Request for Information
for
Cost Oversight and Spending Transparency (COST) Software
Introduction:
This is a Request for Information (RFI) only issued for conducting market research. Accordingly, this RFI constitutes neither a Request for Quote (RFQ), Request for Proposal (RFP), nor a guarantee that one will be issued by the Government in the future; furthermore, it does not commit the Government to contract for any services described herein. The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is not, at this time, seeking proposals or quotes, and therefore, will not accept, review, or evaluate unsolicited proposals or quotes received in response hereto. This notice is not to be construed as a commitment on the part of the Government to award a contract, nor does the Government intend to pay for any information submitted because of this request. The Government does not reimburse respondents for any costs associated with submission of the information being requested or reimburse expenses incurred for responses to this RFI. The information provided may be used by VA in developing its acquisition strategy and Performance Work Statement (PWS) or Product Description (PD). Any information submitted by respondents to this RFI is strictly voluntary; however, any information received shall become the property of the Government and will not be returned to the respondent. Interested parties are responsible for adequately marking proprietary, restricted, or competition sensitive information contained in their response. This is a request for information and does not obligate the Government in any way, nor does it commit the Government to any specific course of action. Product information, brochures, part numbers, and/or other description information may be included with the submission.
Requirement:
The Department of Veteran s Affairs (VA) Office of Information & Technology (OI&T), Information Technology Budget and Finance (ITBF) has a requirement for cost modeling and financial management software with the ability to categorize and report costs against OIT s Budget Structure, in addition to calculating Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) for IT Products and Services through a series of allocations based on cost category and operational data sets. The VA IT dollars that must be managed within the application is approximately $9 Billion annually or up to 100,000 financial transactions annually.
The desired outcome of the software purchase is to have a single, unified view of IT cost and related resource consumption categorized against the OIT Budget Structure, in addition to calculating the TCO for all VA IT Products and Services. The contractor shall provide ongoing configuration support, mentoring, and education so that OIT can fully utilize the capabilities of the product and configure in the most efficient manner. The contractor shall provide software updates, platform upgrades (if applicable), product support, and periodic technical health assessments. Please provide a Rough Order of Magnitude (ROM) for your product as is needed to meet the salient characteristics listed in the System Capability Requirements for Sections 1.1.1 1.1.5.
System Capability Requirements:
1.1.1 IT Cost Transparency
Must be able to model multiple dollar types, including budget, obligations, expenditures, and expenses
Ability to calculate, visualize, and optimize application Total Cost of Ownership (TCO), including fully burdened TCO.
Support demand-driven decision-making by aligning IT spend to business processes, capabilities, and outcomes.
Against all business units, at a minimum, the following metrics:
Business unit percentage of total solutions spend
Total cost of ownership by application and service
Cost per employee or contractor
Business unit percentage of total IT spend
Vendor spend
Service Desk spend and consumption
Cloud spend and consumption
Infrastructure spend and consumption
Against all Products and Services, the following breakouts, at a minimum, for the above metrics:
Business unit
Direct allocation
Indirect allocation
Overhead allocation
Enabling Application allocation
Cost Pools and Sub-Pools
Towers and Sub-Towers
Towers broken out into Cost Pools
Fixed costs
Variable costs
OpEx costs
Capital Expenditure (CapEx) costs
The ability for the government to configure model health reporting, including the strength of the data relationships as part of each allocation from one layer in the model to the next.
The ability to allocate costs in a myriad of ways, including but not limited to:
The ability to allocate costs in a recursive fashion.
The ability to allocate costs using % of total and % of FTE ratios.
The ability to allocate costs using data relationships between financial data and operational data sets (Data Center ID, Server ID, Storage Device ID, Ticket ID, etc.).
The ability to allocate costs in a sequential order.
The ability to allocate costs to Products only and not Services that are in the same Cost Object Layer
1.1.2 Support Services - Product Mentoring
Provide technical product expertise, ongoing guidance and enablement to include weekly office hours, and 24/7 enhanced product support. Specific tasks include:
Provide guidance regarding how to work with available data and how to transform datasets that will fit within the solution s core capabilities around data automation and data quality.
Help the government understand how to architect the solution to better leverage the government s data and expose key insights
Help the government learn how to build reports leveraging current capabilities to engage your end users in insight-hunting
Share best practices around solution design, performance and scalability. Mentor government admins to configure more efficiently with performance and long-term maintainability in mind.
E.g. Software should be capable of providing insights into specific calculation time for individual reports
E.g. Support should be capable of identifying formulae that burden the calculation engine excessively
Recommend new use cases to evolve use of the solution
1.1.3 Product Education
Provide access to training delivered via WebEx/video conference, live, or as part of a web education library.
1.1.4 Accessibility, Security, and SLAs, and Performance
Proposed product must meet all salient characteristics without developing an interface, performing any kind of custom development, or requiring extensive configuration by the government.
The product must have achieved FedRAMP Authorization. The Contractor shall comply with FedRAMP requirements as mandated by Federal laws and policies, including making available any documentation, physical access, and logical access needed to support this requirement.
1.1.5 Additional Information
All functionality listed above must be part of a stand-alone solution that does not depend on another third-party product or bundled system comprised of more than one third party product
Each module set should be capable of providing backend and front-end environment access to specific users
Reporting access should be configurable on a Report-by-Report basis for each persona or user configured
Custom personas should be configurable
Responses:
Please submit a capability statement describing your company s ability to meet the overall requirement described and responses to the questions below. The capability statement shall be limited to 10 pages. Responses to this RFI shall be submitted via email to Joseph Jeranek at Joseph.Jeranek@va.gov no later than 1:00 PM EST on July 23, 2026.
1) Provide a brief summary of your technical approach for meeting the requirements
for Cost Oversight and Spending Transparency (COST) Software specific to the following:
2) Has the above System Capability Requirements section provided sufficient detail to describe the technical and functional requirements that encompass the desired solution?
______ YES ______ NO
a. If NO , please provide your technical and functional comments/recommendations on elements of the requirements that may contribute to a more accurate quote submission and efficient, cost-effective solution.
3) Are there any specifications that you believe are unachievable by industry? If so, please state why.
4) What additional information would be needed to provide a firm fixed price quote for each item/task?
5) Include the following identification information:
Name of Company:
Address:
Point of Contact:
Phone Number:
Fax Number:
Email address:
CAGE/Unique Entity Identifier (UEI) Number:
Company Business Size and Status for North American Industry Classification System (NAICS)
VA anticipates that this effort would fall within NAICS Code 541519, Other Computer Related Services, which has a size standard of 150 employees. If you believe there is a more appropriate NAICS code, please provide that to the Government with your rationale.
Any Schedules held on General Services Administration (GSA), Government-Wide Acquisition Contracts (GWAC) held on the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Solutions for Enterprise-Wide Procurement (SEWP) V, or any other schedule not mentioned above to assist in determining acquisition strategy if you are included in one or more. Please also include Contract Number, expiration date, etc.
Socioeconomic data: If you are a small business, what type of small business are you? Are you able to comply with FAR 52.219-6 and 52.219-14 in execution of this effort? Are you able to comply with 852.219 73 VA Notice of Total Set Aside for Verified Service Disabled Veteran Owned Small Businesses and with subcontracting limitations in 13 CFR 125.6 in execution of this effort?
6) Is your company currently providing similar services to any Government agency or other non-government customers? If so, please identify the agency or non-government customer. If you are unwilling to share your customers' identity, please address whether your company offers the same or similar services, commercially (outside the federal government).
Post RFI Phase
VA envisions that once RFI responses are reviewed, select responders may be invited to provide a face-to-face or telephonic briefing and/or demonstration to VA personnel to answer additional questions with respect to the response given. VA retains sole discretion of whether any post RFI briefings and/or demonstrations are warranted, and which industry partners may be invited to provide additional market research information.
Based on market research results, the RFP/RFQ may be made available on NASA SEWP V. It is the responsibility of interested parties to regularly monitor the NASA SEWP Website for updates. The Government will not provide hard copies of the solicitation once issued. Interested parties are responsible for monitoring the website and downloading the solicitation, its attachments, and any amendments from the internet site identified above when/if issued. All information regarding the procurement is provided herein, and no additional information shall be provided at this time.
OFFERORS ARE ADVISED THAT THIS REQUIREMENT MAY BE DELAYED, CANCELED, OR REVISED AT ANY TIME.
