Office of Law Enforcement (OLE) Vessel Monitoring System (VMS)

Background
The Vessel Monitoring System (VMS) is a satellite and cellular surveillance system primarily used to monitor the location and activities of commercial fishing vessels in the U.S. Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) and international regional fisheries management organization (RFMO) areas. VMS supports law enforcement initiatives, regulatory and statutory violation prevention, and fishery data collection purposes. Data from VMS is used as evidence in the prosecution of environmental laws and regulations including regional fishing quotas, the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act (MSFCMA), the Endangered Species Act (ESA), and the Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA). The system employs satellite and cellular-based communications from Enhanced Mobile Transceiver Units (EMTU) onboard certain vessels. The VMS program monitors over 4,000 vessels 24/7, with potential increase up to 7,000 vessels during the contract period. The NMFS OLE employs software to receive, store, and provide vessel location and electronic reports to users, including OLE staff, the United States Coast Guard, State enforcement agencies, and other fisheries-related personnel totaling over 2,000 users.

Work Details
The contract anticipates a hybrid of Firm-Fixed-Price and Time-and-Materials contract for deploying NOAA NMES VMS to NOAA locations in production. The plan should include details on schedule, approach, resources necessary for deployment, steps required for implementation rollback to pre-implementation operations, tasks, human resources required for implementation including NOAA IT Staff, NOAA Staff, Contractor; configuration assistance; analysis of current data structures in vTrack; testing of configured NOAA NMFS OLE application; preparation of deployment plan; organizational change management plan; development of training materials and tools; delivery of training to NOAA NMES OLE and support staff; system support services including version and patch release management, backup and recovery procedures and tools.