Description
The purpose of this amendment number A002 to Request for Quotation HSFEHQ-04-Q-0072 is to answer questions and extend the closing date for receipt of quotations. As a result of additional questions, the response date for RFQ HSFEHQ-04-Q-0072 is hereby extended until Friday, August 27, 2004. Following are the questions and answers. 1. Q: By what means is the Contractor expected to obtain contact information? Will contacts be entered through the site, imported from some other source, or some other way? A: It is anticipated that the contractor will have a pre-existing media contact database that includes contact information for radio, print, television, wire, networks and other type of media outlets. Ideally, contact information should already exist with the contractor and not need to be entered or imported specifically for this contract. 2. Q: For the purposes of back up access, what forms of communication are available to a field office in a disaster area? Is it an option for the field office to send information through Headquarters? A: FEMA staff will fax the news release, advisory or other document for distribution to the contractor, and either fax or phone the appropriate point-of-contact to designate distribution list. Since field offices need 24 hour access and we would like to provide all users with direct access, it is not an optimal solution to have the field office need to rely on headquarters to send information. 3. Q: What is the maximum number of users? A: The contractor is required to provide for 20 users to access the system on a regular basis, with an additional 20 users accessing the system for intermittent periods. However, FEMA needs to be able to assign unique users, such that there may be no more than 40 active users at one time but 20 of those users may vary. 4. Q: Approximately how many contacts and/or groups are expected to be part of the contact database? A: There are approximately 25,000 media organizations in the country. In addition, these organizations may have multiple contacts depending on the outlet size. The actual number of contacts to provide thorough access to the nation’s media outlets should be provided and understood by the contractor. 5. Q: On what date is the service required to be online? A: It is desired that the service will be operational immediately upon award of contract, but is required to be operational within two weeks of contract award. 6. Q: Is the primary mechanism for forwarding documents to the contacts via FAX or via email attachment? Please provide an estimated ratio of FAX to document attachment for distributions per month. A: The primary distribution is expected to be fax. At this point, 99% of our distribution is done via fax. 7. Q: On the past performance section, what exactly are you looking for in “Contract Type”? Are you looking for a code or explanation? A: We are looking for the contract type, (ie. whether it was cost plus fixed fee, firm fixed price, time and materials, etc.). 8. Q: Reference Deliverable 1 – “… It is preferred that no special equipment or software be required for access and use of the system.” Because users will access an online system, are we to assume that all users will have access to the Internet and some sort of web browser? A: Yes. All users will have access to the intranet and will be using Microsoft Explorer. Q: Is there a minimum workstation configuration (operating system, browser, office suite, etc.) that we will have to develop to? A: Yes. Must be Windows 2000 Professional and Microsoft Office Suite compatible. 9. Q: Reference Deliverable 2 – “The Contractor shall provide access to contact Information for print and broadcast media, …” Who will provide the contact information, FEMA or the Contractor? A: The contractor will provide and maintain the media and congressional contact lists. Q: If FEMA will provide the mail list, is the mail list purchased from a commercial vendor(s)? A: N/A Q: Who are the vendors? A: N/A Q: What are the database fields? A: This is largely dependent on what the vendor has developed, but would include organization, primary news contact, assignment editor name, phone, fax, website, address, city, county, media market, state, zip, media type, circulation, beat/subject interest. Q: In what format is the data provided? A: N/A Q: How often can the Contractor obtain information from the vendor to comply with the RFQ requirement of “This information shall be regularly updated and maintained by the Contractor to ensure accuracy?” A: The contractor is responsible for providing the information to keep its database current. Q: What type of database does FEMA currently use to store mail list data? A: FEMA purchases contact information for media outlets through Bacons, Burrell’s and Media Yellow Book. 10. Q: Reference Deliverable 2 – “ Contractor to regularly update and maintain the contact info.” How does FEMA envision this being accomplished? By importing updated lists into the database? Or have they conceived enabling the contacts to update the information themselves, for example via returned email? A: It is assumed that the contractor has a staff who is responsible for maintaining the database, either by performing scheduled checks and verifications, inputting corrections provide by media organizations to FEMA or the contractor directly, and/or by installing updated issues of media database software. 11. Q: Reference Deliverable 3 – “… In addition, the contractor shall provide capability to include additional internal and external contacts not included in the media or congressional database for distribution purposes as provided by FEMA.” Who will be responsible for entering the “additional internal and external contacts” into the database? A: FEMA staff Q: Who will be responsible for obtaining these additional contacts? A: FEMA staff 12. Q: Reference Deliverable 3 -- "...target distribution … by … Circulation audience, Outlet type, Editorial interest or beat...etc.” Will this "insider" information be made available by FEMA to the contractor or is the contractor expected to develop these lists? A: It is expected the contractor will have this information as part of the contact database information. 13. Q: Reference Deliverable 4 – Back-up system: Pending setting up Internet accessibility at the DFO, will FEMA DFO staff have access to cell phones and/or Blackberries (PDAs) that can be used to interface with the electronic data system? Or is a phone-based back-up system more realistic and acceptable to FEMA? A: The backup access is anticipated to be through phone service. Q: Has FEMA conceived how they expect this backup to happen? Do you expect the distribution to run locally in your environment or would the contractor provide a dedicated connection (DSN) so the contractor could run the distribution in the host environment? A: FEMA staff will fax the news release, advisory or other document for distribution to the contractor, and either fax or phone the appropriate point-of-contact to designate distribution list. 14. Q: Reference Deliverable 5 – “The Contractor shall provide for the distribution of approximately 61,250 pages … to contacts to be received via fax or email …” Does this statement say that contacts must be capable of receiving documents via fax or email or that the Contractor must be capable of receiving documents via fax or email for further distribution? A: Contacts have the capability to receive documents via fax as it is currently the standard mode of distributing information to reporters and news organizations. More and more contacts are also providing email addresses for distribution; however, we continue to find fax is still the predominately preferred method of receiving information due to the time sensitive nature of the material. Q: Can this number be further broken down into the number of fax pages and estimated emails? A: The number is based on a monthly average of 350 documents of an average 1.75 pages each (that is, some will be one page, two pages or three pages). Each document will be sent to an average of 100 contacts. 15. Q: Reference Deliverable 7 – “…assign additional user accounts on a temporary basis.” What role will these temporary users be filling? Will they be disseminating information, viewing rollup reports, etc? Have any other roles been defined? A: The temporary users are our disaster assistance employees, who deploy to field offices after a disaster. The users will be using the system to fax/email releases, advisory, fact sheets and other information to media contacts in the same manner FEMA HQ and regional offices will use the system. They will also use the system to download media contact lists to use for outreach purposes, and will review reports or release distribution. Q: Should there be any “user training” (either in person or online) for OPA staff and what aspects should it cover –Maintenance of database lists? Distribution (how to send out information)? Statistics (how to generate)? A: It would be useful if the contractor could provide a very easy to use tutorial – either on line or in print to walk users through how to use the system. 16. Q: Reference Deliverable 8 – “The Contractor shall provide FEMA the ability to enter a project/billing code for each distribution …”Can you please provide information regarding the billing code? For example, 1) will it always be a unique number?, 2) is it comprised of an alpha/numeric combination of characters?, how long is the code?, who enters the code?, do all users know their billing code?, etc? A: The project/billing code will be a unique number that references the source of the document; that is, there will be distinct codes assigned to FEMA’s HQ office, 10 regional offices, and disaster field offices. It is numeric, and is expected to be no more than 4 numbers. The user operating the distribution of the document to the media will enter the code, and will know the code to enter. 17. Q: Reference the Price Discussion: Under the Basis for Award section it states: “Offerors shall quote based on price per page distributed; monthly retainer will be averaged based on estimated usage to facilitate comparison among users.” and under the Submission Requirements section it states: “The Offeror shall provide, in writing, a detailed price quotation. The price quotation shall include, at a minimum, a separate unit price and extended price for the base period (1 year) and three (3) optional 12 month periods.” Please clarify what is requested for pricing information. We are not certain whether you are requesting a price per page or a fixed price for the work on an annual basis. A: Since anticipated usage is expected to fluctuate monthly, it is anticipated that price per page will be the most appropriate fee system. In addition, this appears to be the industry standard towards pricing media distribution systems. Q: If FEMA is requesting information based on a price per page, this is difficult to determine because the majority of the documents being sent will be delivered via email and therefore pages are not relevant. Pages can be converted into file sizes and priced accordingly. A: Actually, the majority of documents being sent are anticipated to be delivered via facsimile. We would prefer not to use file size, as we include the FEMA seal and wordmark on all documents, and this art file and formatting information would most often be larger than the actual text included in the document. 18. Q: What is your ideal or vision for the system? For instance: Do you envision pushing documents out to recipients, or would you also want individuals to be able to log in and search for information? For example, allowing a legislative aid to log onto the service and search for all messages that were sent out using particular keywords or timeframes? A: It is solely for pushing documents and information out to media organizations and members of congress. There will be no log on for users to search for information. Q: Do you simply want to send documents to individuals at each media station or would you be open to a more robust media interface, that included both push and pull communications, on-air reports, etc.? A: The primary purpose is to send documents to media outlets and congressional members; however, additional functions will be considered as part of the best value. Push/pull communication ability is not a need. 19. Q: Would your ideal system be used to communicate urgent alerts as well as send informational documents? A: All information will be treated the same; however, it may be useful to have the capability to bump documents up if there is a queue of documents waiting to be distributed without losing the processing of the existing documents. 20. Q: Would you ever want to use the system to communicate to the general public? A: No 21. Q: Regarding the messages: Does the system need to be able to forward pre-created documents, or will a representative from FEMA type the message to be sent out into a browser window? A: Forward pre-created documents Q: Will the documents be Word, Acrobat or other format files? A: Word or text file Q: Will the system need to store an archive of all the documents that were sent? A: It needn't store the actual document, but should store for a set time period the distribution of a document (can be referenced by document number as all are assigned a log number) as far as who it was sent to, who received it, and what fax/email contacts produced errors or were unable to connect. Q: Will the system send text-only messages or will the messages include graphics as well? A: It will incorporate the FEMA seal and wordmark as a jpg file Q: Should the system be able to send out messages to cell phones and pagers in addition to email? A: This would be a feature considered under best value, but should not add cost to the day-to-day operation of the system. Q: Will you want messages to be posted to an online system for self-service viewing? A: No 22. Q: In terms of pricing do you expect to see a fixed price per page or variable pricing based on volume? A: We would expect fixed price per page. 23. Q: What is your vision on how the system will work if the Internet is not accessible? Would a FEMA representative connect to the system via land line telephone, mobile phone, or satellite phone? A: FEMA representative would fax the information for distribution to the contractor (ideally) for distribution, and would notify the contractor the desired media outlets to receive the information. 24. Q: Please provide clarification on the following item under deliverables: "5) The Contractor shall provide for the distribution of documents to contacts to be received via fax or email in a timely and expeditious manner, including providing the ability to send approximately 61,250 pages per month, estimated by current distribution averages of 350 documents per month of an average 1.75 pages to 100 contacts per distribution." A: It is unclear what clarification is required. 25. Q: Are we sending 61,250 pages per month? or this is the ability of the hardware to broadcast up to 61,250 pages per? A: Based on the annual average of releases distributed, it is expected the monthly average will be 61,250. Since it is an average, some months will be higher, and other will be lower. 26. Q: Is your current average broadcast 350 documents? to how many lists? A: Yes, that is the current monthly average. As such, some months will be higher, some will be lower. Each document is sent to an average of 100 contacts, which can be selected by pre-established list or by sorting contacts by a specified criteria (e.g. radio stations in designated media market(s)). 27. Q: How many distribution lists do you have? I understand there are 100 contacts per distribution. Do you mean one distribution equates to one list? A: There is no set distribution list. The distribution is determined by the relevant media contacts to the information contained in the document. The 100 contacts is an average. As such, some distributions will be more than 100 contacts, and some will be less. One distribution would be considered one document sent to the specified contacts selected from the overall database, so in effect, the “list” created for that distribution. 28. Q: Will the initial contacts be provided by the customer or will the successful offeror have to research and develop the client list to populate the database? A: It is preferred that the offeror provide that information. 29. Q: The definition of a page varies depending upon the medium employed. A printed page is one side of a (nominal) 8.5 x 11 sheet of paper, defined in electronic format as delimited by formfeed characters. We are using this definition in pricing the response. Is this correct? A: The majority of distribution is expected to be to fax numbers. As such, a page is defined as 8.5x11, one side, text and jpg images (no more than two). 30. Q: Please elaborate on the statement "This contact information shall be regularly updated and maintained by the Contractor to ensure accuracy." in section # 2. Please define how regularly and by what criteria the Contractor validates accuracy. A: It is assumed that the contractor has a staff who is responsible for maintaining the database, either by performing scheduled checks and verifications, inputting corrections provide by media organizations to FEMA or the contractor directly, and/or by installing updated issues of media database software. The frequency of which this should be performed is at the discretion of the contractor, but should support minimizing the number of distribution attempts to contacts “bounce back” due to incorrect information. 31. Q: Please provide an estimated percentage of total time per month or percentage of total distributions described by minimal in section # 4? A: It is anticipated that this would be no more frequent than 2-3 instances per year. 32. Q: Regarding "to be received via fax or email" in section # 5, is this clause describing the mode of receipt of the document by the Contractor or by the contact or both? A: By the contact. All documents will be uploaded via internet access for the user to select contacts and distribute via the service. 33. Q: Please define "special equipment or software" from section # 1. Are WinZip, Microsoft Word, or Acrobat Reader and other freely available software acceptable for viewing the received documents? This is especially significant to the FAX distribution. A: All FEMA users will have access to the intranet and will be using Microsoft Explorer. It is not known what capability recipients have, but is assumed fax capabilities are consistent. That is, a document that is sent to a fax number through this service will be able to be printed out by the receiving fax machine without any special modification.