REQUEST FOR INFORMATION -- A JOINT VENTURE U.S. Department Of Commerce, National Technical Information Service located at 5285 Port Royal Road, Room 200F, Springfield, VA 22161. REQUEST FOR INFORMATION. POC Mr. Sandy Waters, Director Of Strategic Planning, (703) 605-6400. The National Technical Information Service (NTIS), an agency of the Department of Commerce, Technology Administration, is looking for an Internet based World Wide Web information search engine and content provider to join in a joint venture with NTIS to develop and maintain a new online government information service distributed through NTIS. The business opportunities described in this notice are joint ventures, require investments by prospective partners, and yield a revenue sharing opportunity. NTIS enters into joint venture partnerships in accordance with the authority granted to NTIS in the National Technical Information Act of 1988 (15 U.S.C. 3704b) and in accordance with the guidelines published in the June 13, 1989 Federal Register. Joint ventures do not involve procurements using government funds. The joint venture partner, when selected by NTIS, must currently be in the web data collection and browsing business and is expected to use its capabilities to gather and electronically classify content from selected web sources identified by NTIS. The joint venture partner is expected to handle data acquisition from web sites, storage, index processing and make the data and data collection capability accessible through a subscriber-based search interface operated by NTIS. NTIS will use the partner's capabilities to create a set of services that offer subscribers access to a web contents database consisting of bibliographic citations, documents, the contents of targeted databases, and the contents of any type of file identified at the source sites. The revenue resulting from sales of the services developed by the joint venture partner and sold by NTIS will be shared. The search engine the joint venture partner supplies must be customizable, capable of supporting flexible parameters for accurate data identification, provide for the handling of foreign language content (including character sets), have the ability to distinguish the foreign languages, and translate as required selected contents. The search engine must be capable of precisely identifying contents and locations, and display a map of data associations (as an option), and display search results data in an easy to use format. The joint venture partner will provide the capability to manage site listings and associated content access, and a programmable data collecting web crawler. NTIS will evaluate responses based on; a) the ability of the web crawler to be programmed, its functionality, and depth of flexibility for all languages and character sets, b) the ability to provide a functional, flexible and accurate search engine, c) the ability of the search engine to provide a user friendly display that is uncluttered, intuitive, feature and option rich, and allows for the saving of search profiles unique to the user account and d) the ability to provide for NTIS to manage access to the collected data stored by the partner, the site listings, and the update frequency. After reviewing submissions, a joint venture partner will be selected and a long-term agreement negotiated for the ongoing development and sale of the product of the venture. Prospective web information partners are asked to describe and reference the technical capabilities of products, describe their technical expertise and provide a concise description of their web experience, along with a brief descriptive synopsis of their company's capabilities including descriptions of their capacity to create, produce and supply database content via electronic means. NTIS has for more than fifty years fulfilled its mission of acquiring and disseminating information obtained from both government and private sector sources worldwide in response to the needs of government agencies, authorized agents and subcontractors and the general public. As a self-supporting government agency NTIS operates a clearinghouse for the information it collects, delivering bibliographic databases, and content selected by consumers in paper and electronic format, and also able to support the fulfillment needs of users for the delivery of historic or archived materials produced in print-on-demand paper, demand microform or CD-ROM, or via on-line electronic access. If you require added details of the product described in this notice please respond via an e-mail response sent to: swaters@ntis.fedworld.gov, or fax all responses to this request for information on or before May 1, 1998 to: Mr. Sandy Waters, NTIS, swaters@ntis.fedworld.gov, FAX (703) 487-4009. Additional information about the process of joint venturing with NTIS can be found at http://www.ntis.gov/about.htm web site, locate the "Joint Venture" section and print the desired background and sample agreement information. E-MAIL: POC Mr. Sandy Waters, Director of Strategic Planning, swaters@ntis.fedworld.gov.

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