U.S. Department of Justice, Immigration and Naturalization Service, Procurement Division, 425 I Street, NW., Room 2208, Washington, DC 20536, Attn: Robert Richards, (202) 514-4573

D -- AUTOMATIC DATA PROCESSING AND TELECOMMUNICATION SERVICES SOL HQ-97-07 DUE 020397 POC Robert Richards, (202) 514-4573. The Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) has a requirement to support the Verification Information System (VIS) on behalf of the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) Program. Lockheed Martin Corporation is the incumbent contractor. A solicitation issued on September 11, 1996 elicited a proposal only from that incumbent. At this time the INS is proceeding with the proposal evaluation process with the incumbent. INS intends to make an award on the proposal received, but is issuing another solicitation in view of the fact that we received so few proposals. The INS had hoped for a broader range of solutions to be submitted, and will be conducting an industry workshop to determine why so little competition was evidenced and to encourage suggestions from industry which will result in more solutions from industry in a follow-on solicitation. The industry workshop will be held on March 17 and 18, 1997, at INS Headquarters, 425 I Street, NW., 6th Floor Conference Room, Washington, DC. The INS will distribute a draft RFP for industry critique, and will conduct facilitated sessions to discuss telecommunications, computer hardware, software, and pricing issues. Workshop participants will recommend changes to the solicitation to promote open competition and fair evaluation of innovative technical solutions and pricing strategies. An improved competitive solicitation for essentially the same requirement will be issued on or about April 1, 1997. -- The services to be procured under the new contemplated solicitation include: access to the VIS database; support of the pilot efforts to expand and enhance user access to the database; and management and administration of the VIS, its databases and subsystems. The SAVE Program is responsible for providing an information sharing capability that assists federal, state, and local governments, as well as private sector organizations in determining the immigration status of non-citizens. The INS database, formally known as the Alien Status Verification Index (ASVI), includes primary, secondary and tertiary verification data, as well as management reporting data. As envisioned, INS will provide daily and quarterly data updates from the feeder INS systems. The contractor will host the data and provide access to INS approved users. Existing end user applications will be provided to the contractor, who will integrate these applications to access the database or develop functional equivalent access screens and capabilities. The INS envisions that all access costs and the majority of database maintenance costs will be recovered by the contractor through per-query access charges levied on the users. The INS would expect quantity discounts as the total number of transactions increases. All proposals must be received by the INS no later than 45 days after release of the RFP. The INS will incur no liability for, nor will it pay any costs incurred in the preparation of proposals or for attendance at the industry briefing. All written requests for the RFP should be directed to: Robert Richards, Contract Specialist, Immigration and Naturalization Service, 425 I Street, NW., Room 2208, Washington, DC 20536. The RFP may be requested by fax at (202) 514-3353. Only written or faxed request will be accepted; no telephone inquiries or requests will be accepted. (0036)

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