General Solicitation Demonstrations of Innovative Commercial Technologies

Implemented by Class Deviation 2022-O0007

INNOVATIVE COMMERCIAL DEMONSTRATION SUMMARY

The Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office (CDAO), in collaboration with CENTCOM, is seeking demonstrations for commercial platforms to enable DoD personnel to rapidly create and maintain computer vision (CV) capabilities. Intended applications include automated detection and identification of features in imagery and video collected by spaceborne, airborne, and land/sea-based sensors. Desired solutions will support the following supervised learning functions:

• IMAGERY/VIDEO INGEST – The capability must support manual and batch ingest of data from local or cloud data stores, inclusive of pertinent domain metadata (e.g., collection timestamp, sensor details, image processing details, geotags, content tags, synthetic content tags, etc).
• BATCH DATA PREPARATION – Example functions include spatially-subdividing large images or temporally-subdividing videos for labelling purposes.
• LABELED DATA SET INGEST – The capability must support ingesting existing labeled data sets, provided they conform to common labeled data set standards (e.g., COCO).
• CV TASK AND ONTOLOGY GENERATION – CV tasks include classification, as well as single- and multi-class object detection and instance segmentation for imagery and video.
• LABELING – The capability must manage distributed workforce labeling and secondary quality reviews. An optional, yet highly desirable, feature is incorporation of novel methods to enhance labeling efficiency. Examples include pre-labeling (i.e., machine-generated labels) and machine-assisted labeling (e.g., human-generated point automatically converted to polygon).
• AUTOMATED LABEL AUGMENTATION – The capability must boost the size of a labeled dataset through intelligent batch transformations thereof (e.g., mitigate class imbalance).
• AUTOMATED MODEL TRAINING – Model training must flexibly utilize cloud or on-prem GPU compute resources.
• AUTOMATED MODEL SCORING – Performance scoring must be based on industry standard CV metrics (e.g., F1, precision, recall), contrasting findings from test and validation (i.e., withheld from training) sets.
• MODEL CONTAINERIZATION – The capability must export a containerized model, inclusive of the model network, weights, and supporting metadata for traceable provenance. The containerized model must be fully viable as an air-gapped capability, with zero external system dependencies.

In addition to interacting with the above functions via a consolidated web UI, programmatic interaction via open Application Programming Interfaces is also required. As such, there are two target user demographics.

1. Respectively, the primary user demographic consists of DoD analysts and operators with mission-related subject matter expertise (i.e., not traditional CV developers), warranting an intuitive, streamlined UI/UX. This enables scale while bolstering user adoption.
2. Data scientists and infrastructure engineers will have a role in deploying, maintaining, and ensuring interoperability of the CV platform as part of a larger digital enterprise, to include cloud-based and on-premises networks.

The goal for this effort is to enable DoD warfighters to create performant CV models in 7 days or less via a self-service platform. If successful, this process will complement existing CV development programs of record focused on model performance optimization.
In this context, “innovative” is defined as any commercial product, technology, service, and/or any application of an existing commercial product, technology or service that have the potential to fulfill requirements, close capability gaps, or provide potential technological advancements for the Department of Defense. This may include any novel process, practice, methodology, or application of the preceding items to a new mission domain.

Under a CSO, DoD may competitively select solutions received in response to a general solicitation, similar to a broad agency announcement. Use of a CSO in accordance with this Class Deviation 2022- O0007 is considered to be a competitive procedure for the purposes of 10 U.S.C. chapter 221 and Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) 6.102. As a result of the competitive processes used under this CSO Announcement, multiple awards of various demonstrations may be executed. Awards executed from this CSO competitive process may include, but are not limited to, a FAR based contract and/or an Other Transaction Agreement (OTA).

Under the authority of 10 U.S.C. 4022, the CDAO may desire to award an other transaction agreement to carry out prototype project(s) that are directly relevant to enhancing the mission effectiveness. This general solicitation satisfies the requirement to compete to the maximum extent practicable pursuant to 10 U.S.C. 4022(b). As such, responses to this general solicitation have the potential for follow-on other transactions in accordance with 10.U.S.C. 4022(f).

SUBMISSION PERIOD

Responses to this CSO will be accepted by the Government beginning 1 June 2024 through 31 May 2025 at 1700 Eastern Time (dates tentative based on SAM.gov announcement). This general solicitation will be reviewed, updated, and amended, at a minimum, on an annual basis.

EVALUATION CRITERIA

The CDAO and its partners intend to review any responses to this announcement monthly. The Government will assess solutions for technical merit using the rubric in Appendix 001.

INSTRUCTIONS FOR PROPOSAL SUBMISSION

Interested solution providers are required to submit a five-page Discovery Paper using the TradewindAI platform via the below link. Interested solution provides are required to complete the registration page at the link provided and upload your Discovery Paper as instructed on the website. The registration page includes a Discovery Paper template with additional instructions to complete and submit the Discovery Paper. Interested solution providers must use the Discovery Paper template provided on registration page.

QUESTIONS

Questions regarding this Announcement should be sent to support@tradewindai.com.

NOTICES

Use of Contractor Support

Non-Government, subject matter expert (SME) evaluators (also called “judges”) may be used to support this CSO. Such evaluators will be operating at the direction of the Government and through signed non-disclosure agreements (NDAs). The Government understands that information provided in response to this general solicitation is presented in confidence and it agrees to protect such information from unauthorized disclosure to extent required by law. Your participation in any round of assessment under this Open Call indicates concurrence with the use of Non-Government SME judges.

Demonstration or Requirement Conflicts

As stated in this announcement, the Government intends to utilize this CSO for the possible award of FAR procurements or OT agreements. Entities will be responsible for understanding and mitigating organizational conflicts of interests, in accordance with appropriate statutes and regulations (e.g., FAR Subpart 9.5).

Helpful Links

Appendix 001: Evaluation Rubric (PDF)

CDAO - TryAI v1-0 Evaluation Criteria (PDF)