SOURCES SOUGHT
D -- Program Loan Accounting System (PLAS – CFLPIDS Investment 103)
- Notice Date
- 4/20/2011
- Notice Type
- Sources Sought
- NAICS
- 541511
— Custom Computer Programming Services
- Contracting Office
- Department of Agriculture, Farm Service Agency, Acquisition Management Division, Contracts Operations Branch, 1280 Maryland Avenue, SW, Portals Bldg., Room 508A, Washington, District of Columbia, 20250-0567
- ZIP Code
- 20250-0567
- Solicitation Number
- AG-3151-SS-11-ProgramLoanAccountingSystem(PLAS)
- Archive Date
- 5/10/2011
- Point of Contact
- Jeffrey McRae, Phone: 2026904030, Billy Rowland, Phone: 202 720 9356
- E-Mail Address
-
Jeffrey.Mcrae@wdc.usda.gov, billy.rowland@wdc.usda.gov
(Jeffrey.Mcrae@wdc.usda.gov, billy.rowland@wdc.usda.gov)
- Small Business Set-Aside
- Woman Owned Small Business
- Description
- This is a Sources Sought for Certified 8a Program Participant, SBA Certified HUB Zone Firm, SBA Certified Small Disadvantaged Business, Veteran Owned Business, Woman Owned Small Businesses only. Please respond with your corporate capabilities and any other relevant information that would allow USDA to determine your ability to perform the following type of requirement. 1.) BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES The Program Loan Accounting System (PLAS - CFLPIDS Investment 103) is one of the Farm Service Agency's (FSA) official accounting and financial management systems and supports over 30 loan and grant programs for direct and guaranteed loans. The PLAS loan portfolio contains approximately 285,000 loans with an outstanding principle balance in excess of $16 billion. PLAS is an online transaction entry and inquiry financial and accounting system accessed by over 2,500 service centers and the Finance Office (FO). Updates are done nightly in a batch mode. The FO is the primary user of PLAS and has overall operational, financial and accounting responsibility for Rural Development/FSA. Approximately 10 million transactions are process to the system annually with over 3.5 million of these transactions being loan payments. PLAS functions include: online inquiry and transaction input; loan making and loan servicing transaction updates; investor accounting; acquired property inventory; daily register, balancing and program reporting; and fiscal and financial reporting. The PLAS hardware platform is an IBM System z10 Enterprise Class (z10EC) mainframe. The system environment is IDMS with 160 Subsystems (Batch/On-line). It contains approximately 1,400 COBOL (Enterprise COBOL, DC-COBOL, MVS-COBOL and COBOL II) programs, 500 maps/dialogs and 3000 Procedures and over 2,000,000 lines of code. 2.) SCOPE OF WORK The primary purpose of this effort would be to acquire information technology support services for the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) FSA for the PLAS. The support services would include analysis, design, software development, testing, systems documentation, deployment and production support. Benefits include: • Delivery of mission critical Farm Loan Programs • Satisfaction of e-Government requirements • Provide for delivery of new Farm Bill applications • More efficient program delivery, eliminating trips by the producer to the local Service Center • Improve data quality Current challenges include: • Providing scalability necessary to meet the increasing demands from ongoing Modernization efforts • Maintaining Farm Loan Program delivery dates for Mission Critical Farm Loan Programs A contractor would be required to provide software enhancement support including the development of functional requirements, design, coding, test scripts, testing and documentation for the system using COBOL (Enterprise Edition) and the FSA Systems Development Life Cycle (SDLC). A contractor would need to provide technical support as needed for audits, security requirements, special reporting requests (including but not limited to those required by Section 1609 and Federal Funding Accountability & Transparency Act), as well as other oversight activities (including OMB A-123 requirements). A contractor would be required to provide all labor and supervision necessary to provide • Overall Project Management for contractor personnel • Enhancements to existing software 3.) CONTRACT TYPE The services required will be both Firm Fixed Price and Labor Hour. -3.1 FIXED-PRICE SUPPORT Project Management - Overall Project Management includes day to day on-site project management and direction of the work assigned to the Contractor. The Project Manager will be the single point of contact for communications regarding facility directives or problems and any other administrative communications. The Project Manager shall be responsible for communicating to their subordinate employees as appropriate. Reports and Meetings - At Contracting Officer's Technical Representative (COTR) determined intervals, monthly and no later than the seventh business day of the month the contractor shall submit written status reports showing a complete list of all Requests for Automation, Problem Reports, Enhancements and special activities including the creation of special reports or congressional inquiries completed during the month. Weekly status meetings will be scheduled to discuss issues and track progress on assignments. -3.2 LABOR-HOUR SUPPORT ---Systems Enhancements Initiatives: 1. ENHANCEMENTS TO PLAS including but not limited to: • Legislative/Judicial (example Farm Bill) • Regulatory/Policy • Audit • Internal Systems Infrastructure • External Interfaces The Government will provide instructions for each enhancement or document requested. The number of enhancements will be no less than twenty. The scope and size will be limited to what has historically been requested and provided. Historically, each task averaged 410 IT Specialist support hours. The software functionality shall meet all required systems architecture and adhere to the contents of the Request for Alteration (RFA) associated with the enhancement. All requirements shall be compliant with applicable laws, regulations and SDLC. Interfaces to other systems must maintain compatibility among system components in the current production environment. The Contractor will have access to Documentation as well as business and legacy system subject matter expert's who will answer questions, provide support and resolve issues whenever required for any of the projects assigned on an as-needed basis. This includes access to FSA personnel as well as other FSA agency personnel, such as USDA Rural Development (RD) personnel, and other government personnel as needed. The Contractor shall make its need known to the FSA PM so that timely responses will be provided. The Contractor will have support from application support teams for applications that provide services and data consumed by the PLAS applications (e.g., Farm Loan Program Information Delivery System (FLPIDS), Automated Multi-housing Accounting System (AMAS), Dedicated Loan Origination System (DLOS), National Receipts and Receivable System (NRRS) and Guaranteed Loan system (GLS), etc.) 2. COMPLETE IMPLEMENTATION OF 2008 FARM BILL APPLICATIONS: Support of applications still required to finish implementing the 2008 Farm Bill. 3. IMPLEMENTATION OF 2012 FARM BILL: It is expected that a new Farm Bill will be passed in 2012. Any new programs or changes to existing Systems will need to be identified, and implemented in accordance with established process. 4. SUPPORT THE FARM LOAN INFORMATION DELIVERY SYSTEM (FLPIDS): In support of FSA's FLPIDS initiative it is expected that changes will be needed to better integrate with FLPIDS. -3.3 TASK DEFINITIONS 1. The COTR will identify all enhancement task requirements in a word document that will include the task description, completion criteria and supporting documentation. The Contractor shall have four business days to evaluate the enhancement and project the level of effort required to complete the enhancement. The government will provide additional information if requested, within two business days. If the government is unable to provide the information upon request the four business days will be adjusted appropriately. 2. All enhancements will be identified by the Government Project Manager within three (3) days of contract startup. Additional tasks will be identified based on criticality and priority as determined by the Government. All tasks will be similar in scope and size. Historically, each task averaged 410 IT Specialist support hours. The total number of enhancements for the base period will not be less than six (6). The total number of enhancements for each option period will not be less than twelve (12). 3. The COTR and the Contractor Project Manager will agree on the estimate provided in C.4.2.1 prior to any work beginning and the total time for all enhancements shall not exceed the negotiated price for the CLIN. 4.) DELIVERABLES Contractor Submission. The contractor shall provide hard copy deliverables as required per the Government's request. All deliverables shall be produced using recommended software tools/versions as approved by the Government. All reports shall be accomplished utilizing the MS Office Software Suite to include MS Project as required. Analysis Summary Document (include the date, RFA number, detailed description of the technical and/or business requirement, affected components (systems, subsystems, Jobs, reports and Program names), definition of acceptance criteria, risks, and dependencies ) shall be delivered to the Government. Draft Scope Document (include the date, RFA number and all affected components (systems, subsystems, Jobs, reports, program names and file names). Detailed Work Plan using MS Project for all enhancement tasks that will require more than ten days to complete. Detailed Program Specifications and Detailed Data Flow Diagrams - at the Governments request. This will be identified when the task is assigned. Source Code, Data Files and Job Control Language - at the Governments request. Test Plan - at the Governments request. User Certified Scope Document and Detailed Business Requirements - at the Governments request. Unit Test Results - including walk-throughs at the Governments request. Operating Instructions and Run Reports - if applicable. Implementation Plan and Support - if applicable. Government Review. Government personnel will have 10 workdays to review deliverables (to include resubmissions) and provide written acceptance/rejection. The client representatives/COTR will notify the contractor of deliverable acceptance or provide comments in writing. The contractor shall incorporate Government comments, or provide rationale for not doing so within 5 days of receipt of comments. Government acceptance of the final deliverable will be based on resolution of Government comments or acceptance of rationale for non-inclusion. Additional changes volunteered by the contractor will be considered a resubmission of the deliverable. Deliverable and Data Rights. All test materials, documents, notes, records, software tools acquired, and/or software modified or produced by the contractor under this PWS shall become the property of the U.S. Government, which shall have unlimited rights to all materials and determine the scope of publication and distribution. The contractor shall be required to deliver electronic copies of all documents, notes, records and software to the Government quarterly and upon termination of the contract services or expiration of the contract period. A deliverable schedule shall be identified for each task. Each task may require some or all of the following deliverables as part of the task. Description Due Date Monthly Status Reports -- NLT the 7th business day of the month. Analysis Summary Document (include the date, RFA number, detailed description of the technical and/or business requirement, affected components (systems, subsystems, Jobs, reports and Program names), definition of acceptance criteria, risks, and dependencies ) -- NLT 5 days after analysis completion Draft Scope Document (Subject to government review and approval prior to work beginning) -- NLT 5 days after analysis completion Detailed Project Work Plan for enhancements that exceed 10 days NLT --10 days after analysis completion Detailed Program Specifications -- Per SDLC System Flow Diagram -- Per SDLC Source Code, Data Files and Job Control Language -- Per SDLC Test Plan (include the test objectives, dependencies, requirements, level of testing (i.e. unit, systems, user acceptance), test cases with expected results, required output(s) and person's responsible to signoff on each test deliverable.) -- Per SDLC User Certified Scope Document -- 2 business days after Gov signoff User Certified Detailed Business Requirements -- 2 business days after Gov signoff Design, Development, and Unit Testing Completed. Contractor shall provide walkthrough showing all applications meet government specifications and follow requirements as outlined in the previous deliverable. -- As negotiated Documentation ( Including Operating Instructions and Run Requests) -- NLT 5 days after test completion Implementation Plan and support -- NLT 5 days after test completion This is not a Request for Proposal (RFP). This is a Sources Sought only to ascertain the market availability of firms that are Certified 8a Program Participant, SBA Certified HUB Zone Firm, SBA Certified Small Disadvantaged Business, Veteran Owned Business, Woman Owned Small Businesses only and can provide the support outlined which falls under NAICS 541511.
- Web Link
-
FBO.gov Permalink
(https://www.fbo.gov/spg/USDA/FSA/MSD/AG-3151-SS-11-ProgramLoanAccountingSystem(PLAS)/listing.html)
- Place of Performance
- Address: USDA/FSA/ITSD/ADC, 4300 Goodfellow Blvd., Saint Louis, Missouri, 63120, United States
- Zip Code: 63120
- Zip Code: 63120
- Record
- SN02429623-W 20110422/110420235841-3f04dd3ffe186ed429bee450bf5d7b88 (fbodaily.com)
- Source
-
FedBizOpps Link to This Notice
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