U.S. EPA, OPPTS Ct. Support (3803F), 401 M St. SW, Wash, DC 20460-0001

R -- EPA REINVENTION SMALL PURCHASE SOL 97-1234 DUE 112996 POC Contact Point, Tom Valentino, (202)260-1252 A draft of the contemplated small purchase statement of work follows. The final statement of work is expected to be released by 29 Nov 96. If you would like to receive a copy of the final statement of work when it is issued, please send a facsimile request to Tom Valentino at either 202-260-6483 or 202-260-1225, or send an email request to Valentino.Thomas@epamail.epa.gov (phone requests will not be accepted). The level of effort is estimated at 1400 hours. The proposed effort is set-aside for small businesses; the SIC code is 8748 ($5.0 million). Offerors will be evaluated based on cost, demonstrated ability to meet the designated deliverable due dates, and the demonstrated ability to conform with the other specified statement of work areas. This small purchase is designed to help EPA's Regulatory Reinvention Team (RRT) better understand the expectations held by various internal and external stakeholder groups of EPA's reinvention efforts. Those expectations can then serve as the basis for evaluating, tracking and continuously improving the Agency's reinvention. For this small purchase, ''Reinvention'' is defined as improving the way EPA protects public health and the environment so that America can enjoy continued environmental improvement at reasonable cost. ''Stakeholder'' is defined as parties interested in or affected by EPA's efforts to reinvent itself. The purpose of this small purchase is not to evaluate and track individual reinvention projects going on within the Agency. Separating individual projects from the broader overall reinvention effort may be difficult. Nevertheless, the contractor shall attempt to evaluate the overall EPA reinvention effort, rather than any specific projects within it. TASK 1: EXTERNAL STAKEHOLDER IDENTIFICATION. The contractor will propose to the RRT at least seven different groups of external stakeholders, and at least seven different opinion leaders from each of those groups. The external groups will represent aggregates of the spectrum of opinion outside of the Agency regarding EPA's mission, methods, and need for reinvention. The groups should, therefore, when combined with one another, reflect the full range of external opinion regarding EPA's mission, methods, and need for reinvention. The proposed opinion leaders within each of those groups should be reflective of the group as a whole. The contractor will, as part of its recommendations, explain how each person proposed meets that requirement. Taking these recommendations into account, the RRT will then select five groups, and five opinion leaders from each group. While the final decision about the adequacy of the groupings, and the appropriateness of the recommended opinion leaders, will rest with the RRT, the contractor's experience with EPA's reinvention efforts and its experience with the various stakeholders affected by those efforts will clearly be critical to successful implementation of this task. DELIVERABLE: List of at least seven stakeholder groups and at least seven key opinion leaders within those groups. DUE DATE: Within three weeks after award of this small purchase. TASK 2: INTERNAL STAKEHOLDER IDENTIFICATION. The contractor will work with the RRT to identify at least five different groups of internal stakeholders, and at least seven different opinion leaders from each of those groups. The internal groups will represent aggregates of the spectrum of opinion within the Agency regarding EPA's mission, methods, and need for reinvention. The groupings will therefore likely be ''functionally'' based -- one group might be made up of people working to implement traditional statutory requirements within media offices processes, another group might consist of people implementing or designing relatively recent reinventions of those processes, while another group might be made up of people working on entirely new methods for achieving environmental protection. Again, the groups, when combined with one another, should reflect the full range of opinion (this time internal) regarding EPA's mission, methods, and need for reinvention. The proposed opinion leaders within each of those groups should be reflective of the group as a whole. The contractor will, as part of its recommendations, explain how each person proposed meets that requirement. Taking these recommendations into account, the RRT will then select three groups of internal stakeholders, and five opinion leaders from each. The contractor's experience working with different groups within EPA will be critical to successful implementation of this task. DELIVERABLE: List of at least five internal stakeholder groups, with at least seven key opinion leaders within each. DUE DATE: Within four weeks after award of this small purchase. TASK 3: DATA GATHERING. The contractor will contact the agreed upon stakeholder opinion leaders (or alternates, as necessary) by phone, e-mail and/or in person (EPA will not, however, cover travel costs) and discuss with them perspectives on: a) what measures of performance EPA should consider in evaluating its efforts to reinvent itself and its regulatory framework, both to date and in the future; and b) how the evaluation process might work. DELIVERABLES: a) Brief (one or two page) write-ups of the findings from each of the interviews (to be delivered electronically, via either disk or e-mail, in WordPerfect 6.1); b) Summaries of the recommendations from each of the different groups, both external and internal (probably not more than two or three pages per group, via e-mail or disk in WordPerfect 6.1); and c) A written recommendation based on all the interviews, for 1) what measures of performance EPA should consider in evaluating its efforts to reinvent itself and its regulatory framework, both to date and in the future, and 2) how the evaluation process might work (No more than ten pages, via e-mail or disk in WP 6.1). (0320)

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