Immigration & Naturalization Service, Procurement Division, 425 I St., NW, Room 2208, Washington, DC 20536

99 -- SOURCES SOUGHT TO SUPPLY OPTICAL AND NON-OPTICAL CARD STOCK SOL HQ-99-09 DUE 040599 POC Robert Richards, Phone 202/514-4573, Fax 202/514-3353 The Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) plans to issue a competitive commercial item solicitation for optical card stock, non-optical card stock, holograms, and protective laminate used to produce various immigration cards. As part of its mission to enforce immigration laws, the INS produces a variety of cards to identify recipients of certain benefits, such as Permanent Resident Card (PRC), Department of State LaserVisa, Employment Authorization Document (EAD), and the Student/Exchange Visitor Card (SEV). The optical card stock required by the INS is the size of a credit card and contains a write once read many (WORM) optical memory stripe that is encoded with cardholder information by the INS Integrated Card Production System (ICPS). ICPS encoding of the WORM stripe, additional printing, and the application of a hologram and a protective laminate personalize the generic optical card stock by converting it into either the PRC or LaserVisa card for an individual recipient. The ICPS process also applies to printing and holograms to personalize non-optical card stock converting them to either EAD or SEV cards for individual recipients. Non-optical card stock differs from the optical card stock in several ways, the most noticeable of which is the absence of the optical memory stripe on the back of the card. Like the optical card stock, the non-optical stock has security features introduced during the card manufacture process. Optical card stock must be manufactured in accordance with the Drexler European Licensees Association (DELA) optical card and all other applicable standards incorporated by ISO/IEC 11693 and 11694. The composition and printing, on both the front and back of both the optical and non-optical cards, must be identical to that of the existing cards. -- The INS intends to issue a commercial item solicitation combining aspects of FAR Part 15 as well as FAR Part 12. The INS anticipates a single award of an Indefinite Delivery Requirements Type contract against which the INS will issue orders for card stock. The contract will have a base period of one year and four one-year options. The solicitation is expected to contain a guaranteed minimum of four million units of optical stock and one million units of non-optical stock. It is anticipated that all card stock will be ordered in quantities of at least one million with partial deliveries (and acceptance) between 200,000 and 300,000 units per month. The INS anticipates, over the five-year contract life (inclusive of all option periods), requirements for optical card stock of approximately 25 million units and non-optical card stock to be approximately 9 million units. Holograms and protective laminate are expected to accompany all card stock units. Interested sources are invited to submit, in writing to the identified point of contact, their interest in receiving the solicitation no later than April 5, 1999. Posted 03/22/99 (W-SN311133). (0081)

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