REQUEST FOR INFORMATION

The Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) Mainframe Line of Business (MLOB) is
seeking information from industry to assist with the development and planning of a potential new
requirement.

THIS IS A REQUEST FOR INFORMATION (RFI) NOTICE ONLY. THIS IS NOT A

REQUEST FOR PROPOSALS (RFP). NO SOLICITATION IS AVAILABLE AT THIS TIME.

1. In support of our ongoing effort to create a new Blockchain as a service offering for our
mission partners, DISA is conducting market research to ensure better understanding of
the capabilities available in the market place relevant to a Blockchain as a service
offering which could be deployed on Z systems.

2. The scope of this document is to determine industry products available that provide a
solution stack to enable DISA to provide a scalable permissioned Blockchain as a service
offering which can be run on a mainframe environment. Blockchain as a service
capabilities must work in correlation to the technical characteristics below.

3. Technical Characteristics –
a. Support for deployment on an s390x architecture.
b. Support for Federal Information Processing Standards (FIPS) 140-2 Level 4-
compliant encrypted sessions.
c. Full auditing and reporting –the solution should include mechanisms for logging
actions that happen at each layer of the solution
d. Scaling support – the offering must be able to replicate and scale to quickly
respond to anticipated shifts in mission partner workloads
e. Product support - The Government will need full vendor support for product
maintenance, questions, and problems.
f. Containerization - The offering should have the ability to support containerized
software deployment.
g. The offering should have the ability to be deployed in an air-gapped environment.
h. Governance - The offering should have the ability to limit and carefully control
access to the Blockchain capability through mutually authenticated x509
certificate-based role-based access control.
i. Administration – The Government needs to be able to limit the administrative
capabilities with regard to managing smart contracts and network scaling to
authorized admins.
j. Solution hardening – The Government needs DISA STIG-type or NIST controls,
and a plan to demonstrate control inheritance through different solution
components to ensure a secure implementation.
k. Permissioned Blockchain - The Blockchain capability will have the ability to limit
membership and visibility for a given Blockchain network and the information
shared between members on those networks.
l. Must run on a Linux on z guest under a z/VM operating environment.

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 m. Must support fiber channel attached logical device disk storage.

4. Requested Information –
a. Describe your technical abilities to provide DISA and its mission partners with a
service solution.
b. Identify software product names and part numbers that will be used to meet the
listed technical characteristics in support of the scope of DISA Blockchain as a
service.
c. Identify if software used is open source commercially-supported software.
d. Identify current contracts available to the Government which could facilitate
acquisition of identified software products.
e. Identify licensing schemas available (i.e. Perpetual, Annual, Subscription,
Software as a Service, etc.).
f. Describe the installation training and enablement methods you will implement in
support of the installation of the solution at DISA. Please include recommended
training requirements for the software solution.

RESPONSE GUIDELINES:

Interested parties are requested to respond to this RFI with a white paper. Submissions cannot
exceed 15, single spaced, 12-point type with at least one-inch margins on 8 1/2” X 11” page size.
The response should not exceed a 5 MB e-mail limit for all items associated with the RFI
response. Responses must specifically describe the contractor’s capability to meet the
requirements outlined in this RFI. Oral communications are not permissible. BETA.SAM will
be the sole repository for all information related to this RFI.

Companies who wish to respond to this RFI should send responses via email no later than 12:00
PM CST November 10, 2020 to melissa.s.leal.civ@mail.mil, cesira.l.maranon.civ@mail.mil,
adam.m.venhaus.civ@mail.mil, and carmelynanne.bryan.civ@mail.mil.

INDUSTRY DISCUSSIONS:

DISA representatives may choose to meet with potential offerors and hold one-on-one
discussions. Such discussions would only be intended to obtain further clarification of potential
capability to meet the requirements, including any development and certification risks.

QUESTIONS:

Questions regarding this announcement shall be submitted in writing by e-mail to

adam.m.venhaus.civ@mail.mil AND carmelynanne.bryan.civ@mail.mil. Verbal questions will
NOT be accepted. Answers to questions will be posted to BETA.SAM. The Government does
not guarantee that questions received after 12:00 PM CST November 9, 2020 will be answered.
The Government will not reimburse companies for any costs associated with the submissions of
their responses

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DISCLAIMER:

This RFI is not an RFP and is not to be construed as a commitment by the Government to issue a
solicitation or ultimately award a contract. Responses will not be considered as proposals nor
will any award be made as a result of this synopsis.

All information contained in the RFI is preliminary as well as subject to modification and is in
no way binding on the Government. FAR clause 52.215-3, “Request for Information or
Solicitation for Planning Purposes”, is incorporated by reference in this RFI. The Government
does not intend to pay for information received in response to this RFI. Responders to this
invitation are solely responsible for all expenses associated with responding to this RFI. This
RFI will be the basis for collecting information on capabilities available. This RFI is issued
solely for information and planning purposes. Proprietary information and trade secrets, if any,
must be clearly marked on all materials. All information received in this RFI that is marked
“Proprietary” will be handled accordingly. Please be advised that all submissions become
Government property and will not be returned nor will receipt be confirmed. In accordance with
FAR 15.201(e), responses to this RFI are not offers and cannot be accepted by the Government
to form a binding contract.