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

99 -- ASSESSMENT INSTRUMENTS (TESTS) SOL COW-0-R-0022 DUE 030300 POC Mary Rouse 202/353-7621; Andrea Grimsley 202/514-3420; Kathy Kallinikos 202/514-0017 E-MAIL: Click here to contact the Contract Specialist via, Mary.C.Rouse@usdoj.gov. Solicitation No. COW-0-R-0022 (Assessment Instruments -- Tests) is amended as follows: Under (v) Delete in its entirety and Replace with: "The contract line item for each of two Assessment Instruments is: User license, quantity 1,000 minimum and 150,000 maximum cumulative." Under (vi) DELIVERABLES: Delete "Text documents should be in Microsoft Word." Replace with "Text documents should be in formats readable by Microsoft Word or Adobe Acrobat Readable Format (.pdf)." Under (xi) Delete "FAR 52-212-3" and Replace with "FAR 52.212-4." Under (xii) Delete "FAR 52-212-4" and Replace with "FAR 52.212-5." Additional information provided below is in response to submitted questions. Please note that INS received two additional questions, the purpose of which appears to have been to seek guidance regarding the possible relevance of certain earlier INS procurements to this solicitation. For the record, this solicitation speaks for itself. Accordingly, INS advises prospective offerors NOT to draw possible inferences from past INS procurements. Should an offeror choose to do so, it will clearly be at the offeror's own risk. (1) Q: Please further define "assessment" or "assessment instrument" as used in the solicitation. A: A machine-scorable, standardized questionnaire that measures job-related constructs. It can be a measure of one or more constructs and, thus, can consist of a battery of instruments. (2) Q: Please clarify the format of the pricing requested. Is there significance to the request for lot pricing per 1,000 or 10,000 user rights as opposed to unit pricing? A: A specific format has not been mandated. However, the INS testing programs are large-volume programs. Therefore, lot pricing for 1,000 and 10,000 user licenses have been requested. (3) Q: If user rights purchased by INS are unused at the end of a procurement period or the contract, what will happen? A: INS is buying user-rights which have no limit on time of use. (4) Q: How does INS plan to account for the number of uses? A: INS maintains accurate records of the number of applicants tested through its interagency agreement with the Office of Personnel Management. Therefore, INS can provide quarterly accounting to the contractor. (5) Q: With respect to provisions of FAR 52.212-3, is any part of this procurement a "set-aside" for small, woman- or minority-owned business? Do any of the provisions of this section regarding preferences in procurement apply? A: No. (6) Q: Should copies of the actual assessment instrument(s) be made part of the Technical Proposal? A: Yes, along with the scoring key. (7) Q: Should Technical and Pricing sections be bound or packaged separately? A: Yes. Posted 02/25/00 (W-SN428496). (0056)

Loren Data Corp. http://www.ld.com (SYN# 0142 20000229\99-0002.SOL)