R -- R -- MORNING NEWS CLIPS

Notice Date

December 4, 2001

Contracting Office

Executive Office of the President, Office of Procurement, Office of Procurement, 725 17th Street, NW, Room 5002, Washington, DC, 20503

ZIP Code

20503

Solicitation Number

EOPOA-02-09

Response Due

December 7, 2001

Point of Contact

Robert Helms, Contracting Officer, Phone 202-395-7667, Fax 202-395-3982, Email robert_d._helms@oa.eop.gov -- Kathleen O'Halloran, Contracting Officer, Phone 202-395-7671, Fax 202-395-3982, Email kathleen_e._ohalloran@oa.eop.gov

Description

The purpose of this amendment is to respond to questions received in response to the Executive Office of the President's (EOP) combined synopsis/solicitation number EOPOA-02-09 published in FedBizOpps and the Commerce Business Daily on November 21, 2001, and to make the following change: The clips package will include relevant stories each day from the following newspapers: The Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Washington Times, USA Today, and the Los Angeles Times (The word "Times" was not included in the original solicitation). =20 Following are questions in response to this solicitation and EOP's answers to questions: 1) Will you take bids on the services separately? Ans. No. 2) Will you store the "clip" information anywhere? B) How will you know how to customize the information coming from the clips? Ans. A) The clips are sent to respective staff members, and the original document goes to archives. B) The product requested is a customized clips package. 3) Electronic or physical clips? Ans. Electronic 4) Will you use approved vendors on the GSA schedule? Ans. This is an open market commercial item solicitation. 5) Will there be a central contact for questions? Ans. Yes, the Contracting Officer's Technical Representative (COTR) 6) What are you going to do with the clips once you have them? Redistribute? By hard copy or electronic? Track news items? What happens with the clips? Ans. Once the summary and clip package is received each morning, they will be distributed electronically and via hard copy to members of the Executive Office of the President. 7) Is there currently an incumbent carrying out the tasks as noted? Ans. Yes. Bulletin News Network. 8) Is this solicitation for a small business? Ans. This is not a set-aside. 9) The offeror is asked to provide the services as a trial period for up to one week. Does this mean that each offeror is asked to provide such services via Internet, or will it only be asked of those offerors who make the competitive range? Ans. All offerors must provide the trial service access via the Internet as part of their proposal. 10) If all offerors are to provide the service for a trial period of one week, are we to assume it is the week immediately following the due date of December 7? Ans. Yes, the access should be available beginning December 10. 11) Is the daily 15-20 page executive news summary to include all of the mentioned newspapers, or is the contractor expected to focus on particular sections of each paper (ex. international, business, sports, front page, weather, editorials)? Ans. Items included should be those likely to be of interest to the White House. 12) Is there a detailed RFP, or is the one paragraph notice all there is? Does the offer go to you on December 7, or someone else? Ans. The combined synopsis/solicitation EOPOA-02-09, issued on November 21, 2001 in accordance with FAR Part 12, is the only notice that is given to prospective vendors -- that document is essentially the solicitation. That announcement constitutes the only solicitation; a written solicitation will not be issued. Yes, all offers are due to me by December 7, 2001, 12:00 PM EST. at the following e-mail address: Linda_A._Stivaletti@oa.eop.gov. Please note the underscore between "Linda and A." and between "A. and Stivaletti." 13) Who holds the current contract? Ans. Bulletin News Network 14) How long have they held the contract? Ans. Since Jan. 20, 2001 15) Can we see/obtain a copy of a current news clip package? Ans. This is not releasable, as it is proprietary information. 16) Will the trial period referenced in the RFQ need to be available/begin on the due date of our submission? If not, when should it be available for the seven-day trial? Ans. The trial period of one week will begin on December 10, 2001. 17) The publications listed in the Description the first time are far more extensive than those listed as being in the clips package (just six papers) -- can you explain? Ans. The contents in the News Summary are to be more extensive and inclusive. The News Clips are to include the major papers such as the six mentioned. 18) Does the clip need to be from an actual paper or can it be from the newspaper website or online service like Nexis? Ans. Since the paper is delivered and processed via e-mail and internet site, it is actually necessary for the source of the clip story to be from an on-line paper. 19) Are there requirements for Articles selected? Do they have to mention the President or the words White House or Bush Administration or is that up to the vendor? Ans. The articles included in the summary and clips shall be of interest to the White House. It doesn't particularly have to pertain to the words White House or President Bush, but they should be stories that would be of interest to the White House as a whole. 20) Can we use closed captioning for broadcast or does it have to be a transcription? Ans. Transcription is preferable in cases where it is possible. Closed captioning is certainly acceptable for cases where full transcription is not available in ample time.=20 21) Some of the referenced newspapers are printed at 1:30AM and are available for delivery/pick-up some time after that. Therefore, the requirement appears to be to review all 14 major papers listed and provide an executive summary (in email and posted to an Internet site) by 6:20AM. This will be a 3 or 4 hour period (estimated) to develop and deliver this 20 page report. Is this the intent? (We are inquiring with distributors to see what time we can get these papers to do the research.) Ans. Yes. 22) Most/all of these papers have on-line news publications. We will be able to access much information through the on-line means earlier than the print publications can get to us. But much of the print material doesn't make it to the web news. I see much of this research being the capture of on-line information (once-filtered by the publisher) supplemented by limited print information when it becomes available. The wire services will also play a key role. This question is related to the previous: may it be assumed that the intent is to primarily capture on-line/wire content for the executive summaries? Ans. The intent is to summarize items of interest to the White House published by listed sources, regardless of media. 23) There is a requirement for a 15-20 page summary and a 75 page package of news clips. May we assume the 75 page package is "an attachment" to the 15 page summary -- if they want the whole story? Ans. Essentially yes. The Summary is a broad overview and summary of the news from papers and televisions outlets. The Clips are a package of the major stories from the major papers in their entirety. =20 24) Television coverage is not elaborated on. We see no requirement for feeding audio-visual excerpts as a part of this report, therefore we believe this report is asking for scripts from relevant television news reports. Is this correct? On the other hand, since we have a requirement for publishing this information to an Internet site, some AV files may be appropriate for the web site (but these would not be available in the emails, except by external link). What is the thought on AV files? Ans. What is basically wanted is a summary of the news from previous day's television coverage. This can be achieved either by transcripts summarized or closed captioned summarized.=20

Web Link

Visit this URL for the latest information about this (http://www.eps.gov/spg/EOP/OP/WashingtonDC/EOPOA-02-09/listing.html)

Record

Loren Data Corp. 20011206/RSOL007.HTM (D-338 SN514416)