FBODaily.com | FedBizOpps: PRESOL | R | Batch Scanning

FBO DAILY - FEDBIZOPPS ISSUE OF SEPTEMBER 24, 2015 FBO #5053
SOLICITATION NOTICE

R -- Batch Scanning

Notice Date: 9/22/2015
Notice Type: Combined Synopsis/Solicitation
NAICS: 922110 — Courts
Contracting Office: United States Judiciary, U.S. Probation Office, U.S. Probation Office, P.O. Box 7367, Tupelo, Mississippi, 38802
ZIP Code: 38802
Solicitation Number: RFQ15-002
Point of Contact: Gregory Brown, Phone: 2147532515
E-Mail Address: greg_brown@txnp.uscourts.gov
(greg_brown@txnp.uscourts.gov)
Small Business Set-Aside: N/A
Description: This is a request for quotes offering Open Market Pricing for document conversion services required by the U.S. Probation and Pretrial Services Office, Northern District of Texas. Quotes may be hand-carried or e-mailed to the below listed address by 4:00 p.m. (CST) on September 30, 2015. Hand carried quotes must be delivered by the same time at the U.S. Probation and Pretrial Services Office, Northern District of Texas, ATTN: Gregory Brown, 1100 Commerce Street, Room 1329, Dallas, TX 75242. Quotes may be e-mailed to Gregory Brown, Administrative Supervisor, at Greg_Brown@txnp.uscourts.gov. Quotes must include pricing submitted on a per page basis, estimated at 4,200,000 pages. The judiciary expects to, but is not obligated to, award one fixed price task order as a result of this RFQ based on the lowest priced, technically acceptable quote received. In order for a quote to be considered technically acceptable, the vendor must propose an acceptable technical approach for providing the services required by the attached Statement of Work (SOW) and also demonstrate a satisfactory recent history of past performance in performing tasks similar to those required by the SOW. The vendor shall include in its technical approach a quality assurance surveillance plan (QASP), detailing how they will ensure that quality work will be produced. In addition, the QASP shall include procedures for ensuring sensitive information is safeguarded. The vendor shall also include a timeline for implementation and milestones for task completion. Technical requirements are listed below. A walk through of the working space will be available at the U.S. Probation and Pretrial Services Office, 1100 Commerce Street, Room 1329, Dallas, TX 75242. Please contact Greg_Brown@txnp.uscourts.gov to schedule a walk through no later than September 25, 2015. Questions concerning this RFQ must be submitted in writing to Gregory Brown at the above listed email address by September 28, 2015. Answers to all questions will be provided to all bidders on September 29, 2015. STATEMENT OF WORK (SOW) U.S. DISTRICT COURT, NORTHERN DISTRICT OF TEXAS - DALLAS DIGITAL CONVERSION OF CASE FILES 1.0 BACKGROUND, GENERAL DESCRIPTION, AND REQUIREMENTS 1.1 INTRODUCTION The U.S. Probation and Pretrial Services Office in the Northern District of Texas (hereafter referred to as Probation and Pretrial Services), has an objective to reduce the Probation and Pretrial Services on-site storage requirements for paper records. The focus of this reduction is on the Probation and Pretrial Services Office's collection of "closed" criminal case files. In accordance with approved records retention schedules, current holdings of closed cases are eligible to be both scanned and uploaded into the PACTS system and then destroyed, or sent to the Fort Worth Federal Records Center (FRC) until eligible for ultimate destruction or transmission to the National Archives. However, Probation and Pretrial Services preference is to scan and upload all closed case files into PACTS. For the purpose of this SOW, the private firm considered to provide the work and services outlined in this SOW shall hereafter be referred to as the CONTRACTOR. The CONTRACTOR, through its employees and/or sub-contractors, will provide labor and other direct costs (equipment and materials) required to complete the work identified in this document. 1.2 PURPOSE The purpose of the project is to initiate and complete BATCH scanning of paper documents into electronic files so that Probation and Pretrial Services may upload the files into PACTS. This project will help Probation and Pretrial Services reduce the amount of physical records holdings it has and move closer to a paperless office. With the increase in staff's telework schedule, it will be critical that staff have remote access to their electronic case files from various locations. 1.3 SCOPE The project involves the document preparation, scanning, and preparation for uploading of electronic files to PACTS. 1.3.1 CASE FILE DESCRIPTION The government requires that the CONTRACTOR integrate their scanned output to a PDF/A file format and store the files to a Probation and Pretrial Services designated network drive or other storage device(s) so that the files may be uploaded to PCTS. The creation of the PDF/A should be at 300 DPI and the settings for the file should be at the smallest size after compression is applied, with a maximum file size for any one file of 10MB. The 300 DPI and PDF/A requirements are necessary to comply with NARA standards. The 300 DPI is to facilitate future text search operations. After scanning, all material will be segregated and placed back in the original folder and placed in separate boxes. This will take place immediately after the scanning of the files is completed. 1.3.2 QUALITY PROCESS Quality assurance is critical to this project. Quality control processes must be performed while scanning. The government requires a written QA and QC plan in response to this solicitation that will describe how at least the following issues will be addressed: de-skewing, de-speckling, multi-feeds, double-sided documents, and other production issues. 1.3.3 ESTIMATED VOLUME OF CASE FILES There is an estimated 1400 standard sized file boxes. The estimated pages per box is 3,000. Based on current estimates, there will be approximately 4,200,000 scanned images. The size of a typical physical file ranges widely from cases where file folder content is less than 1 inch wide to file folders with content of five inches wide. In addition, some cases will have their content enclosed in several file folders where their collective volume exceeds 12 inches. &emsp; 1.4 SPECIAL REQUIREMENTS This section describes specific requirement and compliance determinations associated with this project. 1.4.1 WORK LOCATIONS AND HOURS OF OPERATIONS Work will take place within the Dallas area not to exceed 20 miles from the Dallas Probation and Pretrial Services Office located at the: Earle Cabell Federal Building, 1100 Commerce St., Room 1329, Dallas, Texas. Work space, equipment, and transportation of records will be provided by the CONTRACTOR personnel and not a third party. CONTRACTOR space provided will have the necessary IT connections for network access to provide Probation and Pretrial Services with documents prepared for uploading into the PACTS system. Some additional IT resources and other logistics may be necessary to support the appropriate number of computers, scanners, printers, and work tables. 1.4.2 SECURITY District Court case files may contain confidential information. Computers that are the property of the CONTRACTOR must be checked for viruses and malware through the IT Department of Probation and Pretrial Services prior to the start of the project, and may be checked by the IT Department at random times throughout the project. Any internal storage media used by the CONTRACTOR will be wiped cleaned after the project is completed. Any external storage media provided by the CONTRACTOR will be wiped cleaned after the project is complete. Any storage media supplied to the CONTRACTOR by Probation and Pretrial Services shall be returned to upon completion of the project. CONTRACTOR staff and sub-contractors shall include employees identified by CONTRACTOR. CONTRACTOR staff assigned to work ON THIS PROJECT will be required to go through a security validation check from the FBI's National Criminal Information Center (NCIC) and be fingerprinted for state and local check by the Department of Public Safety. These individuals must be free of felony convictions. CONTRACTOR agrees to protect and limit access to court records to those employees and sub-contractors cleared by the court for this project. No fewer than fifteen business days prior to the project's start date, CONTRACTOR will provide Probation and Pretrial Services with completed fingerprint cards and with certain personal information of the assigned personnel (names, dates of birth, addresses, social security numbers, race, gender etc.) required to conduct the appropriate security check of all individuals it proposes to deploy on-site to support this project in addition to any substitute personnel due to employee absence. 1.4.3 EQUIPMENT AND SOFTWARE SUPPLIED BY THE CONTRACTOR CONTRACTOR will supply the hardware and software to perform the project in the agreed timeframe. This will include, but will not be limited to, high speed scanners, computers to collect data from the scanners, and equipment to interface with Probation and Pretrial Services for upload of scanned files to the Probation and Pretrial Services network. Software will include programs and firmware for the CONTRACTOR's computers and scanners, which must include quality control functionality. Adobe Acrobat can be supplied by the government for scanning purposes if this software is not already owned by the CONTRACTOR or if an updated version is required. The Probation and Pretrial Services Office reserves the right to check all of the Contractor's equipment used by the CONTRACTOR for this project for virus/malware at any time throughout the continuance of the project. Anti-virus software approved by Probation and Pretrial Services must be operational in CONTRACTOR's computers to ensure no malware is transmitted to Probation and Pretrial Services networks. The CONTRACTOR must monitor computer usage activities of CONTRACTOR staff and prevent District Court data from being transmitted to any non-judiciary system or recorded on any non-judiciary portable device, which includes but is not limited to USB drives and/or internal/external drives. The CONTRACTOR must comply with information systems security requirements as determined by the Probation and Pretrial Services Information Technology Supervisor. The CONTRACTOR will provide protection for information and an information system that has been categorized in accordance with Federal Information Processing Standards Publication 199 as moderate impact. Prior to the performance of tasks under this contract, the CONTRACTOR must make available to Probation and Pretrial Services the CONTRACTOR's Information System Security Plan for protecting all data collected or maintained by the CONTRACTOR on behalf of Probation and Pretrial Services, including provisions for training, monitoring and testing, incident reporting (see "data breaches" below) and other physical and logical access and security controls and safeguards. 1.4.4 PROCESSING RECORDS IN AND OUT OF THE COURT Records will be transferred from Probation and Pretrial Services onsite records storage areas to the CONTRACTOR's facility located within 20 miles of Probation and Pretrial Services. CONTRACTOR will be directly involved in the retrieval of Probation and Pretrial Services records using CONTRACTOR's vehicle, as supervised by staff from Probation and Pretrial Services. Third party retrieval and/or delivery services are not authorized. CONTRACTOR shall remain in full custody of retrieved court records while in transit, storage, and/or processing outside the Earle Cabell Federal Building. CONTRACTOR will use the Earle Cabell Federal Building loading dock to load the records into the CONTRACTOR's vehicle. CONTRACTOR staff will be those approved by Probation and Pretrial Services to work on this project. All records will be identified jointly prior to loading into the CONTRACTOR's vehicle and will be listed on an inventory log. Probation and Pretrial Services and CONTRACTOR staff will sign off on the log at the Probation and Pretrial Services Office, and again at the CONTRACTOR's work location. The volume and frequency of records transfers will be determine by mutual agreement between Probation and Pretrial Services and the CONTRACTOR. Previously retrieved records must be returned by CONTRACTOR before new records can be retrieved from Probation and Pretrial Services. CONTRACTOR will communicate weekly with Probation and Pretrial Services relative to completion of the project through the use of a transaction log to document production, including the results of the review and validation of digital documents. CONTRACTOR will notify Probation and Pretrial Services staff when scanned records are ready for the government's QA/QC process and uploading PACTS. 1.5 DATA BREACHES AND INFORMATION SYSTEMS SECURITY PLAN The CONTRACTOR shall be required to prevent and remedy data breaches and to provide Probation and Pretrial Services with all necessary information and cooperation, and to take all other reasonable and necessary steps and precautions, to enable Probation and Pretrial Services to satisfy its data breach reporting duties under applicable law, regulation, or policy in the event that a breach occurs. Special attention should be paid to OMB Memorandum 06-19 ( July 12, 2006), particularly the extremely urgent reporting time frames included therein for certain breaches, as well as to any other subsequent laws, regulation, or policy governing data breaches that may arise during the performance of the contract. An Information Systems Security Plan must be provided and shall include policies and procedures necessary to ensure the timely detection of and reporting to Probation and Pretrial Services of data breaches, as well as safeguards to prevent and mitigate the risk of, as well as to remedy, such breaches, if any. 1.6 MAINTAIN LOGS The CONTRACTOR shall maintain a transaction log to document production, including the results of the review and validation of digital documents. The log must support and provide evidence of adherence to established scanning procedures. This log shall be proposed by the CONTRACTOR and accepted by Probation and Pretrial Services. In addition, the CONTRACTOR shall maintain a production log and will advise Probation and Pretrial Services as to the progress of the production on at least a weekly basis. At a minimum it will list number of files processed by day, number of scanned images, and number of images provided to Probation and Pretrial Services for uploading to the PACTS system. The form and format of this report will be agreed to by the CONTRACTOR and Probation and Pretrial Services prior to the start of production. This log will be used to supply a final report to Probation and Pretrial Services at the conclusion of the project showing traceability of the conversion process. This is so Probation and Pretrial Services record staff will have a documented chronology of the paper to digital conversion to be used as the record custodian. 1.7 TEST RUN Before starting, the potential CONTRACTOR must run a test by running 25 Probation and Pretrial Services selected cases through all the proposed tasks and/or steps. Probation and Pretrial Services will then run a test of the prepared files to upload them into the PACTS system using an automated script. Probation and Pretrial Services will determine if the tasks were successfully completed by retrieving the scanned and uploaded files from the PACTS system. Probation and Pretrial Services will verify that the PDFs were uploaded under the correct client and case and that the documents contained in the accessed PDF are viewable. If the scanning and uploading process fails on the CONTRACTOR's side of the process, the CONTRACTOR will be given forty-eight hours to rectify the problem. The following factors will be considered when determining if a test batch was successful: • CONTRACTOR's equipment and software are compatible with Probation and Pretrial Services software for this specific project. • All required file metadata is correctly formatted and applied. • All case file documents are successfully uploaded under the correct client number on a flash drive. • All documents are legible and retrievable through the PACTS system. • CONTRACTOR's proposed transaction log, used to provide evidence of adherence to established scanning procedures, is deemed acceptable. • CONTRACTOR's proposed production log, used to track progress of production, is deemed acceptable. • All case file documents are boxed according to post production steps (Section 2.7) and returned to the original case file. Probation and Pretrial Services will then conduct random testing of SCANNED files throughout the project. This review does not substitute for any quality control the CONTRACTOR will establish for the project. The CONTRACTOR is responsible for quality control. The official start of production will begin after the test run is completed and accepted by the District Court. The CONTRACTOR will be paid for conducting this test at the per-page rate cost stipulated on the quote sheet. 2.0 DESCRIPTION OF DELIVERABLES The deliverables for this project comprise the following items: document preparation, digital document conversion, overall data validation (QA), and delivery of all Dallas District Court voluminous documents and state court records case files to the District Court for uploading into CM/ECF. The vendor quote must include: preparation, scanning, indexing, and preparing scanned documents for uploading into PACTS by Probation and Pretrial Services. 2.1 CASE FILE PREPARATION The CONTRACTOR shall establish one or more document preparation stations to perform all required steps to prepare the paper documents for digital conversion. These steps include but are not limited to: • Removing staples and separating (‘fan') the pages (removes ‘chads') to assist the feeding into image scanners. • Removing blank pages and duplicate document content, if present. • Maintaining the physical divide of the case file right and left sides by retaining the divider sheets, to represent the boundary between the sections. • Identifying, when applicable, documents that are too light/dark, thin, badly wrinkled, or otherwise not able to pass through the scanner. This may include rare torn or tattered documents where photocopying will allow the CONTRACTOR to perform proper scanning. The government will provide access to its photocopy equipment for this purpose. • Identifying when a document is double-sided, ensuring that both sides of the document is imaged, and in the correct order. • Removing non-standard sized pages, (i.e. larger than 8.5" x 11"). The CONTRACTOR will not scan the non-standard pages but will extract them and place them with the original case file content, but marked as not scanned. • Scanning photographs in monochrome setting similar to the other textual content in the case file. • Ensuring that the pages are correctly oriented. 2.2 DIGITAL CONVERSION CONTRACTOR shall scan the paper case files and take all necessary steps to ensure the digital image product is accurate, complete, and fully readable. Accurate means that the digital document corresponds to the original paper document. Complete means that the digital document contains an exact duplicate of the number of pages (single and double-sided) stored by the paper case file. Last, the term readable means that the digital document presents information identifiable with certainty by the human eye. These steps include but are not limited to: • Selecting the scanning parameters (resolution, black/white output, contrast, brightness, flat-bed or ADF settings) to ensure readability of the digital document's content. • Determining the temporary storage location for the digital output.] • Follow the required file naming convention for the digital output. Scanned files must be saved in format: o-y-t-s-#, where PACTS# = File Side (R/L) a. PACTS Client # b. Side of file (right side/ left side) Examples of acceptable filenames: 23541_R, 23541_ Scan the documents in each case file into a PDF/A file not to exceed 10 MB per file. Include the application of optical character recognition (OCR) to each PDF/A file. If a case file would exceed this 10 MB limit, the PDF/A file must be split into separate files such that no file exceeds this size limit. • Performing a first level review while scanning or at the end of the document. 2.3 CASE FILE Document Upload Process in PACTS Probation and Pretrial Services will upload the case files into the PACTS system through use of a flash drive or similar device. The CONTRACTOR must ensure that all files are saved with the required naming convention to ensure proper uploading by Probation and Pretrial Services. 2.4 LEGAL ADMISSIBILITY All images must be admissible in a court of law. This requires: • Images and data are created, captured, and stored by a consistent documented process that ensures authenticity and appropriate custody of the documents. • Images are stored to prevent alteration without leaving an electronic footprint. • The identities of Probation and Pretrial Services staff and CONTRACTOR staff involved in the document capture, indexing, data conversion, and storage process and the scope of each staff member's participation must be documented. This shall be in a deliverable at the end of the project and shall be the CONTRACTOR's responsibility. This is the log referred to in Section 1.6 of this document. 2.5 ELECTRONIC DOCUMENT AVAILABILITY CONSTRAINTS Under certain circumstances, Probation and Pretrial Services will require access to documents in the CONTRACTOR's possession within 24-48 hours to respond to judicial requests or other high priority needs. 2.6 POST PRODUCTION STEPS • Probation and Pretrial Services staff will perform a random sample review of the scanned PDF files as a third review of electronic content. Part of the review will involve a comparison of electronic content in relation to the paper original. The CONTRACTOR shall facilitate expedited access of selected sample cases as requested by Probation and Pretrial Services staff. • The CONTRACTOR will maintain a transaction log to document production, including the results of the review and validation of the digital documents. This log supports and provides evidence of adherence to established scanning procedures. • The CONTRACTOR shall ensure that all scanned documents are placed in District Court supplied boxes or other receptacles. 2.7 PRODUCT DELIVERY The nature of this project is such that product delivery is ongoing soon after the project start date. The project's final delivery, the digital conversion and validated upload of the last case file in the collection, must be completed no later than a date six months after the beginning of the contract. 3.0 CRITERIA AND REVIEW PERIOD FOR DELIVERABLE(S) 3.1 ACCEPTANCE CRITERIA FOR DELIVERABLE(S) All documents within the case files will be stored in the same order as received. All given case files will be provided to Probation and Pretrial Services under the correct client name and case number and other required metadata. The documents will be retrievable and readable. Probation and Pretrial Services will conduct random testing of the documents. District Court will review deliverables upon presentation and provide acceptance or rejection within 15 workdays after completion of the scan/upload of the case file. The CONTRACTOR shall correct deficiencies and resubmit within 10 workdays after rejection.&emsp;
Web Link: FBO.gov Permalink
(https://www.fbo.gov/spg/AOUSC/USPRO/USPO/RFQ15-002/listing.html)
Place of Performance: Address: 1100 Commerce Street, Room 1329, Dallas, Texas, 75242, United States; Zip Code: 75242
Record: SN03898224-W 20150924/150922235841-c3bd0dba5aaba78afa891112ffcc4073 (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 |

Loren Data's SAM Daily™

R -- Batch Scanning