SEC seeks cloud-based e-discovery system for pilot

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is looking for a small business to provide a cloud-based electronic-discovery system for a pilot project, according to a solicitation released Thursday.

The procurement is a small business set-aside competition, and the agency is planning to award a single contract. Vendors must be certified under the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program, better known as FedRAMP.

During the pilot, the SEC wants to evaluate the cloud solution against the current on-premises system for cost efficiency, capabilities and performance, according to the solicitation.

The SEC, which already has an Amazon Web Services cloud operating environment, said in the solicitation it would prefer a solution hosted by Amazon Web Services “to facilitate more rapid and secure data transfer.”

The small business awarded the contract would be responsible for “design, configuration, testing, electronic document discovery (EDD) processing, data and document loading, system administration, creation of electronic productions, pilot system deployment, training, and operational support of the SEC electronic Discovery 3 (eD3) application,” according to the solicitation.

The application must be based on a commercial software product.

The SEC’s goals with the pilot are to reduce the costs of managing and maintaining electronic discovery software and data while improving access to analytical tools used in the e-discovery process.

“Some of the information comes in paper format, which must be imaged and loaded into SEC systems,” according to the solicitation. “Most information arrives through electronic media, and may need to be converted or processed before it is loaded into repositories.”

The agency is looking in particular for tools that help with data analysis and visualization, the solicitation says.

“Features that show connections between people and relationships among documents will enable investigative attorneys and examiners to use their time more efficiently,” it reads. “Visualizations should allow staff to look at a broad view of an entire matter, and then focus on areas of interest.”

Proposals are due by August 13.