SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT OF JOINT VENTURE OPPORTUNITY 12.22.98 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 Marketing, Strategic Planning, (703) 605-6402. The National Technical Information Service (NTIS), an agency of the Department of Commerce, Technology Administration, is seeking a partner in a joint venture to build a value-added Internet system based on the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS), and distributed online by NTIS. 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 is 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. 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 (reference 15 U.S.C. 3704b) and in accordance with the guidelines published in the June 13, 1989 Federal Register. A guiding principle of the Joint ventures is they do not involve procurements using government funds. The joint venture partner, when selected by NTIS, must currently be fully familiar with electronic commerce business, web-based database production and hosting, and is expected to use its capabilities together with those of NTIS to produce an online product from selected government information sources. The joint venture partner is expected to provide a subscriber-based system with a search and retrieve interface. The partner will create a set of electronic services that offer the subscribers a single point of access to a web contents database consisting of citations, documents, the contents of targeted databases, and the contents of any relevant files. The revenue resulting from sales of the services developed by the joint venture partner and sold by NTIS will be shared. The searching capabilities the joint venture partner supplies must be customizable, capable of supporting flexible parameters for accurate data identification, and display the search results in an easy to use format. The system will allow subscribers to view or download selected files. Prospective 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 oftheir capacity to create, produce and supply database content via electronic means. NTIS will evaluate prospective partners responses based on; a) the partner's experience with web-hosting databases, b) experience with web-hosted subscription access, c) the experience and ability to provide a functional, flexible and accurate search across an entire information collection composed of varied file types, d) a demonstrated ability to provide a user friendly search and display that is uncluttered, intuitive, feature and option rich, and allows the user to create and maintain their own subscriber information. After reviewing submissions, a joint venture partner will be selected and a long-term joint venture agreement negotiated for the ongoing development and sale of the product of the venture. The response closure date for this item is by close of business on January 22, 1999 responses for the joint venture described should be e-mailed or faxed to the attention of Mr. Sandy Waters. If you have any questions please respond via an e-mail response sent to: swaters@ntis.fedworld.gov, or by fax to: Mr. Sandy Waters, NTIS, FAX (703) 605-6715. Phone calls will not be accepted. Additional background information about NTIS and the process of structuring joint ventures can be found at http://www.ntis.gov/about.htm web site, locate the "Joint Venture" section and print the desired contents. WEB: Background Information About Joint Ventures With NTIS, http://www.ntis.gov/ltrjvweb.htm. E-MAIL: To Respond To This Notice Please Send E-Mail To:, swaters@ntis.fedworld.gov. Posted 12/22/98 (W-SN282551).

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