USDA, Office of Operations, Procurement Operations Division, Room 1547-South Building, 1400 Independence Avenue, SW, Washington, DC 20250-9850

D -- MANAGEMENT OF TELECOMMUNICATION SERVICES AND EQUIPMENT DUE 060197 POC Ronald Lester (970) 498-1633; Donna Lester (202) 720-1540 REQUEST FOR INFORMATION -- Management of Telecommunication Services and Equipment. Point of Contact is Ronald A. Lester, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Telecommunications Services Division, Fort Collins, Colorado, 80524, 970.498.1633. Currently there are numerous open contracts with the Federal government which provide telecommunication management services. However many of these contracts are not cost effective to perform telecommunications inventory on a nationwide basis for USDA agencies. Responses should be restricted to existing contracts and/or contracts that will be awarded within the next 30 days. There are approximately 11,000 USDA locations in the United States. The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) currently acquires and uses telecommunication services and equipments from various telecommunication service providers. The services and equipments are provided by AT&T, Regional Bell Operating Companies, Local Exchange Carriers, and independent telephone service providers. There is need for USDA to identify existing contract vehicles and/or vendors which can provide telecommunications inventory services for USDA agencies. Specifically, it is USDA's goal to put in place a number of cost effective contract sources that can provide a standard telecommunications inventory management process that can be accessible by all USDA agencies. USDA lacks adequate (fully integrated) telecommunications inventory, Customer Service Record (CSR), Call Detail Records (CDR's), Service Order processing (SO), Moves, Adds, and Changes (MAC's), and billing reconciliation automated tools to accurately and timely conduct inventory of services and equipments, monitor and track CSR's, CDR's SO's, and MAC's, and perform billing reconciliation of the service provider's CSR against a physical inventory. USDA is currently piloting the Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) Transaction Set 811 and will use TS-811 for managing telecommunication services and equipments in the future. Areas of interest to USDA include, but not limited to: market and product literature, automated tools, market research, past performance in this area, capability statement, and references. In addition, USDA is also interested in obtaining any information relating to other EDI transaction sets. It is requested all comments be provided in hard copy and on 3.5" MS-DOS formatted floppy diskettes in Corel WordPerfect 7.0 or compatible format. Comments should be received no later than June 1, 1997. This synopsis is for REQUEST FOR INFORMATION. There is no solicitation document at this time. (0113)

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