The Decennial Contracts Execution Office (DCEO) supports Decennial Census Programs by overseeing and managing contracts responsible for delivering well-integrated technical solutions within cost, scope, and schedule.The Decennial Census Programs depend on large-scale information technology and business solution contracts to achieve this mission in terms of scale and timing.

DCEO is responsible for contracting activities using formalized, structured project management approaches, and ensuring strategic goals and objectives are addressed. DCEO develops and maintains contract standards and processes ensuring quality management is integrated into all Decennial federal procurements. 

The Decennial Directorate requires a contracting vendor to provide transformative technology support for Decennial Programs. Specifically, the technology support includes modernization of existing applications and development of new applications. This modernization must utilize the latest leading practices for application development, including the use of DevSecOps, cloud native coding, and scaled Agile. The Decennial Program’s goals for the Decennial Transformation and Application Modernization (DTAM) contract include:

• Modernize application landscape to support Decennial Programs in minimizing lifecycle costs and technical debt.
• Application architectures that are optimized to take advantage of the benefits of cloud computing for large scale real time data processing and use of AI/ML, ultimately resulting in Census’ ability to increase speed, quality, and quantity of the data analytics used in the planning and execution of the Decennial Programs.
• Transformation to a cloud-first organization, including organizational change management and knowledge training transfer on cloud to the federal workforce.
• Transformation of Decennial Information Technology Division (DITD) to DevSecOps practices providing the highest levels of security, quality, and speed.
• Provide a collaborative effort across contractors, Census federal personal, and other stakeholders with a shared purpose for the completion of successful Decennial Programs.

To meet the above goals, the procurement of DTAM will support the development and transformation of the data management and processing ecosystem supporting Decennial. Key focus areas include:

• Standardized architecture allowing for the efficient and accurate sending, receiving, and interpretation of data.
• Applications and architectures supporting high volume and velocity data inputs.
• Data ecosystems and applications supporting near-real time processing of data at scale.
• Data quality and data integrity embedded as a fundamental element of design for data inputs and real-time processing applications. Applications must allow for early identification and remediation, with analytics and reporting for traceability and coordination with other quality initiations across Decennial.
• Use of business rules and analytics to make data driven decisions.
• Standardized IT Program/Project Management, requirements management, systems engineering, and operational delivery support spanning the lifecycle of the systems supporting Decennial Programs.

The announcement is located on SAM.gov https://sam.gov/opp/a62390165ee141d2af40c5924f12ab19/view

On December 12, 2023, the U.S. Census Bureau held a virtual industry day in support of market research to identify potential sources capable of providing Decennial Transformation and Application Modernization (DTAM) services for the U.S. Census Bureau. Additionally, the U.S. Census Bureau wanted to understand best practices and seek recommendations from vendors on how to best acquire the needed industry expertise and achieve benefits in accordance and compliance with federal requirements.