Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), Contracts Management Office (CMO), 3701 N. Fairfax Dr., Arlington VA 22203-1714

A -- INFORMATION GATHERING, PROCESSING AND ANALYSES IN SUPPORT OF CRISIS MANAGEMENT (PROJECT GENOA) SOL BAA96-30 DUE 091696 POC Brian Sharkey, DARPA/DSO,fax (703) 696-2201; Alan Frederick, DARPA/CMO, fax (703) 696-2208. BROAD AGENCY ANNOUNCEMENT (DARPA BAA #96-30): INFORMATION GATHERING, PROCESSING AND ANALYSES IN SUPPORT OF CRISIS MANAGEMENT (''Project Genoa''). Point-of-Contacts: For Technical - Brian Sharkey, Phone (703) 696-2353, Fax (703) 696-2201/2203/0564, E-Mail bsharkey@darpa.mil. For Contracts - Alan Frederick, Phone (703) 696-0047, Fax (703) 696-2208, E-Mail afrederick@darpa.mil. E-Mail is preferred. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Information Systems Office is soliciting proposals for research and new technology development related to a system or systems to assist crisis managers at the highest decision levels of the Government (including the National Command Authority). Information in this announcement is NOT complete. Prospective offerors MUST also refer to the associated Proposer Information Packet (PIP) before submitting a proposal. For the purposes of this research, a crisis is defined as some situation in a foreign country that conceivably could involve the use of U.S. military forces if events proceed unchecked. This definition is not to be interpreted as precluding the application of technologies and tools developed under this program for events of a less serious nature. Proposals are solicited for developing crisis management tools to assist in: collaboration and understanding, evaluation and formation of courses of action (COA) for situations involving significant uncertainty, information access, structuring of heterogeneous information, categorization, visualization and distribution of information, presentation and briefing aids for the development of options for COA to detect, avert and mitigate nascent crises, and identification and definition of prototypes of crises. DARPA anticipates that initial contractor selections will be made during the First quarter of fiscal year 1997. Offerors may submit multiple year proposals spanning a period of up to four years. The initial effort should cover a period of 12 to 15 months. Effort beyond this initial period should be costed on an annual basis to coincide with the Government's fiscal year. All data an offeror deems pertinent to a proposal shall be submitted with the proposal. Each proposal shall address one subject area. If an offeror submits proposals in more than one area, and if there are strong synergistic relationships between the proposals, each proposal must specifically delineate what benefits would accrue to the Government if both proposals were funded. Pending approval of funding, a total of approximately $6M may be available in FY97 for funding multiple efforts. Size of awards and duration of efforts will vary according to the type of effort undertaken. Bidders please note: this program element has been marked for reduction which will be resolved through the budget appropriations conference. PROGRAM OBJECTIVES: Some of the objectives are: reduce to near zero the formation time for tailored, interdisciplinary, crisis action teams, provide crisis action officers access in seconds to relevant data using a consistent user interface across multiple data bases of mixed classification, develop methodologies for preparing templates to describe triggering events which can then be used by intelligent agents to automatically mine data bases rapidly and provide pointers to relevant data, provide tools for rapid quantitative assessment of emerging crises and long-term analysis, reduce the time to a few hours for producing a coherent summary of emerging crisis situations, initial options, reasons for differences in recommendations, and description of uncertainties for presentation to decision makers in an interactive (and later a multimedia) environment, provide capability for a decision maker to drill down through the data to answer specific questions or check assumptions, develop prototypes of crises in an explicit and quantifiable manner which would provide some predictive capability based on a complex mix of economic, social, climatological, and/or political factors. GENERAL INFORMATION: SUBMISSION: Proposers must submit an original and three (3) copies of full proposals to the administrative address for this BAA by 4:00 PM (EDT) 45 days after the date this BAA appears in the Commerce Business Daily (CBD). Should that date fall on a holiday or weekend, proposals are due the first working day thereafter. Proposers MUST obtain the BAA #96-30 PIP, which provides further information on the content, preparation, format, submission and evaluation criteria of proposals as well as other important information. This packet may be obtained from the World Wide Web one working day after the CBD publication at URL address http://www.darpa.mil/baa/. These documents may also be requested in writing by sending correspondence by facsimile to 703-516-6065 addressed to ATTENTION Project Genoa or by surface mail addressed to DARPA/ISO, ATTN: BAA9630 INFORMATION, 3701 N. Fairfax Drive, Arlington, VA 22203-1714. These requests must include the name and phone number of a point of contact. FORMAT: Proposals not meeting the specified format described in the PIP will not be reviewed. This Commerce Business Daily notice, in conjunction with the BAA96-30 PIP, constitute the entire BAA. No additional information is available. EVALUATION AND AWARD: Evaluation of proposals will be accomplished through a scientific review of each proposal using the following criteria, which are listed in descending order of relative importance: (1) Innovation (2) Relevance of work proposed (3) Technical Approach (4) Personnel in primary and subcontractor organizations (5) Defensibility of the overall estimated cost (6) Capabilities, and related experience. This information is further elaborated in the PIP. It is the policy of DARPA to treat all proposals as competitive information, and to disclose their contents only for the purpose of evaluation. The Government intends to use Litton/PRC, Inc., and Syntek, Inc. (as a subcontractor to Vail, Inc.), all of Arlington, VA, as special resources to assist as technical experts, and in administering the evaluation of the proposals. Employees of these companies engaged for these purposes are restricted by their contracts from disclosing the proposal information, and from using proposal information for other than performing administrative and/or advisory tasks. Contractor personnel are required to sign Organizational Conflict of Interest and Nondisclosure Agreements. By submission of your proposal, you agree that your proposal information may be disclosed to those selected contractors for the limited purpose stated above. Any information submitted with your proposal that you do not consent to limited release to these contractors must be clearly marked and submitted segregated from other proposal material. The Government reserves the right to select for award all, some or none of the proposals received. All responsible sources capable of satisfying the Government's needs may submit a proposal, which will be considered by DARPA. Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU) and Minority Institutions (MI) are encouraged to submit proposals and join others in submitting proposals. However, no portion of this BAA will be set aside for HBCU and MI participation due to the impracticality of reserving discrete or severable areas of Genoa research for exclusive competition among these entities. ADMINISTRATIVE: All administrative correspondence and questions on this solicitation must be directed to one of the administrative addresses below. Email or fax is preferred. DARPA intends to use electronic mail for most technical and administrative correspondence regarding this BAA. Technical and contractual questions should be directed to baa9630@darpa.mil. These questions will be answered directly by Email. All questions must be submitted in writing. Administrative Addresses: The PIP and Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) are available at http://www.darpa.mil/baa/. Written requests for these documents may be sent by facsimile to 703-516-6065 addressed to ATTENTION Project Genoa or by surface mail addressed to DARPA/ISO, ATTN: BAA9630 INFORMATION, 3701 N. Fairfax Drive, Arlington, VA 22203-1714. These requests must include the name and phone number of a point of contact. SPECIAL NOTICE: Awards made under this BAA are subject to the provisions of the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) Subpart 9.5, Organizational Conflict of Interest. All offerors and proposed subcontractors must affirmatively state whether they are supporting any DARPA technical office(s) through an active contract or subcontract. All affirmations must state which office(s) the offeror supports and identify the prime contract number. Affirmations shall be attached to the Contract Pricing Proposal Cover Sheet (SF1411) and submitted with the Cost Proposal. See the PIP for additional requirements. All facts relevant to the existence or potential existence of organizational conflicts of interest, as that term is defined in FAR 9.501, must be disclosed. This disclosure shall include a description of the action the Contractor has taken, or proposes to take, to avoid, neutralize or mitigate such conflict. (0211)

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