MODIFICATION
B -- Risk Assessment Products or Services
- Notice Date
- 4/8/2004
- Notice Type
- Modification
- NAICS
- 519190
— All Other Information Services
- Contracting Office
- Securities and Exchange Commission, Procurement and Contracts Branch, Operations Center, 6432 General Green Way, MS 0-20, Alexandria, VA, 22312-2413
- ZIP Code
- 22312-2413
- Solicitation Number
- SECHQ1-04-Q-0028
- Response Due
- 4/9/2004
- Archive Date
- 4/24/2004
- Point of Contact
- Debra Chapman, Contract Specialist, Phone (202) 942-4994, Fax (703) 914-9226,
- E-Mail Address
-
chapmand@sec.gov
- Description
- Amendment 0003: The due date of the combination solicitation/synopsis has been extended from 3:00 PM April 8, 2004 to 4:00 PM April 9, 2004. This synopsis/solicitation is for commercial items prepared in accordance with the format in FAR Subpart 12.603, as supplemented with additional information included in this notice. This announcement requests a detailed capabilities statement (technical quote) in addition to a price quote and constitutes the only solicitation; a paper solicitation will not be issued. Request for Quotation number SECHQ1-04-Q-0028 shall be referenced on any capabilities statement (technical quote) and price quote. This solicitation document and incorporated provisions and clauses are those in effect through Federal Acquisition Circular FAC-20 for full and open competition (this competition is unrestricted). All future information about this acquisition including solicitation amendments will also be distributed solely through this site. Interested parties are responsible for monitoring this site to ensure that they have the most up-to-date information about this acquisition. This contract action may result in multiple awards, or one single award. Contracts shall be Firm Fixed Price commercial item Purchase Orders, and may be awarded as a Base Year plus 4 option years. The Government's requirement is for the following commercially available services: C.1 Background The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is creating and staffing a new Office of Risk Assessment. One responsibility of this office is providing means and mechanisms for early and focused identification of companies engaged in fraudulent, illegal or inappropriate (including misleading, opaque, or incomplete) financial reporting. A companion interest in this objective will be to use risk assessment services or products to identify anomalies in disclosure or financial reporting by public companies subject to the SEC?s disclosure program. For this purpose, the SEC is seeking computer-based products, services, or software. Offerors are requested to provide a detailed Capabilities Statement for a commercial product capable of achieving some or all of these objectives. C.2 Scope Commercial products shall be used to identify companies requiring additional inquiry and investigation. These products shall assist the SEC in identifying changes in financial position or operational results in financial statement presentations not evident in a routine reading of disclosure that may represent material deficiencies in the documents filed by public companies. C.2.1 The initial focus of this analysis will initially be Forms 10-K (annual reports), 10-Q (quarterly reports), and possibly Form 20-F (foreign private issuers). C.2.2 Offerors? commercial products shall provide features such as historic coverage of data related to accounting and audit reports for publicly traded companies. The commercial products shall have analytical capabilities that signal risk factors. These tools may provide pre-selected criteria for risk analysis and/or allow for customized measures. C.3 Objectives Offerors shall provide commercial products having a flexible user interface and/or reporting capability. An important performance objective is a high ratio of positive signals (problem companies or reports) to false signals (indications of problems that turn out to be incorrect). More details in databases and computational platforms are provided in the next section. C.3.1 Desired characteristics of commercial risk assessment products include the following kinds of evaluations and/or comparisons: 1)Evaluation of a company?s present and past financial data 2)Evaluation of a company?s financial ratios against parameters that may suggest inappropriate financial reporting exists 3)Evaluation of other performance measures that may suggest misleading, opaque or incomplete financial reporting 4)Comparison of a company with peers in an industry group 5)Comparison of a company?s risk evaluation with audit opinions 6)Comparison of a company?s accounting reports with other publicly available SEC information (e.g. litigation releases, accounting and auditing releases, EDGAR filings) C.3.2 Offerors should address the extent to which financial statements conform to accounting standards, generally accepted industry practices, and the requirements of the federal securities laws and regulations. C.4 Background and Current Environment It is anticipated that specific risk assessment requirements and resulting objectives will evolve over time. Consequently, the commercial products will also evolve in sophistication and complexity over time, especially at a point where there are data content tags for the reports filed with the Commission. C.4.1 The commercial products shall initially provide for interoperability with respect to the SEC?s enterprise architecture. The SEC?s current development environment includes 1) reporting tools such as Business Objects, Actuate, Crystal, and Brio; 2) databases such as Sybase ASE and Sybase IQ; 3) the Microsoft suite of tools (Access, Word, Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint, Project, Visio); 4) development languages such as C, TCL, Java, J2EE, HTML, UML, XML, XSLT, JSP, Struts, and Servlets (used with TomCat as the JSP server for web development); 5) PureEdge to display internet forms; 6) web services technologies such as SOAP, WSDL, and UDDI; 7) Project Version Control System (PVCS) Tracker and PVCS Version Manager for configuration management of automated information systems; 8) Test Director for independent testing; 9) the search engine Autonomy; and 10) firewall and intrusion detection software. The SEC?s current Technical Infrastructure standards include A. Application Servers such as Enterprise Systems: Sun (Enterprise Servers 4000 series, 4500 series, V880 series, 280 series, E450 series) Operating Environment: Solaris 2.8, Sun 4u Departmental Systems: Sun (Ultra Sparc series, V120 series, 280 series) Operating Environment: Solaris 2.8, Sun 4u Workgroup Systems: Compaq (File Servers - Proliant ML530, Other Compaq Special purpose servers). (Migration): Dell PowerEdge 2550/6450 (Dual Pentium III Processors) Operating Environment: Microsoft NT Server 4.0 (Migration): Microsoft Windows 2000 Server (Active Directory) B. Web Servers such as Dell (Various Models), Sun (Enterprise Servers), Dell PowerEdge Operating Environment: Windows 2000, Solaris 2.8, Sun 4u Software: Netscape Suitespot 3.x, Apache, Microsoft IIS, Tomcat C. File Servers such as Systems: Dell 1650/2550/2650/6450/6650 (Dual Pentium III Processors) (Migration): Compliant Proliant ML360/560/580 Operating Environment: Microsoft NTS 4.0 Server/2000 (Migration): Microsoft Windows 2003 C.4.2 Vendors shall be required to ensure confidentiality with respect to SEC queries of risk assessment services and the nature of the information derived from such queries and services. Vendors shall ensure that no details of SEC usage are disclosed to the public, including possibly a prohibition against their disclosing that the SEC is a user of their product, service, or software. Period of performance shall be for the period of 12 months. Award is anticipated in May 2004. The Government intends to issue one or more commercial item purchase orders for the above items to the responsible vendor whose Capabilities Statement /quotation conforming to the solicitation will be most advantageous to the Government, price and other factors considered. The following factors which are in descending order of importance, shall be used to evaluate quotes: (1) technical acceptability (i.e., reliability and effectiveness of the product being proposed and its compatibility and interoperability with the SEC?s enterprise architecture), (2) user training, (3) past performance for requirements that are similar to the SEC?s Statement of Objectives (offerors shall provide complete client contact information so that reference checks may be conducted), and (4)price. If options are awarded, the Government will evaluate offers for award purposes by adding the total price of all options to the total price of the basic requirement. The Government may determine that an offer is unacceptable if the option prices are significantly unbalanced. Evaluation of options shall not obligate the Government to exercise the option(s). This evaluation will be based on information provided by the contractor. The Government is not responsible for locating or securing any information, which is not identified in the Capabilities Statement or quotation, but may do so at its discretion. Only authorized representatives shall submit quotes. Please carefully review the commercial item clauses for information about requirements and instructions for submitting a quotation. Capabilities Statements that do not include prices for all items will not be considered. The following provisions and clauses apply to this procurement: Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) provision 52.212.1, Instructions to Offeror- Commercial Items (OCT 2000); FAR provision 52.212-2, Evaluation-Commercial Items (JAN 1999) - Award will be made to the responsible offeror whose offer is considered to be most advantageous to the Government, considering technical acceptability, user training, past performance, and price. The Government reserves the right to award without discussions, therefore, it is critical that each quote be fully responsive. However, the SEC also reserves the right to conduct discussions, if later determined to be necessary, with offerors making the competitive range (i.e., the most highly rated proposals, unless the range is further reduced for the purposes of efficiency). Only those offerors determined to be within the competitive range will be invited to present a demonstration of their product to the SEC and will be asked to provide 30 day access to their commercial item product, free of charge, for evaluation purposes. FAR provision 52-212-3, Offeror Representations and Certification-Commercial Items (JAN 1999) - all offerors shall include a completed copy of this provision with their quote; FAR clause 52-212-4, Contract Terms and Conditions- Commercial Items (FEB 2002); FAR clause 52.212-5, Contract Terms and Conditions Required to Implement Statutes or Executive Orders-Commercial Items (APR 2003) - in paragraph (b) the following clauses apply; 52.203-6 Alternate I, 52.222-3, 52.222-19,52.222.21, 52.222-26, 52.222-35, 52.222-36, 52.222-37,52.232-33,52.232-36, 52.239-1, 52.222-41,52.222-43, 52.222-44. 52.217-9 Option to Extend the Term of the Contract (Mar 2000) also applies. Clauses incorporated by reference may be accessed in full text at www.arnet.gov. All Capabilities Statements (technical quotes)and price quotes from responsible sources will be considered. Questions may be submitted on or before 2:00 PM EST April 1, 2004. The price quote shall be submitted as a completely separate document from the Capabilities Statement (technical quote). Two (2) copies of each Capabilities Statement (technical quote) and two (2) copies of each price quote shall be submitted to Debra E. Chapman, clearly marked RFQ no. SECHQ1-04-Q-0028 either via hand delivery or U.S. Mail to Securities and Exchange Commission, MS-020, 6432 General Green Way, Alexandria VA 22312, or to chapmand@sec.gov, or faxed to (703) 914-9226 no later than 4:00 PM EST, April 9, 2004. No other methods of submission will be accepted.
- Place of Performance
- Address: 450 5th Street, N.W. Washington, DC
- Zip Code: 20549
- Country: USA
- Zip Code: 20549
- Record
- SN00562831-W 20040410/040408212729 (fbodaily.com)
- Source
-
FedBizOpps.gov Link to This Notice
(may not be valid after Archive Date)
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