FBODaily.com | FedBizOpps: SRCSGT | D | Services for Automated Face Recognition (FR)

FBO DAILY - FEDBIZOPPS ISSUE OF APRIL 10, 2015 FBO #4885
SOURCES SOUGHT

D -- Services for Automated Face Recognition (FR)

Notice Date: 4/8/2015
Notice Type: Sources Sought
NAICS: 541511 — Custom Computer Programming Services
Contracting Office: Department of State, Office of Acquisitions, Acquisition Management, 1735 N. Lynn St., Arlington, Virginia, 22209, United States
ZIP Code: 22209
Solicitation Number: 1045535064
Archive Date: 8/1/2015
Point of Contact: Darlene Watson, Phone: 7038754864, Fabiola Bellevue, Phone: (703) 875-6945
E-Mail Address: watsond1@state.gov, BellevueF@state.gov
(watsond1@state.gov, BellevueF@state.gov)
Small Business Set-Aside: N/A
Description: This is a Sources Sought Synopsis (SSS) in support of market research purposes only. The Department of State's Office of Acquisition Management, on behalf of the Bureau of Consular Affairs (CA), Consular Systems and Technology (CA/CST) is seeking potential sources that are capable of providing services for performing automated face recognition (FR) to accomplish the mandates in the USA PATRIOT Act of 2001 and the Enhanced Border Security and Visa Entry Reform Act of 2002. This SSS is a posting which seek potential sources that are capable of providing installation, operation, and maintenance of software and hardware associated with the FR system during the like of a potential contract. Potential vendors will provide updates to the FR matching algorithm (to meet the evolving state-of-the-art) aw well as any necessary software and hardware. Biometric technology is required by the Department of State (DoS) to meet mandates in the USA PATRIOT Act of 2001 and the Enhanced Border Security and Visa Entry Reform Act of 2002. The Department of State (DoS) believes that biometric recognition systems will (a) more reliable confirm the identity of an individual holding a visa or passport;(b) facilitate the detection of the fraudulent applications; (c) increase the security of U.S. visas and passports; (d) detect and/or deter known terrorists or criminals; and (e) verify the identity of travelers at U.S. ports of entry. The biometric capability to be provided by the selected vendor will support the issuance of U.S. visa and passport travel documents and petitions for Diversity Visa (DV). For approximately 10 years DoS has been performing automated face recognition (FR) to accomplish the goals stated above. At present, the Visa and Passport face galleries contain over 275 million images combined, which are among the largest face recognition datasets in the world and growing annually at an anticipated rate of 23 million images per year. Every passport and visa application requires a face recognition search of the legacy and watch-list galleries. As stipulated in FAR 15.201, responses to this SSS are not considered offers and cannot be accepted by the Government to form a binding contract. No solicitation exists; therefore, do not request a copy of the solicitation. The decision to solicit for a contract shall be solely within the Government's discretion. Any information submitted by respondents to this SSS is voluntary and are not to be construed as a commitment by the Government, nor will the Government reimburse any costs associated with the submission of information in response to this notice. Respondents will not infividually be notified of the results of any Government assessments. The Government reserves the right to consider a small business set-aside based upon responses hereto for any subsequent acquisition. The government's evaluation of the Capabilities Package received will factor into whether any forthcoming solicitation will be conducted as a full and open unrestricted competition, a set-aside for small businesses, or as a set aside for the socio-economic programs (e.g. HUBZone, WOSB, SDVOSB, etc.). SCOPE OF WORK The Department of State is seeking businesses' who believe thay can satisfy all or part of the requirements for providing a large-scale,, high-throughput FR system. Proposed solutions must comply with recognized industry standards, where applicable. For the purpose of this SSS, an FR solution provides the following: Ability to enroll a face photograph image (template) into a gallery for matching. The number of enrolled templates will exceed 300 million. It is expected that at least 15 million passport, 12 million visa, and 13 million DV new images will need to be enrolled each year. Ability to perform automated one-to-one matching (verification) of face photograph images (templates). Ability to perform automated open-set one-to-many matching (identification) of face images. The number of images (biometric templates) searched may range from 1,000 (or less) to 275,000,000 (or more). The search space may be (a) extended to cover multiple galleries or watch-lists and (b) reduced using biographical indexing (filtering). The result of an identification search should be a sorted list (candidate list), of size L, containing the subset of L identities whose (numeric) values exceed a decision threshold, t. The parameters L and t can be user-specified. The identification search should be able to ascertain when no matching identities are found within specified parameters. Ability to process an excess of enrollment and search requests (exceeding 50,000 per hour) during peak load times. Ability to filter the search results of an identification task based on metadata associated with each image. Ability to integrate enrollment and matching capabilities for other biometric modalities, such as iris. Ability to combine information from multiple biometric modalities (e.g., iris) to perform a single recognition decision (biometric fusion). Shall be based on a Linux architecture that minimizes or preferably eliminates proprietary hardware, firmware, or software. Proprietary elements such as the FR matching algorithm must include provision for Government access to usage on a fair and equitable licensing basis. Shall deploy to at least two geographically-diverse environments to share the computational load and to provide failover capabilities. Shall enroll DoS' legacy image databases. Shall read biometric data from persistent storage (which may include one or more platforms such as Oracle database(s), Hadoop Distributed File Systems, or other mechanisms accessible via SOAP or Representational State Transfer (ReST) web services), perform FR on read data, and write transaction outputs as records to persistent storage. Shall record the match score for each candidate (potential match) from the FR search as an output. Shall provide a Graphical User Interface (GUI) software tool to facilitate manual review of face images by trained face examiners. Shall provide a software utility for manual enrollment of face images (based on manually entered eye positions), when the automated system cannot find the eyes. Shall provide a means to programmatically invoke enrollment or matching capabilities via an Application Programming Interface (API) capable of being exposed as SOAP web services. In addition, Vendors are required to provide, install, operate, and maintain all software and hardware associated with the FR system during the lifetime of the contract. Vendors will provide updates to the FR matching algorithm (to meet the evolving state-of-the-art) as well as any necessary software and hardware at no additional cost to the Government. QUALIFICATION REQUIREMENTS It is mandatory that contractors submitting a capability statement related to activities required to establish, deliver, and manage services for the DOS shall be appraised for CMMI® for Development (CMMI-DEV®) or CMMI® for Services (CMMI-SVC®), Level 3 compliance. Firms must have a system of internal controls to manage (control, use, preserve, protect, repair, and maintain) Government property in its possession. The system shall be adequate to satisfy the requirements of FAR 52-245-1. In doing so, the Contractor shall initiate and maintain the processes, systems, procedures, records, and methodologies necessary for effective and efficient control of Government property. The NAICS code for these services is: NAICS 541511 - Computer Program or Software Development, Custom Security Requirement: A facility security clearance at the SECRET level is required at time of the submission of the capability statement. RESPONSE PREPARATION INSTRUCTIONS INQUIRES If your organization would like to participate, you must respond to this announcement by e-mailing Darlene Watson, Contracting Officer, watsond1@state.gov, your information regarding your product(s), technical approach, management approach, past performance for same or similar activity with commercial activities or government agencies, and responsiveness to this SSS. Please reference the following in the subject line of all submissions: Biometrics System Capabilities and Integration Services). Your e-mail must be received no later than May 1, 2015 by 4:00 p.m. EST to ensure a timely response. NO TELEPHONE CALLS WILL BE ACCEPTED. All questions may be submitted by sending an e-mail to Darlene Watson, Contracting Officer no later than April 16, 20154:00 p.m. EST. No questions received after that date will be answered unless the Government determines the answer to the question imparts information material to Industry's ability to respond to the SSS. All questions, if any, will be compiled into one document by DoS, and answers will be posed for all companies responding to this SSS. All questions and answers will be made available on FedBizOpps within seven (7) days before the due date of this SSS response. Vendors doing business with the Government are required to register in the System for Award Management (SAM) database before they can be awarded a contract. A template containing the information for registration can be found at: https://www.sam.gov/portal/public/SAM/. Questions shall be prepared in the following format: Date: ______________________ From: (Name, Company, and Phone Number of Respondent) To: xxx, Contracting Officer at: email@state.gov Subject: Questions regarding DoS SSS # (xxx) Questions: 1. 2. 3. All respondents with appropriate products and services relating to the requirements set forth in the SSS are invited to submit a Capability Statement and contact information. The Capability Statement should discuss your company's capabilities against the potential requirements, and any other specific and pertinent information that would enhance the understanding of the information submitted. INSTRUCTIONS FOR SSS RESPONSES Respondents must submit Capability Statement in responses, using not more than 25 pages in length. The total page count of 25 pages does not include the cover letter. The total page count does include all other information provided (i.e., graphs, technical, etc.). Font size should be 12 point, Times New Roman, single sided and prepared in Microsoft Word. Fold out charts for tables or graphics are allowed with a limited size of 11"x17" and each foldout count as a single page and also counts toward the total page limit. Charts and graphics must be in Microsoft Excel, or PDF format. The format for the SSS responses is described below: The cover page shall contain (1) Company name, (2) Primary Point of Contact, (3) Phone Number and Email Address, (4) Cage Code, (5) NAICS Code and (6) Socioeconomic Classification 8(a) HUBZONE, Service Disabled Veteran, etc... (7) Current GSA or GWAC contracts that are applicable to NAICS 541511 - Computer Program or Software Development, Custom, (8) Facility Security Level Clearance and (9) Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) maturity level. Introduction Provide a brief description of existing capability to perform the requirement for the service. All capability statements shall be evaluated on the same as listed below Management Approach The respondent shall describe its successful implementation of a comprehensive contract approach to manage and coordinate resources across the contract tasks to provide an efficient, cost-effective, coordinated solution to our customers and stakeholders. The respondent shall describe its ability to hire and maintain qualified staff and provide staff with the necessary support and oversight. The respondent shall describe industry service level standards and methods used to deliver high quality compliant products and services. The respondent shall describe it's capability to leverage personnel with active Project Management Professional (PMP) certifications from the Project Management Institute (PMI) to lead project activities. The respondent shall describe it's capabilities and expertise as related Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) Service Operation and ITIL Operational Support & Analysis. Technical Approach Offerors' response should include information on your company's ability/qualifications to provide the products and services identified in the SSS. Interested parties should also describe technical benefits of their products and services in terms of existing technologies or resources, improvements/enhancements, cost efficiencies of their specific approach, and any other support capabilities that provide service excellence or uniqueness. Responses should contain the following background and contextual information: 1. Has your organization participated in any large-scale performance evaluations (e.g., FRVT, MBE, FRGC)? 2. A brief description of your planned approach to providing integration services to DoS. 3. Does your organization offer automated Face Recognition (FR) as a cloud-based service? If so, what advantages or lessons have you realized from cloud computing? Do you offer a public cloud? Do you offer a private cloud?Include an informal, non-binding estimate of the possible price, or the possible range of prices, of the system described in your response for a variety of deployment methods and pricing models you would consider making available to the Government. A cost-structure that is simple for both the Government and the Vendor is preferred. For example, provide cost-estimates for: a. Department-wide enterprise license b. License for a large number of machines c. Deployment with a cost to be paid per-search or per-comparison.Deployment as a cloud-based service hosted remotely d. Deployment as a cloud-based service hosted within several DoS facilities Corporate Experience/Past Performance: Provide a brief description of your corporate experience in same or similar product solution(s) and/or services to both commercial and government organizations. The respondent shall describe the dollar value, scope, and complexity of the efforts and the actual results achieved during performance. Provide a brief description of corporate industry credentials that your company has obtained that are applicable to the services described in the Scope of Work (e.g. provided support via a COTS product and/or commercially available services). Responses should contain the following background and contextual information: 1. What is your organization's experience and knowledge of face recognition and/or other biometric systems, with particular emphasis on applications in government and those involving large-scale, high-throughput one-to-many (1:N) matching? 2. Advise if your respective prime, sub-contractor, products, and services can be provided via General Services Administration (GSA) Schedule Contract, NASA SWEP, NITAAC or any other Government Point-of-Entry, along with a summary of the relevant terms and conditions. 3. For existing vehicles that may be available to DoS, provide the GSA Schedule number. 4. Provide your company's DUNS Number, address, phone number, and the contact information for your primary point of contact. 5. Provide your business size status as determined by the NAICS codes 541511 as identified for the types of services described. Advise if you provide your respective products/services via General Services Administration Schedule Contract, NASA SEWP, NITAAC and any other Government Point-of-Entry, along with a summary of the relevant Terms and Conditions.
Web Link: FBO.gov Permalink
(https://www.fbo.gov/spg/State/A-LM-AQM/A-LM-AQM/1045535064/listing.html)
Place of Performance: Address: OFFICE OF ACQUISITION MANAGEMENT (A/LM/AQM), PO BOX 9115, ROSSLYN STATION, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE, ARLINGTON, Virginia, 22219, United States; Zip Code: 22219
Record: SN03693315-W 20150410/150408235044-42bb07e25d5d97fb0cc426a6dcc99a2a (fbodaily.com)
Source: FedBizOpps Link to This Notice
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D -- Services for Automated Face Recognition (FR)