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FBO DAILY ISSUE OF APRIL 08, 2009 FBO #2690
SOLICITATION NOTICE

70 -- CA Biometrics Facial Recognition Request for Information

Notice Date

4/6/2009
 

Notice Type

Modification/Amendment
 

NAICS

541512 — Computer Systems Design Services
 

Contracting Office

Department of State, Office of Logistics Management, Acquisition Management, P.O. Box 9115, Rosslyn Station, Arlington, Virginia, 22219
 

ZIP Code

22219
 

Solicitation Number

RFI-1045-Biometrics
 

Archive Date

7/31/2009
 

Point of Contact

JoAnn Stewart,, Phone: 7038756646, Reaver T. Clements,, Phone: 7038755077
 

E-Mail Address

stewartj@state.gov, clementsrl@state.gov
 

Small Business Set-Aside

N/A
 

Description

THE PURPOSE OF THIS MODIFICATION IS TO CHANGE THE QUESTION AND SUBMISSION DUE DATES (BY ONE WEEK) AND CHANGES THE NAICS CODE. THE SUBMISSION DATE IS CHANGED TO MAY 1, 2009 AND QUESTION DUE DATE IS CHANGED TO APRIL 17, 2009. THE NAICS CODE IS CHANGED TO 541512. REQUEST FOR INFORMATION (RFI) BIOMETRICS SYSTEMS INTEGRATION SERVICES - Within the next several months, the Department of State intends to release a Request for Quotation (RFQ) through the GSA Information Technology (IT) Schedule 70 Multiple Award Schedule. The Classification NAICS code is 541512 - Computer Systems Design and Related Services. The purpose of the RFQ will be to acquire the services of a well-qualified organization to integrate automated face recognition (FR) systems, and possibly other biometric technologies (e.g., iris recognition), into the Department’s visa and passport application processing operations. For this effort, the Department intends to issue a five-year, performance-based, firm-fixed-price contract to a systems integrator, with award likely by October 2009. This preliminary announcement is a Request for Information (RFI) – first, to alert those organizations that may be interested and need to establish prime-subcontractor relationships before the release of the RFQ and, second, to request white papers that will be used by the Department to identify organizations on Schedule 70 from which proposals would be solicited. In addition to tailoring its biometric recognition systems to meet the Department’s visa and passport processing needs, the organization selected for the proposed effort will be required to install, operate, and maintain their systems, as well as to update their systems periodically to the evolving state-of-the-art. Biometric technology is required by the Department to comply with mandates in the USA PATRIOT Act of 2001 and the Enhanced Border Security and Visa Entry Reform Act of 2002. For about five years, the Department has been using digitized face images and FR technology to confirm a visa or passport holder’s identity more reliably, facilitate the detection of fraudulent applications, increase the security of U.S. visas and passports, detect or deter known terrorists or criminals, and verify travelers’ identities at U.S. ports of entry. The biometric capability to be provided by the selected integrator will support the processing of applications for U.S. nonimmigrant and immigrant visas (NIV/IV), passports, and E-Diversity Visas (E-DV). The requirements anticipated for the FR processing of NIV/IV and passport applications include open-set one-to-many matching (identification) of applicant-provided face-photo images with face images in legacy databases holding many tens of millions of images and in various watch-lists containing hundreds of thousands of images. In some cases, binning (i.e., filtering based on criteria developed by the Department) will be used to increase accuracy and reduce the processing required to search very large databases. Passport and NIV/IV matching will be performed on integrator-provided equipment. It is anticipated that the FR systems selected will be dedicated to enrolling the legacy databases and watch-lists during the first 100 days of the contract. It is also anticipated that during each of the five years of the contract, approximately 15 million new passport images and approximately 10 million new NIV/IV images will need to be enrolled and searched by the systems, corresponding to a total enrollment and matching rate of up to about 4,000 images per hour (allowing for additional capacity during peak travel periods and expedited responses). The capability for the systems to perform one-to-one matching (verification) is also required. The passport and NIV/IV FR systems will have the capability to read biometric transactions from an Oracle database, process the transactions, and write transaction outputs as records to the Oracle database. The recognition score for each potentially matching image returned from each search will be one of the outputs, and the maximum rank (number of potential matches returned) for each search will be an adjustable parameter. At least two identical FR systems are required in different Department-provided secure facilities to share the load and to serve as backups to one another in the event of a system failure. The requirements anticipated for the E-DV FR system include open-set identification of hundreds of thousands of applicant-submitted face images with images in a database of approximately 15 million images. Operating on Government-furnished equipment (GFE) within a Department-provided secure facility, the E-DV FR system will enroll all submitted E-DV images during a two-month period every year. Once enrollment is completed, matching will be performed within a following two-month period, using the same GFE. In addition to the FR matching capabilities, the following services, products, or capabilities are likely to be needed by the Department: •Maintenance of a system log file, which can be accessed by Department of State personnel at any time, including volumes enrolled and a list of all images that failed to enroll, along with the reasons for the failures-to-enroll, number of images matched, periods of system downtime, and gallery sizes •Operations manuals and system diagrams for all biometric systems installed under the contract •Periodic performance (speed and accuracy) testing of all biometric systems installed under the contract •Installation, following Department approval, of updated versions of the selected FR software within one month of their public release •Face image quality assessment software to test the suitability of applicants’ images for FR and their conformance with International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) quality requirements for face images in passports. This software will provide quality metric values that convey to an operator whether a submitted image is likely to be enrolled successfully and, if not, a probable reason why it would not be enrolled. Related software that provides the capability to perform quality assessment of passport or visa application photo images submitted over the Internet will also be required. •A software tool to facilitate visual comparisons of face images by trained face examiners •A software utility for manual enrollment of face images (based on manually entered eye positions), when the automated system cannot find the eyes •Acquisition, enrollment, and matching capabilities for other biometric technologies, such as iris recognition To manage the number of organizations that prepare completed technical and cost proposals, the Department will use a three-phase, down-select acquisition process. In the first phase, responses to this RFI will be evaluated to determine which organizations are solicited to respond to the RFQ. If your organization would like to participate in the first phase, you must respond to this announcement by e-mailing to Ms. Jo-Ann Stewart (at StewartJ@state.gov) a white paper describing your organization’s capabilities and experience in biometrics systems integration. Your submission in response to this RFI must be received no later than 4:00 p.m. EDT on Friday, 1 Mayl 2009. Your white paper must be prepared in Microsoft Word 2003, be no greater than five pages in length, and include the following information: 1.) your organization’s full name, headquarters location, and location of an office in the Washington, DC area, if any, 2.) the name of a point-of-contact and his/her e-mail and conventional mailing addresses, 3.) a description of the qualifications of the key staff who will be involved, 4.) a description of your organization’s experience with FR and other biometric technologies, with particular emphasis on government applications and one-to-many matching, and 5.) a brief description of your planned approach to providing biometrics systems integration services to the Department. Your response must also include the table shown below, with all applicable fields completed. The table will not count as one of the allowed five pages for the white paper; however, the table should contain no more than five projects involving face recognition or other biometrics for which your organization has been a major technical contributor or prime contractor. All questions concerning this RFI may be submitted by sending an e-mail to Ms. Stewart no later than 4:00 p.m. EDT Friday, 17 April 2009. Questions received after that date will not be answered, unless the Government determines the answer to the question imparts information material to Industry’s ability to respond to this RFI. Government responses to questions will be posted. The required format for the submission of questions is provided at the end of this RFI. Based upon the responses to this RFI, organizations deemed qualified by the Department will be selected to participate in the second phase of the acquisition. Those organizations selected will receive a copy of the RFQ and be solicited to submit full technical and cost proposals. After an evaluation of all submitted technical proposals, up to three organizations will be selected to participate in the third phase of the procurement, during which they will be asked to submit and run evaluation versions of their offered FR systems for recognition accuracy testing. The accuracy testing will use face images representative of those now being processed in applications received for U.S. visas and/or passports. The Department will consider the results from that testing, along with the content of the technical and cost proposals, in its award of a contract for the proposed biometrics systems integration effort. The issuance of this RFI and its solicitation of white papers do not commit the Government to pay any costs incurred in the submission of any information requested. Responses to this RFI will not be returned. Proprietary/competition sensitive information will be protected from disclosure to the greatest extent practical, however, it is preferred that respondents do not provide proprietary or otherwise restricted responses. Each page considered by a submitting organization to contain proprietary information must be so marked.
 

Web Link

FedBizOpps Complete View
(https://www.fbo.gov/?s=opportunity&mode=form&id=35c9478accfb397df430dbb9fae612b5&tab=core&_cview=1)
 

Place of Performance

Address: WASHINGTON, D.C., WASHINGTON, District of Columbia, 20520, United States

Zip Code: 20520
 

Record

SN01786681-W 20090408/090406220701-35c9478accfb397df430dbb9fae612b5 (fbodaily.com)
 

Source

FedBizOpps Link to This Notice
(may not be valid after Archive Date)

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