Q_A CCH Web Maint Tools Dev 12445022Q0038 19Aug22.pdf

Solicitation #12445022Q0038

CCH Web Maintenance and Online Tool Development

Questions and Answers

19 Aug 2022

1. Can you please confirm we will be hosting the website and tools?

Answer: Yes, retaining URL: https://caribbeanclimatehub.org/

2. What platform is being used for the current database?

Answer: WordPress

3. Is there a framework for the tools or are they fully custom?

Answer: Tools are custom.

4. If the Project Manager is fluent in Spanish, will this satisfy the key personnel needs?

Answer: No. Minimum Key Personnel Qualifications as outlined in the SOW require that Information Technology System Administrator(s) must be fluent in both English and Spanish.

5. The SF1449 has an Issue Address of Atlanta, GA and a Delivery Address of San Juan, PR. Can you please confirm if the Contract Administration coordination will be with USDA personnel from GA or PR? On Pg. 2 of the 1449 it states, “Location: place of performance is unknown.”

Answer: Location of performance is listed as unknown because services will be conducting remotely at the awardee’s location. Current Contracting personnel that would be managing the contract are located in Asheville, NC and in Puerto Rico. Primary customer contacts will be in Puerto Rico.

6. Please provide information from the last comparable contract:

Answer: While information Is being provided, also refer to questions #9 and #21.

6.1 Who is the incumbent? Answer: VICTOR M CUADRADO LANDRAU

6.2 What was the contract value? Answer: $119,560.00 (Base + all option periods)

6.3 Was it a Base + 4 Years? Answer: Yes, PoP includes 05/15/2017 to10/31/2022

6.4 Were there any performance issues that USDA had with this contract?

Answer: None

7. Please confirm that travel will not be required to PR or GA during the Period of Performance.

Answer: Travel is not required.

https://caribbeanclimatehub.org/

8. Besides the Network & Computer Systems Administrator, BLS 15-1244 (AKA, Information Technology Systems Administrator, per SOW), are there any additional Key Personnel resumes that you require?

Answer: All resumes that adequately confirm capacity to address the needs should be included.

9. Is there an incumbent?

Answer: Yes, but the current contract and current solicitation are not identical. The current solicitation is not identical to this contract: AG-F430-C-17-0024 as the new solicitation has added components of tool development. While information Is being provided, also refer to question #21.

10. If there is an incumbent, are they eligible to re-compete for this solicitation?

Answer: Yes

11. If there is an incumbent, do you know if they plan to recompete?

Answer: The Government assumes that they will recompete.

12. Are there any requirements for the proposal format?

Answer: No specific requirements other than submission instructions outlined on pgs.

18- 20 of Amendment 0001.

13. Can you disclose the budget for the new contract?

Answer: Budget is not being disclosed.

14. Are you pleased with the services provided by the incumbent contractor?

Answer: Yes.

15. Can you describe the software architecture (WordPress version, any Plug-ins that are used, any custom code)?

Answer: Best to visit the website (https://caribbeanclimatehub.org/). We use WordPress, latest version, and do custom coding on an as needed basis.

16. What database is used (e.g., MySQL)?

Answer: May vary depending on tool/application required.

17. What language(s) is the Online Tools developed in?

Answer: English and Spanish

18. Who creates and manages the website content?

Answer: USDA Caribbean Climate Hub staff initiates, works with contractor to refine, post and manage.

19. Does the scope of work include managed Cloud services and, if so, is there an SLA?

Answer: Scope of work does include managed Cloud services and there is not an SLA.

20. Are any or all of the following services in scope? This is up to the Operating System and not for WordPress:

20.1 24x7 Monitoring

20.2 Intrusion Detection

20.3 Capacity Monitoring and Management

20.4 Security Compliance

20.5 Software Patching & Updates

20.6 Backup & Recovery

20.7 24x7 Emergency Response

20.8 Manage to meet SLA

20.9 Reporting

Answer: Yes, 20.1 thru 20.7

21. If the scope of the SOW does not include managed Cloud services, then what organization is responsible for that? How does the interface and communications work?

Answer: SOW includes managing backups and any required Cloud services to do so.

22. It appears that the level of support in the SOW is increased compared to the current contract. For example, “Ensure contract is supported by qualified Key Personnel, regardless of vacation, sick leave, weekends, holidays, etc., to ensure continuous support (24 hours a day/365 days per year). Contract shall have a maximum of 2 assigned Key Personnel to ensure consistency with support and communication.” Is our observation on the LOE accurate (increased from the current contract)? Can you provide any additional details or comments?

Answer: Level of support expectation not significantly changed. There will be increase activity and use of the site by staff and customers as the Hub team and responsibilities have increased

23. To help us estimate the LOE to support the website – how many tickets per month (or per year) have there historically been? It would be helpful if you could provide the ticket count separately for bug fixes, minor enhancements, and major enhancements.

Answer: We do not use a ticketing system and needs are variable depending on activities of the Hub and the need to tie enhancements and fixes to workshops, new communications, tool updates, etc. An estimate would be, monthly, 0-5 bug fixes, 10-20 minor enhancements, and 1-2 major enhancements.

24. Is there a ticket SLA?

Answer: No

25. To be in compliance with the Service Contract Act, can you please advise which Wage Determination should be utilized for pricing and required reference? The link provided was not accessible. We want to ensure that we have the correct SCA, WD Number and Date for proposal and contract compliance.

Answer: Reference page 13 of 26 of Amendment 0001, clause 52.222-49, Service Contract Labor Standards – Place of Performance Unknown (May 2014). Link provided was re-tested and it works. Amendment 0001 Section B, Schedule of Items, updated Location information by requesting Wage Determination Number, Revision # and Revision Date used in developing pricing based on proposed place of performance.

26. These questions are due on 15 August and the answers will be posted on 17 Aug.

This only allows 2.5 business days to review the answers, revise or add information to the proposal before it is due on 22 Aug. Will the Contracting Officer please consider extending the due date one week to 29 Aug?

Answer: Amendment 0001 - Questions received after 15 Aug 2022 may not be answered.

- Answers to questions will be posted on https://SAM.gov by Friday, 19 Aug 2022.

- Quote Due Date has been extended thru Sunday, 28 Aug 2022 by 2359 hours

Eastern Standard Time.

27. Can you please provide an estimated timeframe with when the Oral Presentations will be conducted and when the offeror will be notified after proposal acceptance?

Answer: See Amendment 0001

28. Will All offerors be expected to give Oral Presentations, or only selected offerors?

Answer: See Amendment 0001

29. Can you please confirm that the following submittals are the only items required for review?

(1) A signed SF-1449 (With included Pricing Sheet)

(2) Staffing Approach (no more than 25 pages, 8.5 x 11-inch document size; 10 pitch Arial Font or larger).

(3) A statement confirming that at least 50 percent of the labor cost incurred for contract performance, will be expended on direct employees of the prime contractor. If statement is not provided, Offeror will be determined non-compliant and removed from consideration.

(4) Completed Schedule of Items (Section B)

(5) Completed Section F, Representations and Certification

Answer: Reference pages 18 of 26 thru 20 of 26, provision 52.212-1, Instructions to Offeror – Commercial Products Services of Amendment 0001 for requirements.

https://sam.gov/

* May we also submit a Title Page and Cover letter before the SF1449 and other documents? YES

30. How many positions are currently supplied by incumbent?

Answer: One

31. How many work hours per year is current incumbent providing?

Answer: 500 hours approximately

32. Is current incumbent supplier/vendor eligible to compete on this RFP?

Answer: See answers to questions #6, #9, #10 and #11.

33. Does the government anticipate an increase in current workload?

Answer: Yes

34. For 365/24/7 operation, what are the primary work hours and what are current

SLAs for response outside of primary working hours?

Answer: M-F 9-5 ATLANTIC. No SLAs, work outside of business hours is rare but important if something is not working.

35. Please describe all current SLAs and quality benchmarks for work currently performed.

Answer: Currently no SLAs.

36. Do all positions on the project require bilingual English/Spanish fluency?

Answer: Yes, however most important is that the products (website and tools) are in Spanish and English, so vendor needs proficiency to accomplish that.

37. Must both key personnel be fluently bilingual in English/Spanish?

Answer: Most important is that the products (website and tools) are in Spanish and English, so vendor needs proficiency to accomplish that.

38. How many FTE currently are assigned to this project? How many full FTE? How many partial FTE positions?

Answer: Contract is for the service not the positions.

39. What is your exiting technology stack?

Answer: Not sure what this refers to

40. Are there any analytics dashboard requirements in place?

Answer: Analytics helpful

41. Are there any regulatory or compliance requirements the website must adhere to?

Answer: This is our Accessibility Statement:

The U.S. Department of Agriculture is committed to making its electronic and information technologies accessible to individuals with disabilities by meeting or exceeding the requirements of Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act (29 U.S.C. 794d), as amended in 1998. Section 508 is a federal law that requires agencies to provide individuals with disabilities equal access to electronic information and data comparable to those who do not have disabilities unless an undue burden would be imposed on the agency. The Section 508 standards are the technical requirements and criteria that are used to measure conformance within this law. More information on Section 508 and the technical standards can be found at www.section508.gov.

42. What are your goals related to SEO?

Answer: We like to see that the information is used within the region (PR and USVI), Nationally, and Internationally.

43. How will the success of the website be measured?

Answer: Downtime is minimal, and website shows growth in content and user engagement keeping pace with the activities of the climate Hub. Tool development occurs as described.

44. What are the KPI’s?

Answer: Response time in fixes, number of fixes needed, number of site users and activity.

45. What are the goals in terms of KPI’s?

Answer: Reduce number of fixes needed, increase use of the site and tools.

46. What are the measurements today?

Answer: Not available http://www.section508.gov/

47. Is there any integration with marketing and communication initiatives?

Answer: Yes, social media and other communications drive users to site. Tools and outreach products are "marketed" in workshops and seminars as available via the website.

48. What type of browsers, devices and screen sizes do you want your website to support?

Answer: Both desktop and phones, various browsers (chrome for sure).

49. Is there a CMS system currently integrating with the website? Any other 3rd party integration and if yes, how?

50. Does the website need to expose data to an outside source through an API for researchers or other end-users?

51. Do you have specific security or authentication requirements for any part of the site?

52. What are the current website statistics for user traffic/page loads?

Answer: Not available

53. What ISP is currently in use to serve the website?

Answer: https://caribbeanclimatehub.org/.

Are those costs to be considered as ODCs for this project?

54. What database backends are in use currently to support visualizations?

Answer: Not sure of this detail.

55. What process is currently used to ensure accurate intake of new datasets or updates to existing datasets?

Answer: Climate Hub staff review/responsibility in collaboration with vendor.

56. Is the government concerned about potential security vulnerabilities inherent to the use of WordPress? Would the government be open to a re-platforming of the site to the cloud to improve security and expand capabilities for communicating data/enhancing visualizations?

Answer: Could be considered.

57. What is the frequency of updates for new datasets for the existing tool?

Answer: Variable, monthly or longer.

58. Does any current backlog exist for datasets to be uploaded or updated?

59. Where does the responsibility fall for data formatting and cleaning prior to upload for use on the site? Currently how much time is spent on formatting or structuring data in preparation for use?

Answer: Shared responsibility.

60. What does the government see as its greatest yet unrealized aspiration for this project?

Answer: Development of new tools, updates of existing tools

61. What critical needs of the user community most need to be addressed during revision? What data exists regarding end user requirements, survey of user experiences, etc.?

Answer: This will be provided by Climate Hub staff and varies by tool or content area.

62. Along with the questions below, we respectfully request an RFP extension equal to 10 business days from the date the responses to these questions are published.

Answer: Under Amendment 0001, due date has been extended thru 28 Aug 2022, 2359 hrs. EST.

63. We see that a maximum of 2 key personnel are required to be available for issues/outages WITHIN 24 hours per day, 365 days per year.

- Please clarify if the intent is that we must be able to respond to the issue within 24 hours, or if you require one of two people to be available 24 hours a day for immediate response.

Answer: Issues that interrupt the web services to the public and require action outside of business hours are rare, but we would like a response within 24 hours.

- If someone must be available 24 hours a day for immediate response – given standard working hours, holidays, and vacations – this requires more resources; so our follow up would be: Would the Forest Service be open to the two key personnel supervising a team of resources that would provide the 24x365 support?

Answer: Again, not common, but we would like some kind of response within 24 hours if site goes down or portions malfunction. Vendors may have different ways to accomplish this.

64. Does each individual key person need to fulfill all key personnel requirements, or can they be spread across both key personnel if both individuals cross-train to be able to understand and support the system?

Answer: Vendor team as a whole needs to fulfill requirements.

65. Please identify the incumbent contract number, incumbent name (including any subcontractors), and the roles served by any incumbent companies.

Answer: See responses #6 and #9 above.

66. Is this planned to be hosted in the Forest Service CIO data center?

67. Does the vendor need to provide the hosting service?

68. Are there specific performance requirements each tool must meet?

Answer: Yes, varies depending on tool and specific functionalities requested.

69. What is the expected average & peak active user count?

Answer: Peak < 1000 at any one time.

70. Attachment 1 mentions assisting with new content additions by the Hub staff to the USDA Caribbean Climate Hub website. Would the vendor be expected to perform content writing/editing or does this just mean that the selected vendor would post content written by Hub staff?

Answer: Vendor would post content but may involve some editing, translation. Hub staff may provide in one language and request posting in both.

71. Farm Planning Tool & Agricultural Statistics Tool Questions

- Can you provide additional information about the types of enhancements you are looking for in the Agricultural Statistics Tool and the Farm Planning Tool?

Farm Planning Tool Answer: Adding additional layers on projected climate, infrastructure biophysical attributes – based on existing geospatial layers but maybe some manipulation needed. Making the interface a little more corporate looking., improving readability of outputs.

Agricultural Statistics Tool Answer: Adding data on productivity (more years for the 100 crops already included) Adding data from NASS, adding data from livestock.

Hub staff will provide data but may need to be formatted.

- Can you provide more information about how the report in the Farm Planning

Tool is created (e.g., automated, manual process, etc.)?

Answer: Automated – report generated in 1-2 minutes. Not sure of current vendor’s process.

72. We noted that the Agricultural Statistics Tool

(https://caribbeanclimatehub.org/tools-apps/agricultural-statistics/) is not available. Are you able to provide some additional functional and technical information about this tool (i.e., what it does, and the technologies used to build it)?

Answer:

- Should be available, it goes down occasionally.

- Confirmed and it is working.

73. Spatial Data Visualization Tool Questions

- For the spatial data visualization tool, do you have specific technologies that your team would like to see used?

- For the spatial data visualization tool, is this tool only available to the public or does it require authentication and authorization. If so, can you provide additional details?

Answer: Should be available to the public.

- For the spatial data visualization tool, do you have a rough number of datasets you are hoping to make available through this tool?

Answer: We potentially have up to 1000 datasets including climate projections, species distributions, historical and current landcover/land use, crop distributions, etc. We will have to prioritize, and layers may need manipulation, so they all work in the tool – probably start with a top 5-10-themes. Some data sets in groups – such as https://caribbeanclimatehub.org/tools-apps/agricultural-statistics/ shapefiles of 130 breeding bird distributions, 200 modeled tree distribution datasets, etc.

- For the spatial data visualization tool, would the vendor be responsible for the design and creation of symbology for the datasets?

Answer: Yes, some already ready – may depend on technology and design used.

- For the spatial data visualization tool, what file formats do you want supported for data downloads?

Answer: Shapefiles, rasters, kmls

74. How many pages do you have currently on https://caribbeanclimatehub.org/?

Answer: 50

75. Would you be open to a rebuild of https://caribbeanclimatehub.org/ with a new WordPress theme? Or do you want to just switch over hosting/maintenance and keep this exact site the way it is?

Answer: Keep as is as much as possible.

76. Is there any incumbent who is providing the maintenance support services at present? If yes, could you please provide the vendor’s name and last awarded contract number?

Answer: Refer to questions #6, #9 and #21.

77. How much workload (professional service hours) was there on average in a month for typical support and new development?

Answer: Refer to questions #22 and #31.

78. Web browser’s security is blocking the site https://caribbeanclimatehub.org/ as listing as harmful website. Is this the correct website URL?

Answer: It is. It goes down occasionally but it is working.

79. Could you please provide the tools and technologies (technology stack) information which was used to develop and maintain the current website (USDA Caribbean Climate Hub), Farm Planning Tool and the Agricultural Statistics Tool?

Answer: Details not available.

80. Will you provide the complete source-code to maintain existing functionalities and develop new features?

Answer: It could be provided to selected contractor.

81. Who is responsible for the hosting of the website and tools? Are they hosted in the USDA infrastructure (on dedicated server or cloud or VM) or vendor is responsible to hold the website and associated components?

Answer: Contractor will be responsible.

82. Who is responsible for the software licenses which could be involved in the development and implementation of the website and tools components?

Answer: Contractor

83. Do we need to plan any onsite visits or all work can be done remotely (from any US State)?

Answer: No travel required; all work can be done remotely. Also refer to question #5 and #7.