SOURCES SOUGHT
D -- Request for Information ? Phase II of a current web-based customer referral tool (Ask ED)
- Notice Date
- 10/29/2003
- Notice Type
- Sources Sought
- Contracting Office
- Department of Education, Contracts and Purchasing Operations, Contracts (All ED Components), Regional Office Building, Room 3069 7th and D Streets, SW, Washington, DC, 20202
- ZIP Code
- 20202
- Solicitation Number
- Reference-Number-RFI-AskED2004
- Response Due
- 12/10/2003
- Archive Date
- 12/25/2003
- Point of Contact
- See Description for Contact Information, See 'Description, Phone See Description, Fax See Description, Description
- E-Mail Address
-
See
- Description
- This Request for Information (RFI) is being submitted for any and all educated and experienced vendors who are capable of providing advice, strategies and development proposals to assist us in creating our next statement of work for the Phase II development of Ask ED. Competition for this Phase II development will begin before February 2004. White paper responses should be no more than 4 pages, not including attachments. Please provide (as an attachment not to exceed more than 3 pages) short summaries of like work completed or in progress and price. Please label all proprietary data. Attachments about the system's current state have been provided (Most "To-Be" items, if not determined to be in Phase II or III have been completed). The below Phase II section is an accurate account of what will be our Phase II development, not what is listed in the attachments prepared by Digicon, the system's original developer. All responses should be in writing and can be e-mailed to anya.smith@ed.gov or mailed Attn: Anya Smith, OIIA/Community Services Team, 400 Maryland Avenue, SW, Room 5E103, Washington, DC 20202. If you need further information about the tool, please contact Anya Smith at anya.smith@ed.gov. BACKGROUND - The Department of Education answers more than 20,000 questions a week ? via telephone, fax, letter and email - from the public and from internal users. No one point of contact has all the answers. Currently, the Department has a web-based referral tool developed in Cold Fusion? and Microsoft SQL Server entitled Ask ED Customer Referral Tool which was built to address these needs?Ask ED incorporates the variety of tools and notes used by the staff to be the prime resource in the Department to obtain and share universal information. This tool allows all ED employees a technological solution to help them make referrals more rapidly, accurately and conveniently. The first phase of Ask ED was released for internal use in January 2003. It resides on ED's Intranet site (connectED) and can be accessed by all those with rights to access connectED. At present, Ask ED is going through a system upgrade, which will allow migration of a current Lotus Notes database tool (The U.S. Guide to ED Programs) to be migrated with the Ask ED database to create a shared database with different front-end looks and functionalities. Additional fields, security levels and data-entry screening procedures will be incorporated into the upgraded system prior to Phase II development. This development should be 85% complete by February 2004. PHASE II NEEDS - Ask ED's general focus is to help anyone in the agency that receives a customer contact, quick and reliable access to the proper office, person and on occasion a standard answer, to their request. In Phase II development, we are looking to create a secure and 508 compliant system that 1) expands the current Principal Office Contact (POC) and Program Information, FAQ, Resources, search/ask-a-question features currently on Ask ED to www.ed.gov. The Internet version of Ask ED will be focused more on answers than referral responses. 2) Creation of an Ask ED Internet homepage on ed.gov with an Ask-A functionality. 3) Migration of the agency's Employee Locator database (currently in Lotus Notes and available on connectED and www.ed.gov) to be an option on the Ask ED websites both on the Inter and Intranet sites. 4) Improvement of the current search functionality to improve results. CREATION OF ASK-A FUNCTION - The Ask-A functionality will be beneficial in addressing the agency's large influx of e-mail traffic, as well as allow ED's customer an opportunity to "self serve" when seeking answers to their ED-related questions. We are seeking feedback on the most economical and efficient manner to do this. See www.ba.com (British Airways) Ask-A function. Something to this effect is in our line of thinking for achieving our needs for in this area; however, we are completely open to other suggestions. The key issues we are considering: 1) Give customers several options to get to the same information. I.e. Use the A-Z topics to house the answers to any question or key word that may be entered in the general search field. 2) Allow the end user easy access to an e-mail form with drop down topics to categorize the subject matter. This would ensure that the appropriate program office receives the request if a "canned" answer is not available. This e-mail system should be able to track the path in which the customer takes prior to sending an e-mail and track the final email subject, as well as disseminate the e-mail to the predetermined subject matter office/person. 3) Automated follow up e-mail messages to be scheduled for send out from the system, which will contact the original customer to verify whether they received assistance. Questions: What else should we consider when developing an Ask-A option and e-mail tracking and dissemination system? What other functions may be useful? Are there off-the-shelf options available to address our needs? When addressing this issue please package a response with high, low and med range solutions with cost estimates. REVISAL OF CURRENT SEARCH FUNCTIONALITY - Ask ED does searches similar to askjeeves.com, as well as has advance search capabilities for words and phrases. We would like to "fine-tune" the database's search capabilities to improve the accuracy of the results and/or be able to drive the more likely results to the top of the results listing (see figures 9 and 10 of the document FRD_1.2_FINAL_As_Built_Erin). QUESTIONS: From our current search design, is there anyway we can improve the search result rankings? The agency's Intranet site (connectED) currently has its search engine run by Google?, would that search engine better suit our needs? What feedback/ thoughts can you propose to improve our search results, which are critical for this tool's success? What are the cost projections for the different approaches you are suggesting? The following files have also been uploaded to FedBizOpps: 1- Document name: For RFI ? Description: Powerpoint presentation with system screen shots; 2 - Document name FRD_1.2_FINAL_As_Built_Erin ? Description: Functional Requirements Documentation; 3 - Document name: As_Built.Arch Description: System Architecture; 4 ? Document name: Teacher_manual ? Description: Teacher training manual.
- Record
- SN00461358-W 20031031/031029213143 (fbodaily.com)
- Source
-
FedBizOpps.gov Link to This Notice
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