2B - RFQ_Instructions to Offerors.pdf

Financial Literacy, Retirement and Thrift Savings Plan eLearning Course Content

United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Procurement Operations Division

Date: 04/15/2026

Solicitation Contents:

Section 1: Solicitation Information, Dates, and Deadlines Section 2: Overview of Solicitation Section 3: Submittal Preparation and Format Instructions Provided to Offerors Section 4: Evaluation Instructions Section 5: Contract Award Section 6: Solicitation Attachments

Section 1: Solicitation Information, Dates, and Deadlines

1.1 High Overview

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) is issuing this competitive request for quotes (RFQ) for Retirement and Financial Literacy Training Content for the AgLearn Learning Management System. Training and use of this software will be utilized by all USDA agencies and potentially used by additional external Federal Agencies. This solicitation shall result in a single award, firm-fixed price (FFP) contract.

This procurement will be awarded through full and open competition with exclusion to a small business set-aside. This solicitation is being issued under NAICS 611430 Professional and Management Development Training, size standard is $15M.

1.2 Amendment History

The government reserves the right to revise or amend the specifics or the solicitation prior to closing time. Any amendments issued to this solicitation will be made available directly via email. It is the Offeror’s responsibility to check for amendments. It is the sole discretion of the government to determine if the solicitation closing date will be extended due to an amendment. In such cases the amendment will include the new closing date and time.

1.3 Points of Contact / Contract Administration

Points of Contact: The following points of contact are to be used to communicate with the government during the BPA and Call Order duration. During solicitation through award, the Contracting Officer (CO) shall be the primary point of contact:

Contracting Officer (CO):

Name: Corey Murzyn Email: corey.murzyn@usda.gov Phone: 970-295-5694

Contracting Officer’s Representative (COR):

Designated in writing by the Contracting Officer at time of award.

1.4 Questions

1.4.1 Questions

Questions shall be submitted via email. The deadline for submitting questions is 4:00pm ET, April 20, 2026. The government may combine questions for best possible response.

1.4.2 Government Responses to Questions

The government will publish responses to questions via an amendment to this solicitation and will be sent via email. The government reserves the right to transmit those questions and responses of a common interest to all prospective offerors. The government will evaluate questions and responses to determine if a second round of questions is required. If the government determines a second round of questions is required, the dates will be identified via an amendment.

mailto:corey.murzyn@usda.gov

1.5 Due Date and Delivery

Quotes must be submitted on or prior to 12:00pm ET, April 28, 2026. USDA will not accept quotes received by fax or mail.

Offerors are to submit quotes electronically via email to the Contracting Officer.

Subject line of the submittal email shall be formatted as follows: Financial Literacy, Vendor Name.

Section 2: Overview of Solicitation

2.1 Background/Executive Summary

The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) is made up of 29 agencies, serving the American people at more than 4,500 locations around the country and abroad. USDA has a diverse mission, supporting the American agricultural economy to strengthen rural communities; protecting and conserving our natural resources; and providing a safe, sufficient, and nutritious food supply for the American people.

USDA employs approximately 70,000 employees to work in a wide variety of locations, from remote rural offices, metropolitan areas, secluded forests, university campuses and foreign countries. Because USDA employees are at different stages in their employee lifecycle, their training needs vary from introduction to Federal employee benefits to basic financial planning training to save for emergencies.

USDA is committed to employee’s retirement and financial literacy training and developing new, innovative ways to meet and exceed the retirement and financial literacy requirements.

USDA demonstrates its commitment to educating its employees on retirement, employee benefits, wellness and financial issues in all locations including remote or rural locations, with a desire to excel beyond the mandatory financial literacy educational requirements described in the Office of Personnel Management’s Benefits Administration Letter 11-104.

We know that almost 60,000 of our employees are covered by the Federal Employee Retirement System (FERS), which requires the employees to be engaged in saving for retirement from the beginning of their career so that they have adequate Thrift Savings Plan (TSP) savings for retirement.

In addition, we know employees need basic financial training on issues such as saving for an emergency, debt management, and situations during a government shutdown.

USDA employees’ access most of their training through our enterprise learning management system (LMS). The Department’s LMS, along with shared e-learning service providers, contributes to USDA’s employee development needs. USDA’s Agriculture Learning (AgLearn) provides a common learning management system (LMS) and e-learning services that enable USDA to maximize the return on taxpayer investment. AgLearn has a robust and secure environment to accommodate approximately 140,000 end users, 2,000 administrators and 30 unique agencies. AgLearn is the Department-wide system for managing training records and activities at USDA.

The AgLearn Program resides within USDA’s Office of the Chief Information Officer, Digital Infrastructure Services Center, Digital Services Center Division, AgLearn Branch organizational structure.

2.2 Acquisition Details / General Contract Terms

2.3.1 This solicitation is a Request for Quote being issued under NAICS 611430, Professional and Management Development Training.

2.3.2 The contract will be Firm-Fixed Price.

2.3 Period of Performance

2.5.1 Period of Performance for this task order is anticipated as indicated in the table below:

Base Period 07/01/2026 – 06/30/2027 Option Period 1 07/01/2027 – 06/30/2028 Option Period 2 07/01/2028 – 06/30/2029 Option Period 3 07/01/2029 – 06/30/2030 Option Period 4 07/01/2030 – 06/30/2031

2.4 Approach

Technical Acceptability will be evaluated to receive an overall rating of “acceptable” or “unacceptable.” This will be based on the offeror’s ability to provide a sound and compliant approach that meets all requirements and shows a thorough understanding of them. It is the offeror's responsibility to ensure their quotation clearly demonstrates their capability to meet the required services of the Performance Work Statement (PWS).

Factor

Factor 1- Prior Experience

Price

2.5 Business Size

This RFQ is set aside for small business.

2.6 Incurring Costs

This solicitation does not commit the government to pay any cost incurred in the submission of the quote or in making necessary studies of designs for the preparation thereof, nor to contract for services or supplies. The Contracting Officer is the only person who can legally obligate USDA for the expenditure of public funds in connection with this procurement.

2.7 Proprietary Data

USDA recognizes that some information requested (e.g. pricing data), may be confidential. Proprietary information must be protected from improper disclosure under Federal law. The Offeror should appropriately mark submitted materials as proprietary, where such restrictions should apply.

2.8 News Releases

The Offeror shall not make any news release pertaining to this procurement without prior USDA approval.

Section 3: Submission Instructions Provided to Offerors

3.1 Guidelines and Formatting

The following is established as the specific information and format required for any vendor submission.

Incomplete quotes are not acceptable. Each offeror must submit one complete electronic submission to the CO via email.

Any submission in response to this solicitation must be in compliance with the terms and conditions outlined in the solicitation and attachments. All claimed capabilities to meet the requirements shall be realistic and are subject to verification by the government. Non-conformance with these instructions may result in rejection of the submission, unfavorable evaluation or being deemed ineligible for award.

To aid in the evaluation process, submissions shall be clear, concise, comprehensive, and shall include sufficient detail for effective evaluation and for substantiating the validity of stated claims. Submissions should not simply rephrase or restate the government's requirements but, rather, shall provide convincing rationale and examples to address how the vendor intends to meet these requirements.

Vendors shall assume that the government has no prior knowledge of their experience and will base its evaluation on the information presented in the vendor submission.

Submissions shall be single-spaced, on 8.5 by 11 paper, have a minimum of one-inch margins and not less than 12-point font for text, 9-point font for tables and 8-point font for graphics. Tables and graphics may be landscape. All other text shall be portrait, double sided print. Offerors shall number each page. All vendor submissions shall be submitted in either MS Word, MS Excel or a searchable PDF as described in these instructions. Do not submit duplicates in all formats.

3.2 Volumes and Page Limits

The Offeror’s response to this solicitation shall comply with the following format and submission requirements. All vendor responses shall be submitted in the following volume format:

Volume 1: Cover Letter/Capability Statement Volume 2: Prior Experience Volume 3: Price

Vendors shall not combine any volumes of their response. Vendors shall not include pricing information in any volume other than Volume 3.

The following table outlines the specific page requirements for each volume and how information such as cover pages, table of contents, compliance matrixes, indexes, tabs etc. are to be included.

Volume Title Page Limits

1 Cover Letter/Capability Statement None To be indexed with a table of contents

2 Prior Experience 9 page limit The Offeror shall provide up to three (3) examples of contracts performed within the last three (3) years and at least one year in length (recency) of similar scope, size, and complexity (relevancy) to the requirements of the Financial Literacy, Retirement and Thrift Savings Plan eLearning Course Content detailed in the

PWS

3 Price No limit

3.3 Cover Letter/Capability Statement (Volume 1)

The offeror’s cover letter and capability statement for the quote must contain the name, phone number and email address of the person to be contacted concerning any matter related to the solicitation.

Include the following in this section:

Point of Contact (Name, email, phone) for the representative the government should contact with questions regarding the quote.

Company name and mailing address.

SAM UEI number.

Offerors must be registered and active in the SAM database. If registration is not active at the time of receipt of quote the offeror is not eligible for award. It is the sole responsibility of the offeror to complete SAM registration. Offerors may obtain information on registration at https://sam.gov and/or https://www.acquisition.gov.

Date submitted and quote expiration date. All quotes must be valid for at least 90 days after the solicitation close date.

3.4 Non- Price Evaluation Factor 1: Prior Experience

The Offeror shall provide up to three (3) examples of contracts performed within the last three (3) years and at least one year in length (recency) of similar scope, size, and complexity (relevancy) to the requirements of the Financial Literacy, Retirement and Thrift Savings Plan eLearning Course Content detailed in the PWS.

The government reserves the right to obtain information from other sources (e.g., Contractor Performance Assessment Reporting System (CPARS)) to assess Offeror’s performance risk.

The Government may consider positive and negative information not mentioned by the Offeror but found during the course of assessing relevant Prior Experience.

The proposal must illustrate clearly how the Offeror has successfully accomplished present and past projects, including accolades and failures. Reference efficiency, effectiveness, and flexibility with respect to timeliness, work quality, and types and scope of services provided. Failure to comply fully with the preceding may result in elimination of the proposal from further consideration.

The following will be used to evaluate prior experience:

1. Recency: Government and/or commercial contracts still in progress or completed within the past three (3) years that have at least one year of performance history.

2. Relevancy: One of the following Relevancy ratings from section 3 will be assigned.

Note: Offerors shall include the following details for each prior experience referenced in the written response above.

a. Client organization name and client contact information

b. Contract or Task Order Number

c. Period of performance

d. Objective of the prior project and team compositions/roles

e. Product or project goals, outcomes, and impacts

• Clearly demonstrable results showing how each Prior Experience example correlates to the service requirement as described in the Performance Work Statement with respect to complexity, magnitude, similarity, and scope. The burden of providing thorough and complete demonstrated past performance remains with the Offeror.

3.5 Price

Offeror’s price proposal shall be evaluated for fair and reasonableness. The Offeror shall submit Firm Fixed Price (FFP) for all support described herein using the attached Requirement List.

All Firm Fixed Prices shall be for the government site. Use your normal business practice.

Section 4: Evaluation Criteria Provided to Offerors

4.1 Evaluation Approach

The Government will select the offer in accordance with FAR 12.602 based upon an assessment whose offers conforming to the combined synopsis/solicitation will be most advantageous to the Government, considering prior experience and price. The Government may consider award to other than the lowest priced offeror or other than the highest technically rated offeror if it is in the best interest of the Government.

4.2 Compliance

Quotes will be screened for compliance with all submission requirements as detailed in the solicitation.

Quotes that do not meet the stated criteria could possibly be eliminated from further consideration.

4.3 Non-Price Evaluation Factor 1: Prior Experience

In evaluating what was listed in section 3.4 of the RFQ- USDA will assess its level of confidence that the offeror will successfully perform the contract requirements based on its prior experience.

4.4 Price

In accordance with section 3.5 of this RFQ- analysis will be performed to ensure a fair and reasonable price.

4.5 Evaluation Notices

Award Notices- Unsuccessful and Successful Offerors will be notified in a timely manner of the award decision.

Section 5: Contract Award

5.1 Award

The government anticipates a single contract from this solicitation. The USDA will consider the offeror’s Prior Experience and Price to determine the offer that represents the best value to the government.

For purposes of this solicitation, “best value” means the expected outcome of an acquisition that, in the government's estimation, provides the greatest overall benefit in response to the requirement. Offerors should therefore propose their best approach to meeting the requirements of the solicitation. Only the non-price factor is considered with the observations and best value analysis for award(s) captured to determine the best value for the government.

Once the government determines the offeror(s) that is best suited (i.e., the apparent successful contractor), the government reserves the right to directly communicate with that offeror to address any remaining issues, if necessary, and finalize the task order. Issues may include technical and price factors and/or disparities. If the parties cannot successfully address issues, as determined pertinent at the sole discretion of the government, the government reserves the right to communicate with the next best-suited offeror based on the original analysis and address any remaining issues.

Section 6: Solicitation Attachments

Attachments Attachment 1: Performance Work Statement Attachment 2: Requirement List Attachment 3: USDA Clauses

1.5 Due Date and Delivery

Section 6: Solicitation Attachments