SOURCES SOUGHT
70 -- Planning and Management Program for the FEC''s Office of Planning and Management
- Notice Date
- 1/8/2003
- Notice Type
- Sources Sought
- Contracting Office
- Federal Election Commission, Office of the Staff Director, Administrative Division, 999 E Street, N.W., Washington, DC, 20463
- ZIP Code
- 20463
- Solicitation Number
- Reference-Number-NAICS541519
- Archive Date
- 2/22/2003
- Point of Contact
- Aaron Ford, Contracting Officer, Phone 202-694-1328, Fax 202-219-3505,
- E-Mail Address
-
aford@fec.gov
- Description
- The Federal Election Commission (FEC) is a 370 Full Time Equivalent (FTE) independent regulatory agency charged with administering and enforcing the Federal Election Campaign Act (FECA) of 1975--the statute that governs the financing of Federal elections and its amendments. The FEC has four major statutory responsibilities: (1) Provide disclosure of campaign finance information, (2) Ensure that candidates, political committees, and political parties comply with the limitations, prohibitions, and disclosure requirements of the FECA, (3) Administer the certification of public funding for Presidential elections and ensure that all related expenditures comply with FECA, and (4) Serve as a clearinghouse for information on election administration. The Office of Planning and Management is seeking a commercial off the shelf (COTS) system to provide automated support for the development of the Commission's budget, tracking its annual goals and objectives, and producing it?s strategic planning documents. The Federal Election Commission is issuing this Request for Information (RFI) to industry to obtain market research in order to assist in the development of a Request for Proposals. All interested parties must respond via e-mail with information about their services with sufficient technical and price detail to allow for a detailed evaluation to the Contracting Officer, Mr. Aaron H. Ford at aford@fec.gov or via telephone (202) 694-1328, no later than 7 February 2003. The subject line of the e-mail message should be Planning and Management Program. The applicable North American Industrial Classification System code is 541519. Proprietary information will be safeguarded in accordance with applicable Government regulations. Firms that wish to respond to this RFI should provide the following information: (1) a brief summary of the budget/planning COTS package/services offered in response to this RFI, (2) a statement indicating an interest and capability to provide the services as described, (3) a technical approach to the Statement of Work provided herein, and (4) a cost estimate. The cost estimate will be used for budgetary planning purposes. THIS IS A REQUEST FOR INFORMATION ONLY!!! It is neither a Request for Proposals (RFP)/Solicitation, nor an indication that the FEC will contract for the products/services described in this RFI. There is no obligation on the part of the Government to acquire any products/services . The Government does not intend to award a contract on the basis of the RFI. The Government will NOT pay for information received in response to this RFI. Submitted documentation will NOT be returned to those firms who provide responses to this RFI. Statement of Work The Office of Planning and Management performs the following five functions for the FEC: (1) budget formulation, (2) budget management, (3) monthly budget reporting, including MIS data, (4) developing and monitoring annual performance plans, and (5) measuring performance in meeting Commission mission and program goals and objectives. The FEC has recently converted its payroll and finance accounting system from a 1032/COBOL environment to PeopleSoft financials, running on an Oracle platform. In addition, the FEC payroll is processed by the National Finance Center (NFC). Consequently, the Budget Office's payroll projection and budget systems are no longer integrated with the new PeopleSoft systems. The replacement system must incorporate payroll projection and FTE monitoring and projection capabilities of the current budget systems. Currently, personnel cost and FTE projections are calculated based on data pulled from a file generated by NFC and copied to the FEC system on a bi-weekly basis. The current projection allows calculations for the remainder of the current year and the next two years. The current year projection shows actual year to date plus a projection for the remainder of the FY, by pay periods, by person and office, as well as for the entire Commission. The projections for the next two years provide costs by person and by office, as well as for the Commission as a whole. Costs are projected for salaries and benefits, including FEGLI, FEHB (health insurance), and CSRS and FERS (including TSP) retirement costs. All projections are based on actual staff on board, and are provided for each person, for each office and for the entire Commission. The projection provides the flexibility to adjust any combination of factors, including retirement, within grade increases (WGI), COLAs, health insurance costs, for planning and for development of what-if scenarios. The new system must be able to import FEC furnished data from the payroll and personnel systems. The resulting data must be able to be exported into software packages (i.e. the Microsoft Office suite). Project Scope -- Mandatory functionality of the proposed COTS software: 1) accurate salary calculations based on actual days and pay periods, with within grade step increases (WGIs) calculated as of the effective date and the ability to query WGI costs separately; 2) projections of FTE and costs for the rest of the current year and the following two years; 3) the ability to calculate and easily change government-share rates of health care, retirement, and locality pay costs; 4) data should be transferable to Excel spreadsheets; 5) the ability to generate budget reports by division, by employee, and FEC wide; 6) the ability to generate management reports by division and FEC wide; 7) the ability to interface with the FEC PeopleSoft finance and accounting system, and, therefore incorporate non-personnel object class data with personnel cost data for budget preparation and presentation purposes (object class scheme attached); 8) produce FTE reports that feature actual hours and FTE to date cumulatively and by division or office; 9) the FTE and personnel data must be usable in a budget preparation system that complies with GPRA requirements and OMB A-11; 10) depict staff on board in paid status as of end of each pay period; 11) must run on an Oracle platform and be compatible with PeopleSoft; must be ODBC and OLAP compliant; 12) must provide on-line and live operational support Monday-Friday 7:00 AM to 5:00 PM Eastern time, and the ability to incorporate MIS data entry and performance data by division or office, to integrate MIS reports with the budget system. Additional capabilities for integrating budget tables and strategic planning documents include the following items: (1) The ability to create planning and budget documents in a standardized format; (2) The ability to store all planning and budget documents in a central location; (3) The ability to link planning and budget documents, so that changing one figure on one page changes that figure across all planning and budget documents. Project Tasks: (1) Provide complete turn-key system; (2) Install system; (3) Train up to 15 personnel, (4) Provide documentation; (5) Provide range of coverage for service and maintenance, and costs associated with each level of service; (6) Describe future upgrade capabilities if newer versions of product are scheduled to be available or are contemplated to be available; (7) Contract Deliverables Project Work Plan; (8) Contract Administration Plan; (9) Configuration Plan - Hardware, software, and cost estimates necessary to implement a web portal that supports integration presentation customization to support 20 scalable to 40 users; (10) Installation Plan for client and server operations; (11) Definition Document - User interface, application integration, metadata dictionary; (12) Change Management and Quality Assurance Plan - A model concept of operations for maintaining content; (13) Acceptance Test Plan - mutually agreed upon by FEC and contractor; (14) Training Plan and systems installation, including applications software, systems maintenance and users manuals; (15) Documentation of System and Software, including users manuals, instructions, etc., both paper copies and electronically; (16) Post-installation maintenance plan, including user support and future upgrade plans; (17) Fully functional and operating budget preparation/MIS/FTE system in compliance with the terms of the SOW. Project Deliverable Distribution List: (1) For all the project deliverables, with the exception of the fully functional and operating budget preparation/MIS/FTE system in compliance with the terms and conditions of the Statement of Work, the Contractor is to provide two copies of each deliverable. The distribution is as follows: (a) FEC Contracting Officer's Representative--one (1) copy and (b) FEC Contracting Officer--one (1) copy; (2) Project Schedule (proposed subject to revisions per Project Work Plan and the Contract Administration Plan; (3) The delivery of a fully functional budget production system is made within one year of date of contract award; (4) New system runs parallel with existing system for the FY 2006 Budget Submission and FY 2005 Management Plan; and (5) New system produces FY 2007 Budget Submission, FY 2007 Performance Plan and FEC Strategic Plan, and produces FY 2006 Management Plan. Project Work Plan: Within 15 calendar days after award, the Contractor will submit a Project Work Plan. The Project Work Plan is the plan for how the Contractor will manage the project and interact with the Federal Election Commission's Contracting Officer and the Contracting Officer's Technical Representative. Contract Administration Plan: Within 15 calendar days after award, the Contractor will submit a Contract Administration Plan. This plan is a detailed description of the responsibilities of the FEC and the Contractor, an agreed upon meeting schedule, performance measurements and bi-weekly progress review meetings, and a standardized reporting format. Included is a schedule with due dates for deliverables. The goal of this plan is to keep track of performance, identify and prevent any potential problems, resolve problem issues, and to maintain/ensure a smooth operating contract. Key Personnel and Proposed Project Team: The Contractor shall provide a full-time Project Manager and identify the total project team in its proposal. In the proposal submitted in response to this solicitation, the Contractor shall identify those personnel that it feels are key to the success of the project. These key personnel shall be designated as such in the contract. The Contractor must notify the FEC Contracting Officer of the proposed changes to these key personnel 30 calendar days prior to their removal from the contract. Replacement personnel must be equally or better qualified that those being replaced and must be accepted, in writing, by the Contracting Officer. Place of Performance: Federal Election Commission, 999 E Street NW, Washington DC 20463. Estimated Period of Performance: The period of performance for this contract shall be from the date of contract award (DOA) through 30 September 2004. System must run in parallel with the FY 2006 Budget Submission, and fully produce the FY 2007 FEC Budget Submission and the FY 2006 Management Plan, as well as the Government Performance and Results Act Documents for FY 2007 Budget Submission: Multi-year Strategic Plan, and annual Performance Plans and Performance Reports. Non-disclosure Forms: Due to the sensitive and confidential nature of the information that the Contractor may access during the performance of work at the FEC, the Contractor and all personnel associated with this contract will be required to sign an Affirmation of Non-Disclosure prior to the commencement of work. The Affirmation of Non-Disclosure states in part that the individual signing the form agrees and understands that they will not disclose any private or privileged information received in the course of service to the FEC. During development, steps will be taken by the FEC to mask and disguise employee name, addresses, and SSNs in the payroll systems. Inspection and Acceptance Criteria: All deliverables will be verified that each is consistent with the contract requirements. The Contracting Officer's Technical Representative (COTR) will certify acceptance and notify the Contractor in writing of the acceptance. The Contractor will not assume acceptance of any deliverable without written notification of acceptance by the COTR which shall be provided within thirty (30) days from the date of delivery. At no time, without written approval of the Contracting Officer, will the Contractor exceed the authorized funding. The Contractor must notify the Contracting Officer when 75% of the approved funding has been expended. Payments: All payments will be made upon receipt and acceptance by the Government of deliverables specified in the Contract Administration Plan, with a final 30% of the contract value retained and to be released solely upon final acceptance of the full operational system as functional in conformance with the system requirements. Notice to the FEC of Delays: The Contractor shall furnish written notice of any delay or potential situation that may cause delay in its ability to meet the delivery and/or performance schedule set forth in this contract. Such notice may be provided verbally to the COTR and the Contracting Officer, and then followed-up in writing within 48 hours after the verbal notification. The notification shall fully describe the cause for the delay, the expected date of delivery and/or performance, and any remedies the Contractor proposes to mitigate the delay. This notification does not relieve the Contractor of its obligation to meet the delivery and/or performance schedule of this contract nor should this notification be construed as a waiver by the FEC of any delivery schedule or date, or any rights or remedies provided under this contract. Authorized FEC Representatives: (1) Contracting Officer, Name: Aaron H. Ford, Organization: Federal Election Commission (FEC), Address: 999 E Street NW, Washington, DC 20463, Phone Number: (202) 694-1328, E-mail address: aford@fec.gov. The Contracting Officer has the overall responsibility for the award and administration of this contract. The Contracting Officer alone, without delegation, is authorized to take actions on behalf of the FEC to amend, modify, or deviate from the contract's terms, conditions, requirements, specifications, details, and/or delivery schedules. However, the Contracting Officer may delegate certain other responsibilities to authorized representatives. (2) Contracting Officer's Technical Representative (COTR). Name: John O'Brien, Organization: FEC-Office of Planning and Management, Address: 999 E Street NW, Washington, DC 20463, Phone number: (202) 694-1216, E-mail address: jobrien@fec.gov. The Contracting Officer's Technical Representative (COTR), to be appointed in writing by the Contracting Officer, is designated to represent the Contracting Officer for all technical matters that arise under the contract that he is assigned. The specific duties of the COTR are clearly articulated in the letter of appointment he/she receives from the Contracting Officer. Some of the responsibilities of the COTR include: (a) determining the adequacy of performance and/or the timeliness of delivery by the Contractor in accordance with the terms and conditions of this contract; (b) acting as the Contracting Officer's Representative in charge of work at the site; (c) ensuring compliance with the contract's requirements insofar as the work is concerned, (d) advising the Contracting Officer of any factors that may cause delays in delivery and/or performance of the work; (e) reviewing and recommending approval of Contractor invoices and (f) conducting and/or witnessing the conduct of any inspections and/or tests that may be required by the contract. Billing Procedures: The Contractor's key personnel and support staff shall provide a breakdown by labor rates, expenses, and other direct costs, and the number of hours worked by task (with a brief description) to the Contracting Officer's Technical Representative (COTR) at a minimum every two weeks for use by the FEC in reconciling and verifying invoices for the purpose of payment. Identification Badges: The FEC Contracting Officer's Technical Representative (COTR) shall ensure that all vendor personnel are issued proper building access/contractor identification badges. Incidental Services, Travel, and Expenses: The cost of all local (Washington, D.C., metropolitan area) services, travel, and expenses incurred incident to performance of this contract shall be borne by the Contractor.
- Place of Performance
- Address: 999 E Street NW, Washington, DC
- Zip Code: 20463
- Zip Code: 20463
- Record
- SN00235744-W 20030110/030108213715 (fbodaily.com)
- Source
-
FedBizOpps.gov Link to This Notice
(may not be valid after Archive Date)
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