MODIFICATION
D -- Request For Information (RFI) – Letter Generation Systems
- Notice Date
- 2/14/2011
- Notice Type
- Modification/Amendment
- NAICS
- 541512
— Computer Systems Design Services
- Contracting Office
- Social Security Administration, Office of Budget, Finance, and Management, Office of Acquisition and Grants, 1st Floor, Rear Entrance, 7111 Security Blvd., Baltimore, Maryland, 21244
- ZIP Code
- 21244
- Solicitation Number
- SSA-RFI-11-1005
- Archive Date
- 3/5/2011
- Point of Contact
- Sean Frey, Phone: 4109669446
- E-Mail Address
-
sean.frey@ssa.gov
(sean.frey@ssa.gov)
- Small Business Set-Aside
- N/A
- Description
- Introduction: This is a REQUEST FOR INFORMATION. Reference SSA-RFI-11-1005 when responding to this announcement. SSA is seeking responsible vendors that are capable of providing a centrally managed solution for letter generation. At present, the Social Security Administration (SSA) uses printed and mailed letters for all formal and most informal communication with its various benefit recipients and business partners. Many disparate computer systems use different internally developed architectures to prepare these notices. Generally, these SSA computer programs offer several letter and paragraph libraries to create their substance and format. SSA staff sometimes hands these notices to its recipients in person, but more often, either the agency or a contractor centrally print them and deliver them by US Mail. The agency achieves customization through the selection of the letter type, paragraphs, fill-ins for paragraphs, and the inclusion of customized text. SSA is conducting market research on how to consolidate its various letter generation systems and provide communications by methods in addition to US mail, such as, but not limited to, e-mail. Its goals are to reduce Information Technology (IT) and programmatic maintenance costs, increase communication management capabilities, reduce costs by using delivery means other than US Mail, and improve public service by offering additional communications options to SSA clients. SSA seeks information about IT products or services that might meet these goals. The following subject headings are specific areas of interest to SSA. You must organize your response by these headings. Your response should address briefly how you propose to meet the requirements under each of these headings. It should include comparable examples of where your company has already applied the potential solution. The agency will not evaluate responses that are too long or poorly organized. For any of the headings, you may recommend solutions your company does not offer. SSA prefers but does not require a single managed solution. SSA prefers the use of commercially proven products and solutions. SSA prefers that options potentially owned or managed by SSA operate in a generic service-oriented web application server environment. Please identify hosting requirements and options for proposed solutions, including whether the solutions can be hosted as a service in third party facilities. SSA permits the offering of open source based products as long as commercial support for the open source product is also available. Content Authoring and Management: SSA requires a centrally managed solution for document language and template authoring, incorporating the ability to create, edit, collaborate, and publish approved document content in a centrally managed environment that will serve as single authoritative source for the agency. A potential solution must store content separately from formatting to render text as required by a variety of current and future delivery methods for communications. The content authoring facility must include the ability to manage content in multiple languages, initially in English and Spanish. Proposed solutions must include the migration of language used in its current systems into any future system. SSA currently has about 20,000 paragraphs and 5,000 templates. A potential solution must include content management and search facilities, and must maintain and track all versions of the same content eventually used for production purposes Also, it must provide a flexible language development environment to support the workflow of the collaborative SSA language development and release process. The design should provide a mechanism for detailed and customizable management information and reporting. Content Composition: SSA will continue its current practice of having separate business programs generate a selection of templates, paragraphs, fill-ins, tables, illustrations and free format text to serve as content for a new communication management system. These separate content generation programs are not a part of this RFI. A potential solution must provide a single uniform standards-based interface to serve as the interface between business programs and the communication management system. This interface must initially accept information (such as a specific name), and permit future use of data references (such as the location of a specific name) and separately executed communication business logic (such as a request to create an award letter for this specific person using this specific data instance). A potential solution must support multiple languages, both by receiving the request in the issuing language and in a neutral format with the content output created in the requested language. It must maintain detailed management information related to the source of communication requests, content selections, and volumes. Content Rendering: A potential solution must properly format the substance of the communication and render it for the target delivery mechanism. It may render the same communication at different times using various formats and delivery mechanisms. This implies a separation between content and format. Currently, SSA uses enclosures. While the agency will continue to use enclosures for interim letter production, it anticipates attaching the content of stuffers on demand without maintaining any inventory. A potential solution must render content using a variety of different markup outputs such as PCL, AFP, PDF and HTML. It must make content available for accessibility purposes, for example, in audio and Braille formats, and render communications on IT equipment that is Section 508 compliant. SSA currently produces about 350 million notices per year. Communication storage: SSA staff must have a historical record of the exact communication rendered and delivered. This includes the parameters used to generate the communication, when it was initiated and by whom, how and when it was delivered, and the delivery methods used. The potential solution must also allow for its reissuance by the same or different delivery mechanisms and formats. It must allow SSA staff the ability to run queries against stored notices to augment management information, perform other analytic and program management functions, and perform bulk actions on stored notices. Content Delivery: A potential solution must provide various delivery options using different formats and devices. Agency staff may personally hand printed material to a recipient or deliver it by US mail or other means. A potential solution should allow the agency to notify recipients electronically and through electronic repositories such as web sites. Electronic communications should be available both in plain text and encrypted. In most cases, SSA will send an unencrypted message to a customer notifying them that a communication is now available at a secure SSA web site. Authentication and encryption management are not part of this RFI; SSA will manage them separately. A potential solution must have the ability to automatically or optionally execute rerouting of undelivered items or other management functions. A potential solution must provide detailed management information related to delivery methods and outcomes. Many products which might support outbound communications initiated by SSA also support inbound customer initiated communications. Please describe any support for these customer-initiated communications. Communication Notification Management: Recipients of SSA communications should have interactive web based channels available, such as a web portal, to view available communications. These include communications previously issued, redelivery requests, and those with altered future delivery and selection methods. A potential solution should offer a subset of communication options using interactive voice response (IVR). Conclusion: Interested vendors must provide verifiable proof in sufficient detail to demonstrate their ability to meet the Agency's requirement, see URL site http://www.socialsecurity.gov/oag/acq/oagacq_508.htm. Any solution must be compatible with applicable Federal Government Section 508 standards. Vendors having the capability to meet the above requirements are invited to submit complete details. The responses shall clearly state the ability to meet the above requirements. Interested parties shall respond to this notice within 15 calendar days from date of this publication. Vendors shall provide the names and contact information of customers. References may be checked. Vendors responding shall indicate whether their services are available on the GSA Federal Supply Schedules. Pricing data may be submitted. This is not a request for proposal and the Government does not intend to pay for information submitted. Respondents will not be notified of the results of the evaluation of the data received. No contract award will be made on the basis of responses received; however, this information will be used in SSA's assessment of capable sources. No Faxed responses. Requests for copies of a solicitation will not be honored or acknowledged. No formal solicitation is being issued at this time. Please submit electronic responses only to the contract specialist identified herein. NOTE: There is a size limit for e-mail: No submission shall be greater than 5 MB. Point of Contact Sean Frey, Contract Specialist, Social Security Administration, Office of Acquisition and Grants, Sean.Frey@ssa.gov Amendment As of this date, February 14, 2011, the Social Security Administration is extending the deadline for responses to 23:59 Eastern Standard Time, February 18, 2011.
- Web Link
-
FBO.gov Permalink
(https://www.fbo.gov/spg/SSA/DCFIAM/OAG/SSA-RFI-11-1005/listing.html)
- Place of Performance
- Address: Baltimore, Maryland, United States
- Record
- SN02379456-W 20110216/110214234352-b083b1e48e9a8726640f9efde4ed622f (fbodaily.com)
- Source
-
FedBizOpps Link to This Notice
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