Amendment 2 - Attachment J4 - 030ADV26R0047 QA_ 20260924 (pp. 13).pdf

Attachment J4 - 030ADV26R0047 – 09/24/2026 (pp.13)

Questions and Answers

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# Question Answer

Clause LC52.227-3 of contract

LCNLS20D0055; I.14; I.1

The 2020 development contract LCNLS20D0055 contained clause LC52.227-3, License of Copyright by the Contractor to the Library (Dec 2001) (Deviation). That clause recognised that the Contractor owns the copyright in the RealDialog Engine software and supporting documentation, treated the Work as restricted computer software and limited rights data in accordance with FAR 52.227-14(g), granted the Government a royalty-free, fully paid-up, non-exclusive, irrevocable license for up to 5,000 users continuing indefinitely, and provided that on termination or expiry the Library would receive a complete copy of the Work exclusive of the RealDialog Engine source code. It further provided that use of the RealDialog Engine is governed by the Contractor's commercial license agreement, subject to 36 C.F.R. 701.7.

No equivalent clause appears in this solicitation. Will the Library include a clause to the same effect, updated to reflect the current components and interfaces of the product and of the Library's infrastructure, in any resulting contract? The Contractor is willing to submit proposed wording with its offer.

Added LC52.227-3. Please submit proposed wording (if any) “to reflect the current components and interfaces of the product and of the Library's infrastructure.”

I.14 (LC52.227-1); FAR 52.227-14

(I.1) Clause I.14 states that the Contractor transfers and assigns to the Library any and all rights in the works produced under the contract, and describes the Library as the sole owner of those works. This is not consistent with FAR 52.227-14, which the solicitation also

Removed I.14/LC52.227-1

09/24/2026 Page 2 of 13 incorporates, and under which the Government receives an unlimited rights license to data first produced in performance of the contract rather than title, which remains with the Contractor.

Will the Library revise I.14 so that it refers to the Library as the recipient of unlimited rights rather than as owner, consistent with FAR 52.227-14?

I.14; H.9(c); C.1 to C.5 The deliverables described in Section C are perpetual licenses, technical support, reports and meetings. No developmental work is identified. The only description of developmental activity in the solicitation is H.9(c), which states that the Contractor shall develop, customize and/or configure the system according to system requirements and design specifications.

Will the Library confirm that there is no intention to develop material under H.9, and development does not extend to the Contractor's pre-existing software, its updates, or its documentation?

This is not a development contract.

The referenced section (H.9) has been removed.

C.6; FAR 52.227-14

Paragraph C.6 recognizes the Contractor's retained rights but refers only to the proprietary design of their devices. To remove ambiguity about pre-existing intellectual property developed at the Contractor's own expense, will the Library amend C.6 to read, with proposed additions shown in brackets:

“The contractor shall retain all ownership of copyright and license for the proprietary design of their devices [including but not limited to source code, object code and algorithms]. [In

Removed C.6

09/24/2026 Page 3 of 13 accordance with FAR 52.227-14, the contractor shall also retain all ownership and copyright to data previously developed under a government contract, where the government has received unlimited rights to said data.]”

I.1 (FAR 52.227-14 Alternate III); FAR 27.409 The solicitation incorporates Alternate III of FAR 52.227-14. Under FAR 27.409, Alternate III is used only where the contracting officer determines it is necessary to obtain restricted computer software, that is, software developed at private expense. Nothing in Sections B through J appears to require the delivery of restricted computer software, and C.6 indicates the opposite.

Why has Alternate III been included? If its inclusion was not intended, will the Library use the standard version of FAR 52.227-14 instead?

Updated to the base clause.

C.4.2.D; C.6; I.14 Under Scenario D the Library hosts the dialog engine as a binary blob. Will the Library confirm that the binary is provided under license and not by assignment; that hosting it confers no rights in the underlying software, models or algorithms; and that the Contractor's license terms prohibit reverse engineering, decompilation, redistribution, benchmarking, disclosure to third parties including other Library contractors, and any attempt to derive source code?

We do not understand the question.

The Library understood that we were entitled to a binary blob of the Dialog Engine under R&D contract. Without it, the Library would not be able to leverage our 5,000 perpetual licenses without RealSAM being involved. A question for RealSAM would be whether “provided under license” implies additional cost to the library or part of the Dialog Engine user license cost? RealSAM may address this in their proposal.

C.6; FAR 52.227-14(c); prior NLS contract Some material relevant to My Talking Books was developed under the Contractor's earlier NLS contract, and

Clause LC52.227-3 of contract LCNLS20D0055 has been added.

09/24/2026 Page 4 of 13 other material, including the dialog engine, was developed entirely at the Contractor's own expense and predates any Library contract.

Will the Library confirm the treatment of each category: that the Government holds unlimited rights to data previously developed at Government expense while title remains with the Contractor, and that data developed at private expense remains the Contractor's property and is licensed on commercial terms?

I.8 (LC52.204-27(b)(4)); FAR 52.227- 14(g) I.8 states that any Contractor rights in the data or deliverables must be identified as required by FAR 52.227- 11 through FAR 52.227-20. The solicitation provides no section or attachment for asserting restricted rights or restricted computer software.

Where, in what format, and by when should such assertions be submitted, and will assertions submitted with the proposal be incorporated into the resulting contract?

When the offeror submits their proposal, they can include an assumptions page that spells out their terms.

L.3 (Volume 2); M.2 Factor 2; FAR 52.212-4(s) Factor 2 defines technical acceptability as both parties coming to a written agreement on the offeror's licensing terms. Please clarify the mechanics:

will the Library identify any terms it considers unacceptable and allow the offeror to revise them; will discussions be held before an acceptability determination is made; what is the expected timeline relative to the closing date; and what happens if agreement is not reached on a single provision?

LC52.227-3 states that the license agreement is subject to 36 CFR 701.7, which indicates what elements of a commercial license agreement do not apply to the Library as a federal government agency. Otherwise, the Library may accept commercial license terms. Negotiations may be necessary in order to come to terms.

We cannot provide a timeline as to when both parties may come to terms.

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L.3 (Volume 2); M.2 Factor 2 Will the Library accept customary commercial license provisions on limitation of liability, exclusion of indirect and consequential damages, and the scope of intellectual property indemnity, and consider them under Factor 2 rather than treating them as material non-compliance?

LC52.227-3 states that the license agreement is subject to 36 CFR 701.7, which indicates what elements of a commercial license agreement do not apply to the Library as a federal government agency. Otherwise, the Library may accept commercial license terms and will consider them under Factor 2 rather than treating them as material noncompliance.

H.11 (LC52.239-5); C.4.2.A

H.11 requires design documentation demonstrating a FedRAMP compliant hosting environment. My Talking Books has been in production for the Library without a FedRAMP authorization, and C.4.2 describes that arrangement as Scenario A, the status quo.

Is FedRAMP authorization genuinely required under this contract, or is the intent that the Contractor continues to meet the Library's own security requirements and proceeds through the Library's assessment and authorization process under H.10? We ask because FedRAMP authorization carries very significant cost, both initially and annually, which would have to be reflected in unit prices for a service that operates today without it.

FedRAMP is preferred, but not required. If the offeror is not FedRAMP-certified, they must support the Library’s security-authorization process and remediate any findings that will impact their ability to get an ATO.

The offeror is also responsible for resolving any vulnerabilities subsequently discovered without incurring additional costs to the Library.

Security is not just a one-time exercise.

H.11; OMB M-24-15 of 25 July 2024;

C.4.2 A to D The Office of Management and Budget memorandum of 25 July 2024, Modernizing the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program, places certain categories of cloud computing product and service outside the scope of FedRAMP, including (1) information systems used only for a single agency's operations, hosted on cloud infrastructure or platform, that

The Library would consider exceptions, as long as they are able to meet the Library’s security requirements.

09/24/2026 Page 6 of 13 are not offered as a shared service and do not operate with a shared responsibility model, and (5) ancillary services whose compromise would pose a negligible risk to Federal information or information systems.

Will the Library confirm it considers those exceptions to apply to this service?

H.11; C.4.2.C; C.4.2.D H.11 is expressed to apply to non- Library of Congress owned and operated systems supporting a hosted application. Under Scenario D all components, including the dialog engine, are hosted by the Library.

Will the Library confirm that H.11 does not apply to the Contractor under Scenario D, and identify precisely which components remain within the scope of H.11 under Scenarios B and C?

Scenario D where the Library hosts everything would exclude RealThing from responsibility in this area.

Regarding the remaining scenarios:

• Scenario A: RealThing responsible for everything except AAA (authentication service), BARD (catalog and content service), Sentry.io (transactions and performance monitoring service), and SendGrid (email relay service).

• Scenario B: RealThing responsible for everything except Auth Proxy, AAA (authentication service), BARD (catalog and content service), Sentry.io (transactions and performance monitoring service), and SendGrid (email relay service).

• Scenario C: RealThing responsible for everything except Auth Proxy, Streaming Servers, AAA (authentication service), BARD (catalog and content service), Sentry.io (transactions and performance monitoring service), and SendGrid (email relay service).

H.10 (LC52.239-3A Alternate I)

Yes, the assumption is correct. MTB already has an authorization to operate (ATO), which puts the system

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The Contractor has prepared its pricing on the assumption that My Talking Books continues to operate as it does today, within the existing accreditation arrangements between the Contractor and the Library, and that no new or additional assessment, authorization or accreditation activity is required in order to provide the licenses and technical support acquired under this contract.

Will the Library confirm that this assumption is correct?

in compliance with H.10. ATO renewal occurs annually. If the Library changes its security policies in the future, however, this could change.

H.8 (LC52.239-1); Attachment J2 H.8 designates the work to be conducted as controlled unclassified information. The Contractor has prepared its pricing on the assumption that its existing information handling arrangements for this service, which have been in place throughout the period the service has operated for the Library, are sufficient to meet the requirements of H.8, and that no additional marking, storage, transmission or encryption infrastructure beyond current arrangements is required.

Will the Library confirm that this assumption is correct?

So that the Contractor can be certain of the scope, please also identify which data elements the Library treats as designated. If additional controls are required, please identify them specifically, including whether the marking, handling and encryption obligations extend to cloud infrastructure operated by third party providers. In that event the Contractor reserves the right to submit revised pricing.

This assumption is correct. The current system already has an authorization to operate (ATO) that is maintained annually.

H.9 (LC52.239-2); C.1 to C.5

Removed H.9

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H.9 imposes a full systems development life cycle, including a system requirements document, a system design document, testing, implementation and documentation.

Section C acquires licenses and support and identifies no development effort.

Will the Library confirm that H.9 applies only to task orders that expressly include development, customization or configuration work, and that no H.9 deliverables are required for the license and support deliverables in Section C?

H.5 (LC52.204-4); FAR 52.204-9; FAR

4.208(d) H.5 requires fitness determinations for contractor employees with regular unescorted access to Library premises, access to Library information technology systems, or access to non-public Library information. My Talking Books has been supported from outside the United States since it entered production, and F.2 anticipates performance at the Contractor's facility, so no member of the support team requires physical access to Library premises.

Will the Library confirm which roles it expects to require a fitness determination? In particular, is a determination required for technical support personnel who do not access Library systems beyond the documented interfaces to the Contractor's own systems?

H.5 appears to apply the same test as FAR 52.204-9, Personal Identity Verification of Contractor Personnel, which under FAR 4.208(d) is used where performance requires routine physical access to a Federally controlled facility or routine access to a Federally controlled information

Fitness determination only applies to resources who are required to access Library systems.

09/24/2026 Page 9 of 13 system. Does the Library intend to issue personal identity verification credentials to Contractor personnel under this contract?

18 H.5

Where a fitness determination is required, please confirm: the exception or waiver process for personnel who have not resided in the United States for three of the past five years; the expected processing time from submission to determination;

whether visitor badging is sufficient for occasional, escorted attendance at Library premises; and which costs, including any drug testing required under H.5(4) and ongoing continuous vetting, the Library expects the Contractor to bear.

There is no such process for personnel who have not resided in the United States for three of the past five years. The expected processing time is three to four weeks, depending on the speed of the submission. Any contractor who has recurring access needs to Library needs to be vetted & badged. The Library bears the costs for investigations and continuous vetting. The contractor bears the cost of drug testing, as per

LC52.204-4 CONTRACTOR

EMPLOYEE FITNESS (SEP 2024).

C.4.1; C.4.3.A; Attachment J3 title and license row C.4.1 states that new perpetual licenses do not cover technical support or associated infrastructure costs, and the license row in Attachment J3 is headed excludes maintenance and support. However C.4.3.A states that for new licenses these support services will be provided for each and every license purchased as part of the purchase price, and the title of Attachment J3 reads New Licenses (with support).

Which governs? If support is included in the purchase price of a perpetual license, over what period is that support provided?

Support for a perpetual license (legacy or new) would be covered by any of the Perpetual RealSAM Dialog License Support scenarios outline in rows 7 through 10 of Attachment J3 - Pricing Chart.

C.4.2 A to D; Attachment J3;

Statement of Work posted 20 August 2026 The lettering of the hosting scenarios in C.4.2 of this solicitation is the reverse of that in the Statement of

If by “previously posted” the offeror is referring to the SOW from the J&A, yes. The SOW from Solicitation # 030ADV26R0047 governs in its entirety. Yes, scenarios A, B, C, and D correspond to cells 7-10 in Attachment J3.

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Work previously posted, in which Scenario A was the Library hosting the authentication proxy.

Will the Library confirm that Section C of 030ADV26R0047 governs in its entirety, and that the four support rows in Attachment J3 correspond to Scenarios A, B, C and D respectively?

C.4.2 Note; H.9; H.10 C.4.2 states that the Contractor shall not charge the Library for transitioning from Scenario A to another scenario.

Does that prohibition extend to migration engineering, deployment into Library infrastructure, integration and parallel running, security accreditation support under H.10, and documentation under H.9?

The scale and timing of that work cannot be forecast and therefore cannot responsibly be priced on a firm fixed price basis. Would the Library consider ordering it under a separately priced line on a time and materials or labor hour basis?

Migration engineering would be covered under a separate development contract to support technical work of this nature.

C.1 to C.5; Attachment J2 Section C includes no development work, yet the service will require ongoing adaptive work as third-party interfaces change, including BARD Login, the Alexa skills interface and the monitoring integration.

Does the Library intend to place a separate contract or task order to cover that work, and may it be ordered under the Contractor's existing NLS contract? If so, will the Library confirm that H.9 applies to that work rather than to the licenses and support acquired under this solicitation?

Yes. Adaptive work will be covered a separate contract for Agile software development services.

B.1; SF1449 Blocks 23 and 24

The offeror should provide prices for each scenario in the pricing chart/price schedule found in

09/24/2026 Page 11 of 13

B.1 presents a single line item 0001 for

1.00 LOT with a grand total for the

period of performance. Given four mutually exclusive scenarios and unit pricing in Attachment J3, what figure should the offeror insert in SF1449 Blocks 23 and 24, and on what assumed quantities and scenario?

attachment J3. The offeror should leave blocks 23 and 24 blank.

Attachment J1 IDs 1 to 7, Target column Please confirm the intended meaning of the 98.6% per month target. Is it that at least 98.6% of tickets in the month must meet the stated time period, so that a ticket exceeding the period counts as a single non-compliant event regardless of the extent of the overrun?

Please also confirm the denominator, the data source, and who performs the measurement described as direct measurement.

Yes, 98.6% of tickets addressed during the month must meet the stated SLA goal. Yes, on a single ticket counting as a single non-complaint event, regardless of overrun.

RealThing shall provide this report as part of C.5.2.G.

Attachment J1 IDs 2 to 7; C.4.3.C Please define business hours as used in Attachment J1 IDs 2 to 7. Taking the help desk window in J1 ID 1 of 9am to 5pm eastern time, is 72 business hours intended to mean 72 hours within that window, that is nine business days?

C.4.3.C uses 72 business hours and 72 hours in the same paragraph and the two are not equivalent.

Yes, 72 business hours translated to 9 business days. The request here is to let us know if an issue cannot be addressed within 3 business days.

26 Attachment J1 ID 7 measures the period from ticket creation to incident resolution and restoration of service to the user. The Contractor's understanding is that it provides level- 2 technical support to the Library only, and does not engage with patrons, network libraries or other organizations. Will the Library confirm that understanding?

Yes, on level-2 technical support since patrons and network librarians engage directly with NLS staff who will escalate issues to RealThing.ai as needed. The NLS Download group serves as Tier 1 support for all NLS products. This group triages issues before routing them to the appropriate responsible party.

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Faults may originate in the patron's home environment, at a network library, or in Library systems. How does the Library intend the resolution measure to apply in those cases?

Attachment J1; C.4.2 A to D;

Attachment J2 To which pricing scenarios does Attachment J1 apply? Under Scenarios B, C and D the Library operates components the Contractor does not control, and Attachment J2 identifies the Alexa platform, BARD and BARD Login as Library or Amazon managed.

Will the Library confirm that service-level measurement excludes incidents arising from Library managed components, Amazon platform events and other third-party outages?

Attachment J1 applies to all scenarios. Yes, all SLAs excluded systems and services that are not managed by RealThing.ai. The contractor is not responsible for third-party outages (such as AWS, Sentry.io, AAA, and BARD).

28 Attachment J2

Attachment J2 names Amazon Web Services as a component. It is underlying infrastructure that may be substituted in future without any change to the licensed functionality or service levels. Will the Library remove it from Attachment J2?

“Amazon Web Services” has been replaced with “RealThing.ai Infrastructure” to cover any such RealThing.ai infrastructure needed to support the system. (see Attachment J2 - My Talking Books (RealSAM) Components v2)

Attachment J2; L.3 Will the offeror's proposal, or Attachment J2, be incorporated into the resulting contract? If so, the Contractor's flexibility to change tooling is materially affected and Attachment J2 should be amended accordingly.

The offeror’s proposal will not be incorporated into the resulting contract.

I.3 (FAR 52.216-18(a)) The ordering period dates in I.3 are blank: such orders may be issued from ___ through ___. Please insert the intended dates.

Inserted dates.

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Justification and Approval The Justification and Approval refers to Plan ID 2026-NLS-0066 in the document header and 2027-NLS-0066 in Part 1. Please confirm the correct Plan ID for reference in the proposal.

The correct acq. plan # is 2027-NLS- 0066.

L.3 L.3 states that the proposal shall be no more than ten pages, excluding resumes and pricing, and separately applies a ten-page limit to Volume 1.

Does the ten-page limit apply to Volume 1 alone or to Volumes 1 and 2 combined? Given that L.3 requires all applicable licensing terms to be set out in plain language, will the Library exclude Volume 2 from the page count?

Yes, we can exclude volume 2 from the page count.

L.3 Volumes 1 and 2 Volume 1 is required to address the technical approach including their licensing terms, while Volume 2 is a separate licensing terms volume. May the licensing terms be presented once in Volume 2 and cross referenced from Volume 1, to avoid duplication within the page limit?

Yes.

SF1449; L.3

Is a signed SF1449 required as part of the offer, and is it excluded from the page count?

No. If the offeror includes a signed SF1449, it can be excluded from the page limit.