, Apache, and Apache Tomcat.

eBRAP will be hosted with a commercial hosting provider on Government-owned hardware. The system will be re-located prior to initiation of this contract to a Government approved, FedRamp certified commercial cloud environment. Costs of hosting in the public cloud are not included in this effort and will be paid directly by the Government to the cloud provider. Any support activities for migration of hosting are not included in this effort.