U.S. Department of Justice, Immigration and Naturalization Service, Contracting and Procurement Branch, 425 I Street, N.W., Room 2102, Washington, D.C. 20536, Attn: Robert Richards, 202/514-4573

99 -- CARD PRODUCTION EQUIPMENT, SOFTWARE, SUPPLIES AND CONSUMABLES POC Robert Richards, 202/514-4573. The Immigration and Naturalization Service anticipates a requirement to produce credit-card equivalent sized cards establishing eligibility for various Immigration benefits. The Government has interest in sources which can themselves provide, as single sources, all the equipment, necessary software, initial and ongoing supplies and consumables, appropriate training, and necessary maintenance to produce these cards. Equipment related to image capture will not be required.--The INS anticipates that card production will be centralized in one to four facilities in a continuous operation mode (24 hours, 7 days a week), where a high-volume, streamlined, seamless process with minimum human intervention can be securely and cost-effectively implemented. The card production process will begin with the intake of raw materials and an interface to existing electronic database information and will result in the production of the cards described below. In order to sustain continuous high-volume production, minimize human intervention and manual processes, the output device must have an electronic interface to receive complete card order information, including data and electronic images directly from the INS software without human intervention. The output device must manufacture the card, incorporate local intelligence capabilities to provide quality control and error detection, print the address information onto pre-printed envelope inserts, place the cards onto a larger paper stock, and insert the cards and paper stock into window envelopes and make them suitable for mailing by the U.S. Postal Service. All steps in this in-line process by the output device must be completed in a single pass with minimum human intervention.--INS is planning high volume production of at least 4 different types of cards with combinations of different features. All credit card-equivalent stock shall include the following layers that cannot be separated without affecting integrity of the card: clear film laminate white PVC and polyester material color PVC polyester material using radio frequency (RF) technology and a clear film laminate. Film laminate will be used to produce a dual-pattern holographic overlay with INS artwork. All cards will be printed on both sides, with multi-color printing on the front of the card, high quality, high resolution color photographic image and fingerprint image displayed on the front of the card with sub- tone fusion dye or equivalent printing process. Printing will also use ultraviolet inks, and microline printing with embedded codes and moray traps. Additional electronic features include a three-band magnetic stripe readable by point-of-scale and telephone-access technologies, 2-dimensional or 3-dimensional bar code symbologies, machine readable optical character reader-B (OCR-B), which is International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) compliant, multi-color printing on the back of the card, half-size optical strip supporting ''write-once, read-many'' (WORM) technology, and integrated chip (IC) technologies. The IC technology, optical strip, and magnetic stripe must be on the back of the card. Equipment must be able to produce approximately one million to four million cards per year for the next three years. A range of 100 to 300 cards per hour must be supported per device for the in-line production of the cards described above, supporting the technologies and processes described above.--Interested parties shall submit information to be received within ten working days from the date of publication of this notice to: Gary Klauber, EDS/ITP, 800 K Street, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20003, Phone 202/414-4747, Fax 202/414-4855.--Respondents should send complete descriptive literature to the identified EDS/ITP point of contact. Respondents will receive from the EDS/ITP point of contact questionnaires which are to be expeditiously completed and returned. (0044)

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