2. Draft Statement of Objectives _SOO.pdf

US Department of Agriculture (USDA)

Recreation One Stop Support Services

Statement of Objectives

April 28, 2026

Draft R1S Support Services SOO 2

Contents Recreation One Stop Support Services

1.0 Purpose

2.0 Mission

3.0 Period and Place of Performance

4.0 Background

5.0 Stakeholders

6.0 Performance Objectives and Operating Constraints

6.1 Contractual – Overall

6.2 Program Management

6.3 Transition

6.4 Hosting

6.5 Security and Data Management

6.6 Reservation System and Services

6.7 Financial Transaction Management

6.8 Outreach and Communications

6.9 Ancillary Support Services

7.0 Deliverables / Schedule

8.0 Attachments

9.0 Security Violations Using Government Equipment

10.0 Data Rights

10.1 Non-Disclosure Agreement

10.2 Data Access

11.0 Privacy

12.0 Section 508 – Accessibility of Information and Communications Technology

13. Information Technology Procedure

13.1 Applicability of Standard Forest Service Information Technology Contract Security Language to Acquisitions

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Recreation One Stop Support Services

1.0 Purpose

The Government seeks a secure, customer-centric solution that provides external users with modern trip-planning and reservation tools to inspire exploration, facilitate planning, guide preparation, provide customer support, and maximize experiences on public lands.

The Government seeks a solution that also provides internal users with dynamic program management tools, communications and information sharing support services, agile technologies, robust and reliable data mining and reporting capabilities, a secure financial management platform that supports transaction processing, end-user support services, and business/market intelligence services.

The Federal Government intends to award a successor contract to the current R1S Support Services contract which expires on 30 September 2028.

2.0 Mission

Recreation.gov is the reservation and trip planning tool of choice for customers visiting Federal public land and water destinations throughout the country. Visitors trust Recreation.gov to deliver fair access to recreation opportunities and information and feel the service is easy to use and meets their expectations.

Recreation.gov is also the platform of choice for many federal agencies to help manage visitation through a robust reservation system that adapts to their needs and visitor expectations. Existing and new services are continually improved upon and developed as the teams learn more about the business needs and challenges of field staff.

At the core of the service is the promise to continually improve the service and keep pace with technology through robust listening tools and mechanisms to ensure the voice of the customer informs development, enhancements, updates, and new services. The program is never “at rest”. It is always observing, listening, evolving, and improving to increase efficiencies, effectiveness, and the experience of Federal recreation for both internal and external customer bases.

3.0 Period and Place of Performance

The Government anticipates awarding a single, multi-year contract consisting of a phase-in period, a 5-year base period, and 5 one-year award term periods available through the Award Term Process.

The availability of award term periods for the Contractor to earn through superior contract innovation, performance and support is considered by the Government to be a non-monetary incentive and is offered in lieu of monetary incentives. The award terms will be treated as pre-priced option periods.

Contractors will perform work at their own facility locations or remotely. Travel to Government offices or specified locations may be required throughout the period of performance for certain management activities.

4.0 Background

Originally established in 1995 under an Interagency Agreement (IAA), four Federal agencies, the U.S.

Forest Service (FS), National Park Service (NPS), U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), and Bureau of Land Management (BLM) began the National Recreation Reservation Service (NRRS) ultimately

Draft R1S Support Services SOO 4 leading to the establishment of Recreation One Stop (R1S), an outdoor recreation portal we know today as Recreation.gov. The vision of the R1S program is to establish and maintain a one-stop portal to meet customer’s expectations to discover trip-related information and offer outdoor recreation reservations to a wide variety of Federal recreation areas, facilities, and activities including, but not limited to, overnight camping, timed ticketing, lotteries, and permits. The history of R1S is one of evolution as changing with new laws, new services, and new agencies having made use of the Recreation.gov platform.

Congress passed the Federal Lands Recreation Enhancement Act (FLREA) as part of the 2005 Omnibus Appropriations Bill, which allowed government agencies to charge a fee for recreational use of public lands managed by the BLM, Bureau of Reclamation (BOR), U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS), NPS, and FS. FLREA also created the America the Beautiful – the National Parks and Federal Recreational Lands Pass Program, known as the Interagency Pass Program (IAP). Recreation fees allow the agencies to meet visitor demand in delivering quality recreation, heritage, and wilderness opportunities, while protecting our natural resources.

In 1998, the Government developed the Recreation Information Database (RIDB), the database housing agency recreation data with the original intent of making this open and sharable with other government entities and the private sector data. The current version of the RIDB is available at:

http://RIDB.recreation.gov. Examples of recreation inventory currently included in RIDB are recreation areas, facilities, scenic byways, overnight camping, tour ticketing activities; group day use facilities;

camping, museums, visitor centers, marine sanctuaries and reserves, and others. While all recreation opportunities may be entered into the system, all do not necessarily offer anything that is reservable. This content also includes availability and GIS data related to recreation areas and facilities. Content for the current RIDB is provided by participating agencies and organizations either via automated web services, or by manually entering data into a web-based interface provided by the current R1S contract service provider.

In 2010, America’s Great Outdoors Initiative (AGO) was passed, which supported outdoor recreation access and opportunities on public lands by establishing a Federal Interagency Council on Outdoor Recreation (FICOR).

In 2016, the Forest Service awarded the current contract for R1S services. The current contract type is Requirements with Fixed Price per-transaction pricing where the Contractor earns a fixed fee for each reservation creation transaction processed via the Recreation.gov website, mobile app, the telephone customer support center, and in-person at participating staffed Federal recreation locations. The fixed fees under the current contract vary depending on the type of inventory being reserved and the sales channel through which the reservation was made, etc.

Services currently provided by the incumbent contract service provider include:

• Hosting

• Security

• Design

• Reservation functionality and maintenance for each reservation transaction.

• Aggregation, storage, and maintenance of all inventory and related data

• Reservation and transaction data associated with the website

• Outreach and communications

• Contact Center and customer support

• Secure financial transaction processing from customer checkout to funds deposit into designated federal treasury account(s)

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• Financial transaction and data management tools, including data mining and reporting, secure automated data transfer, automated financial reconciliation, comprehensive financial auditing

• Telephone, chat, and e-mail customer service and technical support operations for both internal and external customers

• Telecommunication support for areas without, or with limited, capability to connect to the internet

• Lifecycle management of secure Eurocard Mastercard Visa (EMV) chip & pin / Near Field Communication (NFC) Tap to Pay credit card terminals for Agency field locations.

Today, R1S supports reservation services at more than six thousand different facilities which cover all types of inventories. Each type of inventory may have its own unique attributes, amenities, business rules, seasons of operation, etc. The program has experienced growth across inventories, including the addition of new inventory types. For example, in 2025, the Digital Interagency Pass, a suite of nine pass types, was incorporated into R1S. The Government does not guarantee that the current amount of inventory will remain at the same level throughout the contract performance period.

Recreation.gov has experienced steady growth with 5 million visitors in 2008 to more than 48 million visitors in 2025 and securely processes more than 10.5 million reservations each year.

The Government expects that the next generation contract for R1S support services will continue to evolve based on technology, new laws, agency requirements and demands, and stakeholder needs and expectations. As such, R1S will not be a static solution and the R1S support services contractor must be agile and adaptable to meet evolving needs.

5.0 Stakeholders

R1S has an integrated Government team to manage the program and interact with the R1S support services contractor. This includes:

A. Contracting Officer (CO) B. Contracting Officer’s Representative (COR) C. Program Management Office (PMO) – The Contractor’s primary interface for management efforts will be the PMO, an interagency body that governs all R1S efforts.

D. Recreation Management Council (RMC) – Agency executives who provide overall direction to the R1S PMO.

E. Agency Program Managers (APMs) – Agency representatives who work closely with the contractor and interface with field users to resolve any issues experienced by the agency with R1S support services.

F. Lottery Managers – Agency representatives who manage their respective lotteries facilitated on the R1S platform.

G. Concessionaires – Private organizations that operate under contracts to offer goods and services to visitors otherwise not provided by Government personnel.

H. Field Users – Agency personnel located at parks, forests, campgrounds, and field sites who interact with R1S services and the public.

Approximately 5,000 stakeholders as defined above interact with the R1S services.

In addition to the roles above, the following agencies currently use R1S services:

1. Bureau of Land Management

2. Bureau of Reclamation

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3. National Park Service

4. Naval District Washington

5. Presidio Trust

6. U.S. Army Corps of Engineers

7. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

8. U.S. Forest Service

Additionally, data appears from other federal agencies and state governments on the Recreation.gov site, such as NOAA, State of Utah, and more with an ability to redirect to their websites.

Other federal agencies may choose to join the inter-agency program with similar or new inventory and similar or new business rules to support their programs.

6.0 Performance Objectives and Operating Constraints

The Contractor is responsible for the accomplishment of all performance objectives to be achieved within the operating constraints listed below. As noted in the Background section, R1S continues to evolve, and the Contractor’s solution must also continue to evolve to meet the needs and expectations of the Government and end users. Attachments, such as Business Rules and User Stories, provide additional specific functionality and requirements to supplement the objectives, context/known requirements, and constraints included below.

Section 6.1 Contractual – Overall defines the Government’s long-term objectives to:

1. Avoid having to develop a new technology solution from scratch upon expiration of any contract resulting from this solicitation, and

2. Avoid creating an environment at the completion of any contract resulting from this solicitation in which only one single vendor is capable of satisfying the diverse and complex requirements set forth in this solicitation.

Paragraphs numbered 6.2 onward establish firm requirements to be satisfied by Offeror proposals.

6.1 Contractual – Overall

The Government seeks creative and innovative business proposals from industry which convey to the Federal Government sufficient technical and data rights, and documentation for the operation, maintenance, and enhancement of the proposed comprehensive technology platform upon completion of the period of performance of any contract resulting from this solicitation. As used in this context, the term ‘comprehensive technology platform’ refers to the entire technology platform, or suite of platforms, proposed by the offeror to satisfy requirements defined herein, and which are employed to satisfactorily satisfy requirements of any contract resulting from this solicitation upon completion of the contract period of performance, there are no exclusions.

The Offeror’s proposal must detail all specifics and restrictions and/or limitations applicable to any proposed data rights authorizations or licensing agreements relative to the technical and data rights and documentation.

6.2 Program Management

Objectives:

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A. Agile-based processes and human centered design ensure R1S services meet the evolving needs of its public and government users.

B. Program management ensures overall achievement of R1S objectives and responsiveness to the R1S interagency team.

C. Contractor-provided training equips public and government users with the knowledge and skills to confidently execute actions within the system.

D. Special events, such as the Christmas Tree Lighting and White House Easter Egg Roll, are supported with utmost professionalism to achieve seamless event logistics.

Additional Context and Known Requirements:

*Note that this is not inclusive of all requirements as the R1S services must continuously adapt to meet the evolving needs of the program.

6.2.1. The Contractor Program Management team must work closely with the COR, R1S PMO, and

APMs to proactively manage all contractor resources to ensure delivery of timely and quality execution of R1S priorities and objectives.

6.2.2. The Contractor must provide a communications tool by which the Contractor and Government team can chat and share information quickly.

6.2.3. The Contractor must develop a “Product Roadmap” in conjunction with the Government.

a. The Government assumes the role of “Product Owner” and will be responsible for: managing and communicating with the stakeholder community; prioritizing the product backlog;

making business decisions rapidly; participating in iterative planning sessions; removing obstacles to project success; approving and/or assisting in the creation of User Stories and associated acceptance criteria; coordinating stakeholder involvement in User Acceptance Testing (UAT); and advising the COR on contractor performance.

b. The Government reserves the right to determine the schedule for what functionality is prioritized and when it must be completed.

6.2.4. During the Transition-in Period, functionality must be developed in sprint cycles.

6.2.5. Robust system documentation must be developed and shared with the Government regarding the system architecture, functionality, code annotations, user guides, etc.

a. For each new requirement, the Contractor must develop and provide to the Government a detailed plan of the agreed-upon functionality and what must be built to achieve that functionality.

b. The Contractor must propose a “Definition of Done”, which is the list of acceptance criteria that must be met before user stories, and the associated system functionality, is accepted as a deliverable.

6.2.6. The Contractor must produce all pre-deployment, deployment, and post-deployment implementation deliverables including but not limited to communication plans, implementation plans and instructions, configuration documentation, detailed integrated deployment schedules, site surveys, knowledge articles, and additional documents as required.

6.2.7. The Contractor must provide support to develop, execute, and track all testing efforts to support the end-to-end development, deployment, and maintenance of the solution. The Contractor must work with designated Subject Matter Experts to develop, enhance, and maintain the necessary testing artifacts, including test plans, test procedures and test scripts for all releases required during the Period of Performance. These testing artifacts must be produced for each of the defined test types/milestones supporting R1S.

6.2.8. The Contractor must provide support in accordance with OMB Customer Service objectives and reporting. The Contractor must offer end users multiple ways and opportunities to submit feedback on the UI and UX. The Contractor must propose approaches to collecting, aggregating, and analyzing all lines of feedback. All sales channels must incorporate feedback mechanisms.

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While offering opportunities to provide feedback, the Contractor must minimize disruptions in the user workflow.

6.2.9. The Contractor must develop and present at a Quarterly Program Management Review (PMR) meeting with the R1S PMO regarding the performance of the R1S support services. Specific topics and format will be agreed upon with the COR.

6.2.10. The Contractor must develop and submit for Government approval a Quality Control Plan (QCP) within 30 calendar days of the “go live” solution. Quality control documentation must be made available to the Government throughout the period of performance for monitoring against the Quality Assurance Surveillance Plan (QASP).

6.2.11. The Contractor must submit a Monthly Performance Report, a detailed account of their monthly contract performance in a manner that clearly and easily tracks back to the QASP. The Monthly Performance Report must be submitted as an attachment to the Contractor’s monthly invoice.

6.2.12. The Contractor must initiate an annual system audit at the close of each Government fiscal year.

The audit must be performed by an independent and licensed Certified Public Accountant (CPA) and must focus on the entirety of the system controls, financial data, and transactional data contained in the system for the most recently completed Government fiscal year. There is no requirement to conduct successive comprehensive audits of previously audited fiscal years;

however, transactions from the most recent fiscal year which impact transactions and data from previously audited data sets must be audited to ensure compliance with established accounting procedures and business rules.

a. Audit results must be provided to the R1S PMO no later than 60 calendar days after the close of the Government fiscal year.

b. The Contractor must address and resolve all audit findings and coordinate the resolution with the R1S PMO.

6.2.13. The Contractor must coordinate, communicate, develop, deliver, and assess training, training materials, and training sessions to enable government users to confidently and efficiently utilize all contractor-developed back-office tools and workflows within the reservation system. Training demand varies widely in a cyclical pattern throughout the year, with peaks in the spring as seasonal employees are being hired and decreases in the fall and winter when many facilities are closed for the season.

a. Training must be an ongoing program and not simply once per year.

b. Training must also include train-the-trainer sessions.

c. Training must employ a wide range of formats, including but not limited to live educational sessions, narrative and visual resources, recorded videos, and more.

6.2.14. The Contractor must develop and maintain a disaster recovery plan and business continuity plan for the R1S solution that identifies the services, roles, responsibilities, and methodologies to be used in the event of a system failure or disruption. The recovery approach must address a full range of services covering the spectrum from partial loss of function or data for a brief amount of time to a “worst-case” scenario in which a man-made, natural disaster, or IT failure results in the loss of the entire IT enterprise. Services may be required during any timeframe from initial declaration of a disaster to final recovery of all business processes and business functions.

6.2.15. All developed materials, services, and systems under this contract must be 508-compliant.

6.2.16. The Contractor must apportion sufficient support to special events (such as the White House

Easter Egg Roll and Christmas Tree Lighting), which may include on-site support, to ensure successful execution of event logistics.

Constraints:

6.2.17. The Government is the approving authority. The Contractor must not make decisions – strategic or tactical – without the explicit approval of the designated Government authorities, such as the COR or R1S PMO.

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6.2.18. Data must be provided to the Government team for data-driven decisions (security, price, performance, availability, etc.).

6.2.19. A minimally viable product (MVP) must be developed within 18 months or less in a development environment based on an approved product roadmap. An MVP must:

a. Have enough value that people are willing to use it, and it is relatable to the vision for the core capabilities that are required at the end of the “Phase-in Period”.

Demonstrate enough future benefit to reduce the risk of releasing a product that is not viable.

b. Provide a feedback loop to guide the future development of the system.

c. Satisfy the requirements defined in “Basic System Requirements” and “Business Rules” attachments.

6.2.20. During the development of the MVP, the Contractor must conduct at least monthly meetings showing progress against the MVP to ensure that the MVP will be ready within 18 months.

6.2.21. The Government reserves the right, following the release of the MVP, to alter the required functionality in support of the overall vision as implemented by an Agile methodology. These changes will be approved by the Product Owner and, subsequently, the COR.

6.2.22. The Government, at any time, has the right to periodically procure, at Government expense, the services of an independent third-party Contractor to evaluate and analyze a wide variety of factors associated with, but not limited to, the system, website interface, and user experience. The Government, at its sole discretion, may choose to request the Contractor evaluate and/or implement suggestions derived through this third-party process.

6.3 Transition

A. No degradation of services or user experience occurs in the on-time transition from the current contract to the new contract both for transition-in and transition out.

B. Data is transitioned and accurate to ensure continuity of user experience between the contracts.

Additional Context and Known Requirements:

*Note that this is not inclusive of all requirements as the R1S services must continuously adapt to meet the evolving needs of the program.

6.3.1. The Contractor must develop a draft transition-in plan for Government approval.

6.3.2. The Contractor must execute the approved transition-in plan, including reporting requirements to ensure transition objectives are met.

6.3.3. The Contractor must document any lessons learned at the completion of the transition for future transitions.

6.3.4. Legacy reservation and inventory information must be available to participating Agencies and/or concessionaries via the Contractor’s reporting module.

6.3.5. The Contractor must develop a draft transition-out plan for Government approval.

6.3.6. The Contractor must execute the approved transition-out plan in full cooperation with the

Government and successor contractor.

Constraints:

6.3.7. No additional fees will be paid to the Contractor for existing reservations and existing contract data transition.

6.3.8. The Government owns, and will provide to the offeror, all of the inventory, transaction and customer data associated with Recreation.gov; however, for this procurement, the current reservation system remains the sole property of the incumbent contractor.

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6.3.9. The Government owns the recreation.gov and rec.gov domains and will continue to own those domains. The Government will give the Contractor access to the domain for managing the website and all connections between the website and its solution.

6.4 Hosting

A. R1S services and the government’s R1S management tool are available 24x7x365, with the exception of planned and agreed upon maintenance downtimes, for access by public and government users.

Additional Context and Known Requirements:

*Note that this is not inclusive of all requirements as the R1S services must continuously adapt to meet the evolving needs of the program.

6.4.1. The Contractor must host all services in a FedRAMP Moderate certified cloud-based hosting environment.

6.5 Security and Data Management

A. Data in transit and at rest is encrypted, secured, and protected in accordance with National Institute of

Standards and Technology (NIST) standards such that no data breach or exposure occurs.

B. The R1S services are based on FedRAMP Moderate certified software.

C. Personally Identifiable Information (PII) is protected in accordance with the Privacy Act/NIST standards.

D. Data is managed in accordance with the R1S System of Record Notice (SORN).

E. All USDA IT security and data management requirements are adhered to. See Sections 9-13 below and contract clauses for details.

Additional Context and Known Requirements:

*Note that this is not inclusive of all requirements as the R1S services must continuously adapt to meet the evolving needs of the program.

6.5.1. The system as a whole must satisfy all relevant federal IT security requirements and must earn an

Authority to Operate (ATO) from the U.S. Department of Agriculture prior to go-live.

6.5.2. The system must use an approved single sign on and identity verification method, such as login.gov.

6.5.3. The system must be built on Zero Trust principles and require multi-factor authentication (MFA) for all federal employees accessing the system.

6.5.4. All system data must be handled and protected in accordance with all relevant Federal data security and protection requirements.

6.5.5. The Contractor must submit a Security Plan compliant with FedRAMP and other Federal requirements/directives no later than 45 days after contract award.

a. The Security Plan must be updated at least annually and submitted to the Government for review no later than 1 February of each year of contract performance.

b. The Contractor must submit interim updates to the Security Plan within thirty (30) days of receiving an official request from the Government.

6.5.6. The R1S service must act as the aggregation and distribution hub of record for all government-owned federal recreation data. This data includes information relating to all recreation facilities, including facilities and activities listed on Recreation.gov as ‘reservable’, as well as federal recreation facilities and activities which are not reservable. This latter dataset is referred to as

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RIDB data. The Contractor must provide an automated service to securely transfer RIDB data from each agency’s Content Management System, populate, and store that data within the R1S system.

6.5.7. The most current RIDB data must be fully indexed, searchable and displayed in all relevant interfaces of the consumer-facing Recreation.gov portal as appropriate, including, but not limited to, maps and lists. The Contractor must also provide intuitive tools, including tokenized secure APIs, for consumer-use to bulk download RIDB data in-whole, or in-part, in current common unprotected and actionable file formats such as *.csv. RIDB data must not include any customer or transaction data considered to be Personally Identifiable Information (PII) under the Privacy Act of 1974; 5 U.S.C. § 552a.

6.5.8. The Contractor must adapt to changing data collection requirements and contribute to strategies for analyzing and creatively displaying or presenting RIDB data that is relevant to stakeholders and consumers and that supports the decision-making process. For example, live data about wait times for on sales, heat maps displaying high occupancy dates, and same-day booking likelihood.

The contractor is encouraged to identify and recommend useful ways to analyze and display consumer data to optimize travel inventory.

6.5.9. The Contractor must develop, document and execute a stringent data back-up regimen to ensure no system data is lost. System data as used in this context refers to all transactional and reservation related data records, system user profiles, all data associated with reservable inventory and all non-reservable information to include multimedia files, informational articles, etc.

6.5.10. The Contractor must maintain, at a minimum, the most recent twenty-four (24) months’ worth of transactional and reservation-related data in an “active” state such that Government system users and Contractor Customer Support Personnel may query that information to produce reports, resolve issues, etc. The Government must provide the Contractor with the most recent twenty-four (24) months of transactional and reservation related data which the Contractor must maintain for customer support purposes.

6.5.11. All data Back-Ups and Archives must be stored in accordance with reigning industry best practices and standards for Federal data retention to ensure the data remains viable, accessible through non-proprietary means, safe and secure throughout the lifecycle of this contract. As information becomes available, the Contractor must provide its information sources for standards and “best practices” to the Government and the Government may provide further sources as they become available.

6.5.12. On a monthly basis, the Contractor must provide the Government with a cloud-based, electronic data back-up relevant to reservations including but not limited to; customer information, reserved dates, site information, and fees. A back-up of user profile data shall also be provided annually.

The data must be stored and delivered in a format approved by the COR. This back-up is to be stored with Government COR separate from other backups.

6.5.13. The system must be able to identify and flag any suspicious activity and ensure 97% of those cases are reviewed and addressed within 10 business days to enable timely mitigation of any risks. Flagged suspicious activity must have less than 1% false positives.

6.5.14. Appropriate audit and security controls must be in place in day-to-day operations.

6.6 Reservation System and Services

A. Users make and manage reservations using a modern platform that supports their needs in making reservations and evolves to keep pace with industry standards and align with customer expectations.

B. Government users and stakeholders (i.e., concessionaires, cooperators) have a modern, role-based platform that provides the ability to easily maintain and update inventory, as appropriate.

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C. Users have 24x7x365 access to live agents and/or automated support tools to answer questions or resolve challenges with R1S services.

Additional Context and Known Requirements:

*Note that this is not inclusive of all requirements as the R1S services must continuously adapt to meet the evolving needs of the program. Additionally, the Business Rules attachment serves as a guide to minimum functionality requirements for the reservation system.

6.6.1. The Contractor must provide, maintain, and operate a secure, highly flexible and configurable solution that can adapt quickly to changing operational requirements and customer expectations.

6.6.2. The Contractor must provide, maintain, and operate an integrated and intuitive consumer-facing reservation service and comprehensive suite of back-office inventory, reservation, and financial management tools that support a wide variety of inventory and transaction types that are governed by a complex network of business rules to manage reservations individually and en masse from inception through fulfillment.

6.6.3. The Contractor’s solution must include visuals to support end users. For example, maps are essential to planning any activities in the outdoors, and today’s customers demand powerful map visualization tools seamlessly integrated into the user interface of both the desktop and mobile application versions of Recreation.gov. All maps must be geospatially relevant and keyed to geospatial coordinates to include, but not be limited to, relevant facilities, reservable and non-reservable items of recreation inventory (e.g. campsite), points of interest, facility amenities (e.g.

potable water hydrant) to be provided by the Government. Detailed Very High Resolution (VHR) and High Resolution (HR) satellite imagery is a critical tool used by R1S customers when planning visits to federal lands. All map visualization tools integrated into recreation.gov desktop and mobile applications must provide users with the option of viewing satellite views of all maps.

Satellite imagery presented to users via both the desktop and mobile applications must be of a Ground Sampling Distance (GSD) of 1 meter or less per pixel.

6.6.4. The Contractor’s solution must provide end users with communications regarding their transactions, including receipts, confirmation emails, reminder emails of upcoming reservations, modification notices, cancellation notices, etc.

6.6.5. The Contractor’s solution must include the ability to place “white label widgets” on federal agency websites, by which end users are able to make reservations through R1S without needing to navigate to recreation.gov.

6.6.6. Currently supported inventory types include but are not limited to campsites, tickets, venues, lotteries, permits, day passes, site-specific passes, individual activity passes and statutorily mandated passes such as the pantheon of America the Beautiful Annual and Lifetime Passes.

6.6.7. The Contractor’s solution must provide significant flexibility to rapidly add new inventory in bulk or in isolated instances as well as new types of inventory governed by new business rules and transaction types which participating Agencies have yet to identify.

6.6.8. The service development, delivery, maintenance and enhancement must incorporate leading information technology solutions and best practices to ensure maximum flexibility and rapid response to emerging Agency business requirements, evolving security and threat landscapes, and user experience feedback. Such best practices include, but are not limited to, agile development, modular design, integrated testing and evaluation, continuous code deployment, etc.

6.6.9. All consumer-facing and back-office user interfaces and workflows must be engineered and designed to maximize ease of use, intuitively solicit inputs and calls for user action, and utilize common and consistent vernacular to ensure a world-class user experience for all user groups while embracing all relevant tenants of the US Digital Services Playbook available at:

https://playbook.usds.gov/.

6.6.10. The Contractor must provide expertise in areas such as outdoor recreation, and travel and tourism, must analyze the effectiveness of digital content for reaching target audiences, must make

Draft R1S Support Services SOO 13 recommendations to the PMO on ways to improve digital content, and must work collaboratively with the Government on the development of new content to better engage consumers.

6.6.11. The Contractor must provide the ability to create and manage multiple user roles and permissions that allow and restrict access to various information in the system. Users of the system will change frequently, and the system must provide the capability to terminate or change roles and permissions both manually and automatically.

a. As part of user management, the Contractor must develop an attestation process that complies with requirements while minimizing user burden.

6.6.12. Fast access to U.S.-based knowledgeable, human telephone support is critical to successful field operations and a positive consumer experience. The Contractor must provide live human telephone and chat-based technical support to users of the back-office (internal) component, and live human telephone and chat-based customer support to users of the public-facing component of the system. The operational hours of the live telephone and chat-based support services must be sufficient to support users during a substantial portion of customary business hours in all U.S.

time zones. Current availability is 10am to 12am Eastern Time with closures on Thanksgiving Day, Christmas Day, and New Year’s Day. This availability is expected to continue as a minimum.

6.6.13. In addition to live telephone and chat support offerings, the Contractor must provide tailored online tools and information to assist each user group to accomplish system tasks.

6.6.14. The Contractor must implement a comprehensive system for logging, tracking, escalating, and reporting of Customer Service and Help Desk contacts to ensure resolution of each contact issue.

This Customer Service management system must support the creation and release of a follow-up communication providing customers with a unique tracking number associated with their Support Request as well as a summary of the issue and associated resolution actions. If an issue cannot be resolved in a timely manner, these must be documented and reported to the COR for discussion on resolution.

6.6.15. The Contractor must develop, document and execute a comprehensive customer service training program to ensure all customer service and help desk agents are fully trained and proficient on all aspects of R1S services.

6.6.16. The website must comply with federal website standards, such as the 21st Century Integrated

Digital Experience Act (IDEA), OMB Memo M-23-22, and standards found via standards.digital.gov or predecessor website.

6.6.17. The Contractor must engineer reliability and redundancy into the system (including access to all data) in order to maintain system uptime and availability to all users at a level of 99.9886% which equates to 60 minutes of unplanned downtime per year.

a. An outage and unplanned downtime are defined as any amount of time the System is not available and fails to perform its primary function and/or is not capable of handling full user capacity.

b. The Contractor must track and report all System downtime as part of their monthly performance report.

c. The Contractor must immediately notify the COR of any unplanned outages. This initial notification is preliminary and is solely intended to make the Government aware of the unplanned outage and the projected duration of the outage if available.

The Contractor’s number one priority during unplanned system outages must be to restore the System to full operational capability.

d. Once returned to full operational capability, the Contractor must prepare a detailed written incident report describing the specific failure(s) which created the outage and providing a critical analysis of the incidents, activities, environmental factors, etc.

which contributed to failure(s). The Contractor must detail the corrective actions

Draft R1S Support Services SOO 14 taken to return to full operational capability and clearly describe all preventative actions taken to ensure future failures of a similar nature do not occur. The detailed report must be sent to the COR within 10 business days.

6.6.18. The Contractor must schedule planned system outages during periods at which the Recreation.gov has historically shown the least user activity, such as the very early morning hours, as to inconvenience system users as little as possible.

a. For planned system outages with an expected duration of more than 10 minutes, the Contractor must display a readily visible notice on top-level customer-facing Recreation.gov system pages advising them of the date, time and duration of the planned system outage. Such a notice shall be posted and visible to System users for at least the 3-hour period immediately preceding the outage.

6.6.19. The Contractor must request, in writing, approval from the Government for all planned system outages, regardless of the expected duration of the outage, at least forty-eight (48) hours prior to taking Recreation.gov down.

a. Planned system outages will not be counted against the sixty (60) minutes of unplanned downtime described above. If the Contractor fails to provide the required notice forty-eight (48) hours preceding the onset of the outage, the R1S PMO may apply the downtime to the 60 minutes of unplanned downtime described above.

6.6.20. The toll-free telephone number and any websites will be provided by and must be retained by the Government for future use. The Contractor is solely responsible for all service transfer, service activation, and recurring monthly service charges associated with the use of the Government provided Toll Free telephone number(s). The Contractor is solely responsible for all telecommunications hardware and software required to route, track, and manage Customer Support calls in an effective and efficient manner.

6.6.21. All external consumer-facing and internal back-office user interface components and output products must comply with all applicable requirements of Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 (29 U.S.C. § 794d).

6.6.22. Some passes and tickets must be offered free of charge. For example, five of the eight Interagency Passes (IAPs) are free. This will be indicated in the CLIN structure, but may change as new inventory is added.

6.6.23. IAPs must be provided both digitally and in physical form. The Contractor is responsible for delivering the digital IAP. The Government is responsible for supplying and shipping the physical

IAP.

6.6.24. The system must support manual and offline use and validation of physical and digital passes and components, often in very remote locations, including anti-counterfeit measures, and maintain accurate linkage to a passholder’s digital account.

6.6.25. Once purchased through the system, a digital ticket or pass must be available to the user in no more than 30 seconds.

6.6.26. The Government anticipates that most existing facilities in the program will continue to use the reservation service in the future. However, circumstances may dictate the removal of certain facilities. The Government is not liable to replace these or add additional inventory to compensate for the loss of inventory at any time.

6.6.27. In the event that unforeseen circumstances, natural or man-made, mandate the closure of locations/facilities/activities/etc. for which there are active reservations in the system, the Contractor must work proactively with reservation holders to first reschedule or cancel (if necessary) active reservations at the reservation holders’ discretion.

a. No additional transaction fees or CLINs shall be charged as a result of reservation changes or cancellations as a result of Government-initiated closures, regardless of the driving force behind the closure.

b. The Contractor must not penalize a customer for Government closure of facilities whether that closure is due to an act of nature or man-made.

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6.7 Financial Transaction Management

A. Financial transactions are processed using modern, secure technology and managed precisely to ensure accuracy and audit-worthiness.

B. Transactions meet Treasury and Payment Card Industry (PCI) requirements.

C. The system automatically settles and reconciles transactions.

D. The system’s reporting platform provides standard and ad hoc reports and dashboards accessible by the government.

Additional Context and Known Requirements:

*Note that this is not inclusive of all requirements as the R1S services must continuously adapt to meet the evolving needs of the program.

6.7.1. The Contractor must accept all payment methods processed by the U.S. Treasury and the Bureau of

Fiscal Service’s designated credit card processor (currently Worldpay) or lockbox (currently US Bank). Example payment methods include but are not limited to Visa, Mastercard, Discover, American Express, Apple Pay, debit cards, cash, and check.

6.7.2. Payments must be accepted through all sales channels such as the ecommerce website, mobile app, contact center, and field locations. Field locations shall support modern best practice payment methods such as tap to pay, Euro, Mastercard, Visa (EMV) terminals, and offline scan and pay capabilities.

6.7.3. The Contractor must provide, manage, and maintain EMV terminals.

6.7.4. When processing credit and debit card transactions, the Contractor must comply with the Treasury

Financial Manual (TFM), Part 5, Chapter 7000, Credit and Debit Card Collection Transactions rules and security requirements. Security requirements include but are not limited to Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards (PCI DSS), EMV terminals for in person transactions, encryption, and tokenization.

6.7.5. The Contractor is responsible for processing chargebacks as directed by the R1S PMO.

6.7.6. The Contractor must reconcile all financial transactions (electronic and paper) by automatically obtaining financial data from the designated banks and matching all financial data to the appropriate transaction record and by automatically matching all payment failures/defaults/denials/charge backs/etc. to the appropriate transaction record.

6.7.7. The transaction reconciliation process must be automated to the maximum extent practical and must provide Government personnel with the ability to adjust system data as appropriate to match the financial data obtained from the designated bank within the guidelines of GAAP and prudent system financial controls to prevent the misappropriation of system funds.

6.7.8. The Contractor must provide reporting tools that pertain to all actions within the system including reservation data, customer and internal user accounts, analytics, system performance. The Contractor must provide system functionality that allows Contractor and Government personnel the ability to produce and/or request custom reports.

6.7.9. All collections are to be deposited in a designated U.S. Treasury account. Foreign currency is not accepted.

6.7.10. The Contractor must resolve any exceptions or discrepancies between the credit card processor data and the reservation system. The R1S PMO will be responsible for resolving any exceptions or discrepancies for lockbox transactions. Adequate system controls must exist to easily identify and resolve any unreconciled transactions.

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6.7.11. The R1S PMO will be responsible for the distribution of funds from the designated U.S. Treasury accounts as appropriate to all participating agencies, concessionaires, etc.

6.8 Outreach and Communications

A. Communications and outreach reinforce the R1S brand and participating agency missions and outreach objectives and reach desired audiences for action or awareness.

Additional Context and Known Requirements:

*Note that this is not inclusive of all requirements as the R1S services must continuously adapt to meet the evolving needs of the program.

6.8.1. The Contractor must develop an annual outreach and communication strategy in collaboration with the government strategic communication team within the R1S PMO and in consultation with agency representatives and leadership.

a. This strategy must be monitored for effectiveness and updated annually.

6.8.2. The Contractor must identify and produce outreach materials needed to support and deliver tactics within the strategy (i.e., brochures, videos, stickers, branded materials, etc.).

6.8.3. The Contractor must propose and execute measurement methods to ensure the efficacy of goals and objectives.

6.8.4. The Contractor must employ techniques to ensure Recreation.gov is returned at or near the top of relevant search engine results (Search Engine Optimization).

6.8.5. The Contractor must develop, produce, and provide a wide variety of outreach materials, color schemes and slogans/taglines to achieve the overall outreach goals.

6.8.6. The Contractor must provide comprehensive tools for sharing information to all registered system users. Notifications must be configurable in both content, recipient group, and means of transmission to include, but not be limited to, broadcast web messaging, push notifications to mobile app users, e-mail, and SMS/Text.

6.8.7. The Contractor must employ modern industry-best tools to seek customer feedback from all user types, conduct comprehensive analysis of that feedback to identify pain points for users, and inform decisions for continually improving the user experience.

6.8.8. The R1S PMO represents the interests of eight federal agencies. Keeping those agencies informed is critical to the success of the program. The Contractor must support the R1S in developing data products to support and inform participating agencies as required.

6.8.9. The Contractor must review, edit, format, and keep current all Government-provided web content for publishing.

6.8.10. The Government will review and approve all content posted through public-facing channels to include, but not limited to the website, mobile app, social channels, email, and newsletter distribution.

6.8.11. The Government will solely own and retain all rights to any and all R1S support services branding to include, but not be limited to, wireframes, design assets, original source documents, Photoshop files, all logos, names, tag-lines and slogans associated with the R1S support services regardless of whether those branding items were developed by Contractor or Government personnel or whether those…