Loren Data's SAM Daily™

fbodaily.com
Home Today's SAM Search Archives Numbered Notes CBD Archives Subscribe
FBO DAILY ISSUE OF JULY 25, 2007 FBO #2067
SOLICITATION NOTICE

D -- Guaranteed Loan System Maintenance and Development

Notice Date
7/23/2007
 
Notice Type
Solicitation Notice
 
NAICS
541512 — Computer Systems Design Services
 
Contracting Office
Department of Agriculture, Rural Development, Procurement Management Division, 1400 Independence Ave., S.W. Mail Stop 0741, Washington, DC, 20250, UNITED STATES
 
ZIP Code
00000
 
Solicitation Number
AG-31ME-S-07-0008
 
Response Due
8/8/2007
 
Archive Date
8/23/2007
 
Description
The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), Rural Development and Farm Services Agency (Agency) intends to negotiate and award a combination Fixed Price and Indefinite Delivery Indefinite Quantity contract using a negotiated Request for Proposal for technical support services to provide maintenance support and enhancement development for the Guaranteed Loan System (GLS), while continuing to develop component-based processes where deemed feasible. The Agency, as part of supporting its overall role in providing agricultural credit and rural development assistance, has initiated activities to develop and enhance Agency information management. The continued shift from internal Agency automated systems used by USDA employees to a combination of internal, intranet and internet systems serving our varied customers mandates improved and responsive automation support. The Agency direct loan and grant and guaranteed loan initiatives have many constituents including: USDA and Agency executive management, Agency Program Management (Farm Service Agency Farm Programs, Rural Housing Service Programs, Rural Business Cooperative Service Programs, and Rural Utilities Services Programs), Agency servicing offices, the Agency finance offices, private sector lending institutions, customers, and potential customers. Each of these constituents has both common and unique information needs. Each of the Agency program management constituents uses both direct and guaranteed loans in the execution of their program activities. The current automated Guaranteed Loan System (GLS), Program Loan Accounting System (PLAS), Automated Multi-Housing Accounting System (AMAS), Multi-Family Information System (MFIS), Dedicated Loan Origination System (DLOS), and Rural Utilities Loan Servicing System (RULSS) are components which interface, exchange data, and use certain common processes. Our external constituents including lending institutions, customers, and potential customers have different informational and servicing needs than our internal constituents. With mandated E-Government initiatives, our existing legacy components must be enhanced to allow all constituents the necessary access to information and the functionality to more efficiently implement our loan programs. Additionally, the Agency direct and grant and guaranteed loan program automated components must comply with OMB Circular A-129 performance goals, the Treasury Financial Manual, Circular A-123 guidance for internal control systems, Circular A-127 guidance for financial management systems, and Circular A-130 guidance for security requirements. Consideration must also be given to the JFMIP Government-Wide systems automation requirements and the E-File/GPEA initiatives. The various automated components, which support the Agency loan programs, are at different stages of development effort in an attempt to meet E-File/GPEA mandates. The architecture of these components is evolving from a pure block-mode, mainframe environment to one of web-enabled intranet, extranet, and internet capabilities interfacing with some legacy processes. Common processes are being shared between programs to reduce maintenance overhead where feasible. All new development is aimed at re-usability among programs. We have multiple tools being used in the development of our Agency financial and management systems. Computer Associates CA:Gen is being used to model and generate DB2 and Oracle databases and to develop database server components. JBuilder is being used in conjunction with an Oracle database as well as being used for some other component development. COBOL is used for most batch processing development. CA:GEN-ESP is utilized by GLS for job scheduling. The web architecture includes Microsoft IIS servers, TCPI direct and SNA server communicating with an OS-390 mainframe DB2 data server. Microsoft Visual Studio, JBuilder, WEBSphere, Tomcat, and Cold Fusion are being utilized to develop active server pages and Java server pages. JavaScript, VBScript, and JavaBeans are being used as client and server side script languages. Visual Source Safe is used for configuration management and version control. The choice of tool set and architecture will be determined by the Agency using the suite of tools approved by the Agency. This solicitation is directed toward the continuance of implementing enhancements to the automated components that support the direct loan and grant and guaranteed loan programs within the Rural Development and Farm Service Agencies to carry out continuous process improvements to their automation development, keeping in mind the overall goal of creating components that support multiple programs. The tasks developed under this solicitation/contract will utilize the development infrastructure, standards, and guidelines established by the Agency. The Agency requires technical support and assistance to implement enhancements to the automated components that support the direct loan and grant and guaranteed loan programs within the Rural Development and Farm Service Agencies using the appropriate tool set based on the architecture of the component. The Agency requires continued support to implement and institutionalize component based development and the re-use of methodology supported by Agency approved development tools. The Agency requires this support to create/procure automated components that will provide the means for loan program business to efficiently operate and manage activities, including accounting and control; external reporting (i.e., USDA and OMB); and program outreach to support external customer and potential customer needs. The Model Based Development methodology supported by approved Agency development set of tools (which include Computer Associates CA:Gen, Microsoft Visual Studio, JBuilder, WEBSphere, Tomcat, Cold Fusion, JavaScript, VBScript, and Visual Source Safe) shall be used to understand and document the business, strengthen the partnership between business and technical staff, identify opportunities for business process improvements, develop quality automated systems with reusable components, improve front-line worker ability to carry out job responsibilities, enable improved customer service, facilitate timely and responsive information access by customers and management, and institute a basis for continuous process improvements within the Agency loan program businesses. The contract will be awarded for one (1) base year with four (4) option years to be exercised by the Government if found to be in its best interest. This contract will include two sections: a firm fixed price section and an IDIQ Section for which firm fixed price Task Orders will be issued based on hourly rates proposed. The approximate solicitation release date is July 25, 2007. The solicitation will be available and distributed solely through the Federal Business Opportunities website: http://www.fedbizopps.gov. The site provides downloading instructions. All future information about this acquisition, including solicitation/amendments will be disturbed solely through the website listed. Interested parties are responsible for monitoring this site to ensure they have the most up-to-date information about this acquisition. Interested parties must obtain a DUNS number and register in the Central Contractor Registration (CCR) (www.ccr.gov) in order to transact business with USDA. This procurement will be conducted in accordance with FAR Part 12, Acquisition of Commercial Items procedures. INQUIRIES WILL ONLY BE ACCEPTED BY EMAIL TO THE POINT OF CONTACT LISTED BELOW.
 
Place of Performance
Address: St. Louis, Missouri
Zip Code: 63103-2620
Country: UNITED STATES
 
Record
SN01349242-W 20070725/070723220327 (fbodaily.com)
 
Source
FedBizOpps Link to This Notice
(may not be valid after Archive Date)

FSG Index  |  This Issue's Index  |  Today's FBO Daily Index Page |
ECGrid: EDI VAN Interconnect ECGridOS: EDI Web Services Interconnect API Government Data Publications CBDDisk Subscribers
 Privacy Policy  Jenny in Wanderland!  © 1994-2024, Loren Data Corp.