Department of State, Office of Acquisition, P. O. Box 9115, Rosslyn Station, Arlington, VA 22219-0244

D -- COMPUTER SUPPORT SERVICES FOR THE YEAR 2000 COMPLIANT CAPABILITY SOL S-OPRAQ-98-R-0092 DUE 060198 POC Contact Yun Frank on 703-875-6990 The U.S. Department of State (DOS), the Office of Acquisition, proposes a sole source procurement from Siemens ElectroCom L.P.(ECA), Arlington, Texas, to modify the existing Mail Sorting Equipment Systems (MSES) to incorporate Year 2000 (Y2K) compliant capability for Diplomatic Pouch and Mail Division (DPM) at SA-32 in Sterling, Virginia. ECA is the designer of the software and the original equipment manufacturer for the existing MSES system, possessing the rights to the software program code imbedded in the automation. The MSE systems enable DPM to control, sort and process incoming and outgoing unclassified diplomatic pouch material and official and personal mail belongting to foreign affairs community agencies, including the Department of State. These automated systems are essential to DPM in meeting its responsibilities domestically and at all Diplomatic Missions overseas. The MSE systems must provide an automated process to reduce the manual handling of official mail and materials, incoming and outgoing, between the Pouch and Mail Facility, Main State and its annexes, Congress, The White House and other agencies located in the Metropolitan area and around the nation and the world. The process includes the handling of personal mail and packages belonging to the personnel of the Foreign Affairs community located at Department of State facilities overseas. The Y2K compliant systems must provide at least the same level of service the existing systems currently provide. This includes, but is not limited to, an automated tracing and tracking capability of all controlled materials and generating the necessary workload reports necessary for billing purposes, among other things. It is essential for the systems to store and forward material based on programmable pouch and messenger dispatch schedules. We should be able to recall all items being stored by locations on the parcel sorter on dispatch days. The MSE network equipment was modified by ECA for sole use by the Department of State. While ECA provides this type of equipment to the U.S. Postal Service (U.S.P.S.) and other private sector companies, the DOS mail sortation process is unique and differs in many ways from the way mail is directed by the U.S.P.S. For instance, U.S.P.S. machines use a large national database containing over 250 million entries. The DOS sorts mail to only one city/state (WASHDC 20520, 20521, 20522) with around 30,000 entries. The DOS parcel sorter actually "stores" parcels for dispatch in accordance with airline schedules. The U.S.P.S. on the other hand, does not store anything. All mail is sorted and dispatched in "real time". Delivery of the system modification must be completed by January 15, 1998. DOS intends to issue soliciation package on or about May 15, 1998. Interested firms may contact Y. Frank, P.O. Box 9115, Rosslyn Station, Arlington, VA, 22219, Tel: (703) 875-7990. (0104)

Loren Data Corp. http://www.ld.com (SYN# 0027 19980416\D-0009.SOL)