Three artifacts the federal-sub field is short on. Take, adapt, paste into your capture brief — attribution appreciated, not required. Each toolkit is a tight working draft; we add to them as we learn more from deployed engagements.
Want all three toolkits as one branded PDF? The bundled PDF (Iñupiat Field Notes + SOW Snippet Pack + Sub-Vetting Checklist, ~12 pages total) is generated on request so the version you receive is always current. Email Team@OlenArc.com and we return the bundle within 2 business days — usually same day.
Seven principles from deployments with Arctic Slope Community Foundation, Olen Hub pilots, and Native-serving conferences. UX patterns that travel.
Sample SOW language for five civilian software module shapes — paste-ready for a prime BD capture brief. NAICS + engagement-shape included.
Ten questions a prime BD lead should answer before bringing a small civilian software sub onto a task order. Print, mark, file.
Hard-earned principles from deploying software with the Arctic Slope Community Foundation across all 8 North Slope Iñupiat villages, building Olen Hub, and engaging at the North Slope Borough Health Conference, NIHB’s National Tribal Health Conference, and the University of Kansas Sovereign Futures Series. Written for civilian software shops who haven’t worked in Native-serving programs before.
Before drawing a wireframe, map who owns the data, who consents to its collection, who has access, and how it can be shared. Tribal data sovereignty is a governance principle, not a feature flag. Co-develop the data-flow diagram with community leadership before any software design begins. A bad data-flow map made early is fixable; a bad one shipped is a trust failure.
Role-based access is the bare minimum, not the design ceiling. Tribal programs typically have nested community structures — elders, program staff, applicants, partner agencies, leadership, cultural advisors — that don’t map cleanly to corporate org charts. Design roles around the community’s existing decision-making structure, not your tech stack’s default user model. Test the role model in the community before you wire it into code.
Bring community members into the design phase, not the QA phase. A single in-person co-design workshop in a community center surfaces UX details — language choice, color associations, navigation patterns, what “find a service” means in the local context — that no remote design team can guess. Pay community participants; do not extract feedback for free.
Before forcing digital-only, audit how community members actually access information today: Facebook groups, paper flyers, agency walk-ins, phone trees, elder networks, kitchen-table conversations. Good software integrates with these channels, not replaces them. The City of Utqiaġvik community calendar aggregates events from Facebook, agency pages, and informal channels — it didn’t try to replace them.
A single big “community hub” centralized in one organization fails. Native-serving programs work in federated patterns: local organizations control their own corners. Architecture should mirror this — each organization controls its own content, branding, and access rules within a shared platform. White-label re-deployment patterns like Olen Hub bake federation into the platform shape.
Many North Slope and rural Tribal communities have limited or intermittent bandwidth. UI patterns that work in a Silicon Valley office break in Wainwright in January. Offline-first patterns, low-data-mode views, progressive enhancement, large touch targets, and voice-input fallbacks aren’t accessibility extras — they’re the baseline. Test on a 3G connection on a 4-year-old phone, not on your studio Wi-Fi.
The audience includes elders with limited English literacy, mid-career professionals, and youth with smartphone fluency. Plain language at sixth-grade reading level. Iñupiaq / Native-language UI options where the community requests them. Large touch targets and high-contrast typography for elder users. Voice navigation as a primary path, not a secondary one. Test with members of every age band in the community before launch.
See also: the Responsible Data Use & Data Sovereignty-Aware Design section on the Federal & Teaming page for the security / access-control complement to these principles.
Paste-ready SOW language for the five module shapes a prime BD team typically sub-scopes in a civilian software task order. Each block is one paragraph; adapt the agency and program name to your capture context. NAICS codes confirm sub-fit; engagement shape sets timeline expectations.
SOW paragraph: “The Subcontractor shall design, build, and deploy a public-facing applicant or constituent portal under the Prime’s task order, including role-based logins, a Section 508-conformant interface, and a content workflow for program staff. Deliverables include working portal in production-grade environment, role configuration matrix, and operations runbook. Engagement runs as a 4–12 week fixed-scope sprint; fixed-price option available.”
NAICS: 541511 / 541512. Typical engagement: 6–10 weeks. Deliverables: portal in production, role matrix, ops runbook, Section 508 conformance documentation.
SOW paragraph: “The Subcontractor shall build a program performance and impact dashboard integrated with the Prime’s existing data sources, including role-based views for program staff, reviewers, and leadership; AI-summarized program narratives reviewed and approved by program staff prior to release; and exportable rollups for quarterly reporting cycles. Deliverables include working dashboard, data-integration spec, and an AI-narrative review workflow.”
NAICS: 541511 / 541512. Typical engagement: 6–8 weeks. Deliverables: dashboard in production, data-integration spec, AI-narrative review workflow, role configuration matrix.
SOW paragraph: “The Subcontractor shall implement an LLM-assisted document review and summarization workflow for the Prime’s civilian-agency grant or case management program, including document ingestion, structured field extraction tuned to the program’s schema, role-based review queues, and AI-drafted narrative summaries reviewed and approved by program staff. The Subcontractor shall handle Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI) per NIST SP 800-171 in alignment with the Prime’s compliance posture.”
NAICS: 541511 / 541715. Typical engagement: 8–12 weeks. Deliverables: document-ingestion pipeline, field-extraction spec, review-queue UI, narrative-review workflow.
SOW paragraph: “The Subcontractor shall design and deliver a structured intake, eligibility, and review workflow system for the Prime’s civilian-agency program, including applicant-facing intake forms, eligibility-logic engine, internal review queues with role-aware admin tooling, and (where applicable) cross-agency referral routing with explicit user consent capture and digital signature. Deliverables include working system, data-sharing consent UX, and program-staff training materials.”
NAICS: 541511 / 541512. Typical engagement: 8–12 weeks. Deliverables: intake system in production, eligibility-logic spec, consent / signature flow, training materials.
SOW paragraph: “The Subcontractor shall deliver API integrations between the Prime’s existing systems of record and a target program module, including Section 508 / WCAG 2.1 AA remediation of legacy front-ends, structured data mapping between systems, and a minimal interface modernization where the SOW requires. The Subcontractor shall not disrupt Prime staff allocation on adjacent systems during integration delivery.”
NAICS: 541511 / 541519. Typical engagement: 4–8 weeks. Deliverables: integration code, data-mapping documentation, Section 508 conformance audit, modernization deployment.
See also: Capabilities › Module shapes for the full module descriptions and the corresponding case-study mappings on Project Experience.
Five paste-ready sub-SOWs with reference architectures — one per OlenArc product (Grant & Impact Dashboard, AI Document-to-Dashboard, Community Calendar, Olen Hub, plus a capture-phase Research & Prototype engagement). Companion to the generic 5-module SOW pack above; deeper architectural detail intended for the Prime's solution architect or proposal volume. Adapt the agency and program name to your capture context.
“The Subcontractor shall design, build, and deploy a program performance and impact dashboard integrated with the Prime’s existing data sources, supporting role-based views for program staff, reviewers, and leadership. The dashboard shall include funding-by-community visualizations, applicant- or grantee-level rollups, and AI-summarized program narratives reviewed and approved by program staff prior to release. Deliverables include working dashboard deployed to a production-grade environment, data-integration specification, AI-narrative review workflow, and a role configuration matrix. Engagement runs as a 6–8 week fixed-scope sprint under the Prime’s task order; fixed-price option available.”
Acceptance criteria: Dashboard deployed and reachable by named Prime PM; role matrix in place and tested with at least one user per role; AI-summarized narrative produces output reviewed and signed off by program staff on three sample data slices; data-integration spec submitted to Prime architect.
Engagement shape: 6–8 weeks fixed-scope sprint · NAICS: 541511 / 541512.
“The Subcontractor shall implement an LLM-assisted document review and structured-extraction workflow for the Prime’s civilian-agency grant, case management, or compliance program. The workflow shall include document ingestion (PDF, DOCX, scanned), structured field extraction tuned to the program’s schema, role-based review queues, and AI-drafted narrative summaries reviewed and approved by program staff prior to release. The Subcontractor shall handle Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI) per NIST SP 800-171 in alignment with the Prime’s compliance posture; classified data is out of scope.”
Acceptance criteria: Ingestion pipeline accepts the Prime’s test document set; field-extraction precision and recall measured against a hand-labeled gold set agreed at kickoff; review queue tested by named program reviewers; narrative output reviewed and signed off on three sample documents.
Engagement shape: 8–12 weeks fixed-scope sprint · NAICS: 541511 / 541715.
“The Subcontractor shall design, build, and deploy a community calendar and event-aggregation platform that pulls events from named upstream sources (agency pages, partner organizations, social channels with appropriate consent), normalizes them into a single calendar view, and serves the calendar to a public-facing site with role-aware staff tools for moderation and feature management. Deliverables include working calendar in production, source-integration specification, moderation workflow, and operational runbook.”
Acceptance criteria: Three or more upstream sources integrated and producing normalized events; moderation queue tested by named staff; public view passes Section 508 / WCAG 2.1 AA conformance audit; mobile and low-bandwidth views tested on representative devices.
Engagement shape: 4–8 weeks fixed-scope sprint · NAICS: 541511 / 541512.
“The Subcontractor shall deploy a white-label community resource and engagement platform combining a curated resource directory, eligibility information, an aggregated event calendar, AI-orchestrated intake forms, and a navigator chatbot built on a local knowledge base. The platform shall include role-based admin tooling for staff, with audit-ready logging for grant or program compliance reporting. The Subcontractor shall deliver a configurable white-label deployment that the Prime can adapt per community partner.”
Acceptance criteria: Platform deployed to production, content seeded with at least one full resource taxonomy, intake workflow tested end-to-end, navigator chatbot answering against the local knowledge base on a 20-question gold set, admin dashboard tested with named staff.
Engagement shape: 8–12 weeks fixed-scope sprint · NAICS: 541511 / 541512.
“The Subcontractor shall provide stakeholder discovery and clickable-prototype services to support the Prime’s capture or proposal phase, including agency-stakeholder interviews (where permitted), user-journey mapping, a clickable prototype evidencing the proposed solution shape, and a reference architecture brief sized for the prime’s technical volume. Engagement runs as a 3–6 week fixed-price effort sized to fit a Prime’s capture budget — including sizing inside the $10K federal micro-purchase threshold (FAR 2.101) when card-swipe procurement is preferred.”
Acceptance criteria: Stakeholder interview notes delivered, user-journey map signed off by Prime capture lead, clickable prototype hosted at a private URL the Prime can demo, architecture brief delivered in the Prime’s proposal-volume format.
Engagement shape: 3–6 weeks fixed price · NAICS: 541715 / 541511.
Need any of these tailored to your capture context? Send the agency and module shape to Team@OlenArc.com — we return a per-engagement variant within 5 business days under a mutual NDA.
For a prime BD lead bringing a small civilian software subcontractor onto a task order. Ten items to confirm before issuing the sub-PO. Works for any civilian software sub — not just OlenArc.
Pull the sub’s UEI on sam.gov and verify the registration is currently active. CAGE Code should match the UEI record. A sub with “in progress” status cannot receive a sub-PO until activation completes. Confirm SAM record expiration date is at least 90 days out from your TO performance period.
Compare the NAICS codes registered on the sub’s SAM profile to the NAICS expected in the prime task order. For civilian software work the typical fits are 541511 (Custom Programming), 541512 (Systems Design), 541519 (Other Computer Related), 541715 (R&D), 518210 (Hosting / Infrastructure). Mismatch is a flag for size-standard compliance.
Ask for the sub’s most recent NIST SP 800-171 self-assessment score and the date submitted to SPRS. A sub without a recent self-assessment or SPRS submission cannot safely handle CUI on your task order. If the engagement involves CUI, request the self-assessment summary in writing.
Request COIs for: General Liability ($1M/$2M minimum), Professional Liability / E&O ($1M–$5M), and Cyber Liability ($1M–$5M). Policy language should be flow-down friendly under FAR 52.228-7 and any prime-specific indemnification clauses. Workers’ Compensation as required by state and engagement structure.
Distinguish deployed engagements from internal demos. “We can build X” is not the same as “We deployed X for client Y, serving Z users in production.” Ask for at least one production reference the sub can put you on the phone with. Demos and reference designs are useful but cannot substitute for deployed work in a capture brief.
If the scope requires Public Trust eligibility, Secret, or higher clearances, confirm the sub’s posture. A civilian-only sub may not pursue clearances by design; that’s fine for unclassified work but disqualifying for cleared scopes. Ask the sub to confirm their staffing model for engagements requiring eligible-personnel sourcing.
For cloud-hosted deliverables, confirm whether the sub inherits FedRAMP-Moderate controls via AWS GovCloud or Azure Government (standard pattern for small subs) or provides FedRAMP-authorized hosting themselves (rare and expensive at sub scale). Inheritance is the right pattern for most civilian software task orders.
For public-facing software, ask for the sub’s most recent VPAT 2.x or equivalent accessibility conformance documentation. If they don’t have one, ask whether they design Section 508-aware by default or treat accessibility as a remediation phase. Civilian agencies will require it; better to surface the gap before the SOW than during delivery.
If the engagement touches Protected Health Information (PHI) — common in IHS, HHS sub-agencies, or healthcare-adjacent civilian programs — confirm the sub can sign a Business Associate Agreement (BAA) and operates HIPAA-aware development practices. Without a BAA, the sub cannot legally handle PHI on your task order.
For bounded module work, fixed-price is typically cleaner for primes to invoice and for COs to evaluate. Ask the sub which they prefer and why. A sub that exclusively wants T&M for bounded modules may not have estimated the work tightly. A sub that offers fixed-price for bounded modules and T&M for open-ended discovery is signaling estimation discipline.
Want this checklist as a PDF? Email Team@OlenArc.com and we’ll send the latest version.
If you’re a prime BD lead or Native-serving program officer and there’s a sub-performance, compliance, or community-UX toolkit you wish existed, tell us. We add to this page as we learn.