SOLICITATION NOTICE
58 -- AUTOMATED MEDIA MONITORING AND RESEARCH SYSTEM
- Notice Date
- 8/25/2004
- Notice Type
- Solicitation Notice
- NAICS
- 334220
— Radio and Television Broadcasting and Wireless Communications Equipment Manufacturing
- Contracting Office
- Defense Contracting Command-Washington(DCC-W), ATTN: Policy and Compliance, 5200 Army Pentagon, Room 1D245, Washington, DC 20310-5200
- ZIP Code
- 20310-5200
- Solicitation Number
- HQ0038-4219-0004
- Response Due
- 9/13/2004
- Archive Date
- 11/12/2004
- Point of Contact
- Arlene Dee Carlson, 703-614-6846
- E-Mail Address
-
Email your questions to Defense Contracting Command-Washington(DCC-W)
(arlene.carlson@hqda.army.mil)
- Small Business Set-Aside
- N/A
- Description
- This is a combined synopsis/solicitation for firm fixed price commercial items prepared in accordance with the format in Subpart 12.6, as supplemented with additional information included in this notice. This announcement constitutes the only sol icitation; proposals are being requested and a written solicitation will not be issued. This requirement is unrestricted. For purposes of determining business size, the standards for this acquisition, under NAICS code 334220, is 750 employees. If the of feror is a large business, a subcontracting plan with small business is required. The solicitation document and incorporated provisions and clauses are those in effect through Federal Acquisition Circular 2001-24 effective 19 July 2004. Delivery: Thre e (3) months after date of award. Provision at 52.212-1, Instructions to Offerors -- Commercial, applies to this acquisition. Offerors are advised to include a completed copy of the provision at 52.212-3, Offeror Representations and Certifications -- Commercial Items, with your offer. The provisions at 52.212-4, Contract Terms and Conditions -- Commercial Items, applies to this acquisition. The clause at 52.212-5, Contract Terms and Conditions Required To Implement Statutes Or Executive Orders -- Commercial Items, applies to this acquisition. Proposal due date is 13 September 2004, 1:00 pm, Eastern Standard Time (EST). Failure to provide timely responses will exclude your offer from consideration. Please email your quote to arlene.carlson @hqda.army.mil or FAX 703-695-9746. No information, questions, or requests for clarifications will be provided in response to telephone calls from prospective offerors. Formal communications such as requests for clarification and/or information or questi ons should be in writing, corporate letterhead and faxed or emailed to: Department of the Army, Defense Contracting Command-Washington, ATTN: Arlene Dee Carlson, 5200 Army Pentagon, Washington DC 20310-5200, FAX: 703-695-9746, Email: arlene.carlson@hqda .army.mil. Written inquires will be answered in writing and provided to all offerors via an amendment. HOWEVER, because of the response time, no such inquiries will be considered if received after 7 September 2004, 12:00 pm (NOON) (EST). STATEMENT O F WORK: Automated Media Monitoring and Research System (AMMARS). Overview: A system is required to provide rapid access to and analysis of Arabic Language Television News broadcasts immediately, and additional languages in the future. Technology is now available to support automated capture and analysis of video in near real-time. Such a system based on this technology will accelerate staff access to the content of television broadcasts. The Automated Media Monitoring and Research System (AMMARS) will need to provide this capability. System Description: The Automated Media Monitoring and Research System (AMMARS) will provide the ability to capture six television signals in digital format and enable analysts to review up to 30 days of video using a st andard web browser. The system will include alerting by keywords, full-text search in Arabic or English, and phonetic audio search in Arabic. The system will enable rapid analysis of the content to view graphically the temporal occurrence of topics or ke ywords within one or all channels. The system will provide automatic highlighting of Arabic text to mark entities including people, places, organizations, and dates and times. Video segments will include an indication of unique, known speakers using spea ker indentification (ID). The system will support continuous recording on each of the six channels with near real-time access to the video, speech-recognized text, highlighted entities, machine translation to English, and speaker ID, with less than 10 min utes latency. Users must be able to select segments of video for export to Powerpoint or Word, along with text transcripts in Arabic and machine-language trans lations to English. The system shall provide six key capabilities for personnel: 1. Review streaming video with synchronized transcriptions and translations. 2. Selection of video segments by source and time. 3. Search for specific spoken content in the video cache by Arabic- or English-language text query. 4. Create watch lists that trigger real-time alerts when specific content is detected. 5. Export video segments to external documents and presentations. 6. Provide graphical temporal display of the occurrence of topics or keywords within the video cache. The current requirements are that the system shall include all television signal reception and distribution capabilities to support 24x7 monitoring of the following channels: Al Jazeera, A l Arabiya, Al-Manar, Al-Alam, Al Iraqiya, Alhurrah. Customer Functional Requirements: The section provides a detailed description of the functional requirements of the system. Review Streaming Video: From the web-based UI, users can review live broadca st channels in real time along with a synchronized transcript in the source language and its automatic translation into English. The synchronized playback of video and text shall not lag the live signal capture time by more than 10 minutes. Similarly, an y segment of recorded video in the dynamic cache shall be viewable in the web-based UI in synchrony with its transcription and translation. The appearance of synchronized playback in the UI shall be the same for both recorded video segments and for live v ideo streams. In both forms of playback, the word being spoken shall be highlighted in the transcript. Review Video Segments: Users shall be able to select video segments for review by specifying a channel and a start time. The web-based UI shall offer a menu of channels to select from as well as a calendar that covers the span of time accounted for in each dynamic video cache. During the synchronized playback of a video segment, users shall have random access into the segment. The UI shall permit the user to click on any word in the transcript or any sentence in the translation to begin playing from that point. Review Still Frames: Users shall select still frames by simply clicking on a word in the textual transcript while the media player is in the pause mode. A still frame shall be retrieved from the video cache that corresponds to the start time of the selected word. Search Video for Content: Users shall be able to search for specific spoken content in the video cache by submitting keyword que ries to the web-based UI. Arabic or English language queries shall be supported. Boolean operators shall be provided with the search facility as well as capabilities for specifying phrases or substring matches to word stems with arbitrary endings. Users shall be able to restrict their searches to specific channels and intervals of time. Focus Cues: When a video segment is retrieved by means of a keyword search, the query terms in the transcript or translation shall be highlighted wherever they occur to draw the attention of the user. When the retrieved video segment is first selected from the results of a search, the segment shall be positioned just before the first keyword in the transcript or translation text. The web-based UI shall allow the user t o easily skip from one focus cue (keyword or phrase) to another in either direction with a single mouse click. Export Video Segments: Users shall be able to export arbitrary video segments of their choosing to Microsoft PowerPoint slides. Users shall be able to specify the segment to be exported by designating the first and last word in the segment from the automatic transcript, or the first and last sentence from the automatic translation. The video segment shall be then saved to a PowerPoint file alon g with the automatic transcript and translation. The user shall specify the name and location of this file through the standard Windows Save As dialog. Expo rt Still Frames and Metadata: Users shall be able to export still frames of their choosing to Microsoft PowerPoint slides or Word Documents. Users shall be able to specify the still frame to be exported by selecting the corresponding word in the transcri pt. Similarly, users shall be able to export arbitrary selections of the textual transcript and corresponding translation to presentations or documents. Any number of metadata exports can be made to the receiving file in any order. Synchronized Playbac k in Exported Video Segments: Exported segments of video and metadata from the system into Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, or Internet Explorer shall preserve their internal synchronization during playback of the video segment. Just as in the web-based UI, t he corresponding words in the transcript and the sentences in the translation shall be highlighted as they are spoken during video playback. Alerts from Keyword-based Filters: Users may elect to have keyword search queries to be saved as filters to be ap plied against all incoming transcriptions or translations. When a saved keyword query matches words spoken on any channel being monitored by the system, an alert shall be posted to the UI and the video segment surrounding the match is queued for review by users at any time later. Arabic-Language Phonetic Audio Search: The system shall automatically index Arabic language audio phonetically to support phonetic audio search. Arabic-language text search strings shall result in a list of audio clips with hi gh probability of the occurrence of a phonetic audio match. A confidence score shall provide an indication of the general probability of a phonetic match of a specified audio clip to the search string. The system must be capable of supporting languages o ther than Arabic, when required, recognizing that additional software will be necessary for the system to operate in any language that may be required. Content Analysis: Using phonetic audio search results, the system shall provide users with the ability to analyze content by channel and time span to graphically depict the occurrence of key words, phrases, and topics. UPS Option: The system shall optionally provide for UPS backup to support the orderly shutdown of servers in the event of a power outage. Digital Video Recorder Option: The system shall optionally provide for video-only recording of the six channels for a period of 48 hours in the event of a system or power outage. INSTRUCTIONS & EVALUATION: The Government will evaluate offers and make a Best Value selection in accordance with listed criteria. All evaluation factors other than cost or price when combined are significantly more important than cost or price. Factor 1: Technical Capability/Understanding of the Requirements: Both the offerors understanding of the specific requirements and the overall scope of work required and the offerors demonstrated technical capability. The product description and techn ical literature must describe a product that will meet all the performance requirements contained in the Statement of Work. Factor 2: Past Performance: Offerors performance on three past federal and/or commercial contracts within the last three years, plus additional recent relevant information provided by the offerors for consideration. This evaluation will consider timelin ess of delivery, customer satisfaction and product performance consistant with that as advertised. Factor 3: Price: Not adjectivally rated, but considered for reasonableness in the best value determination. Each proposal will be rated based on evaluation of each factor using the following Adjectival Rating and Standards Scale: OUTSTANDING Very comprehensive, in-depth, clear response. Offer meets this standard with no omissions. High quality performance c an be expected. EXCELLENT Extensive, detailed response to all requirements similar to outstanding in quality, but with minor areas of unevenness or sp ottiness. High quality performance is likely but not assured due to minor omissions or areas where less than excellent performance might be expected. GOOD - No deficiencies in the response. Better than acceptable performance can be expected, but in som e significant areas, there is an unevenness or spottiness that might impact performance. FAIR The response generally meets requirements but there is not expectation of better than acceptable performance. Deficiencies are confined to areas with minor i mpact on performance and can be corrected during negotiation without major revisions to the proposal. POOR The response fails to meet one or more requirements. Deficiencies exist in significant areas but can be corrected during negotiations without maj or revisions to the proposal or serious deficiencies exist in areas with minor impact. UNACCEPTABLE Serious deficiencies exist in significant areas. The proposal cannot be expected to meet the stated requirements without major revisions. The proposa l only indicates a willingness to perform in accordance with the requirements document without specifying how or demonstrating the capability to do so. Only vague indications of the required capability are present. Your firms submission should reflect a nd demonstrate an understanding of the Statement of Work and provide sufficient detail to be properly considered. The technical proposal shall not exceed 25 pages in length and single sided. Price submissions shall be under separate cover and competitive firm fixed priced. Email is the preferred method of submission.
- Place of Performance
- Address: Defense Contracting Command-Washington(DCC-W) ATTN: Policy and Compliance, 5200 Army Pentagon, Room 1D245 Washington DC
- Zip Code: 20310-5200
- Country: US
- Zip Code: 20310-5200
- Record
- SN00653848-W 20040827/040826075343 (fbodaily.com)
- Source
-
FedBizOpps.gov Link to This Notice
(may not be valid after Archive Date)
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