Draft_SOW_HPI.docx

PART II – STATEMENT OF WORK STATEMENT (SOW)

1.0 Background

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) charters, regulates, and supervises the national banks and the federal branches and agencies of foreign banks. Headquartered in Washington, DC, the OCC is responsible for promoting and assuring the safety and soundness of the country’s system of national banks and maintaining its competitiveness, efficiency, integrity, and stability in the financial marketplace.

The OCC relies on home price indices to support its supervision efforts, conduct research on credit-risk modeling, and other policy-related work. The agency is committed to protecting data confidentiality and only aggregate results (e.g. regression coefficients and tabular and graphical summaries of data that do not reveal information about individual records) will be published and/or shared with external co-authors.

2.0 Objectives

The OCC requires a responsible contractor to provide neighborhood home price indicies (HPI) historical and current data (Data Set). The OCC will access this data through bulk data downloads. The contractor shall provide access that will allow bulk data downloads by the OCC of the required data.

3.0 Scope of Requirement

This HPI Data Set Requirement must encompass all elements and details necessary to provide Economics the required Data Set as listed in section 4.

4.0 Performance Requirements

4.1 Data Set - Technical Requirements

The Data Set shall contain the following:

· HPI historical and current data for the following geographical units: zip codes, counties, core based statistical area (CBSA), states, regions, and United States.

· Quarterly historical data back to at least the 1990's.

· At least 5 price tiers, and aggregate series.

· Price Series on Distressed Properties

· Price Series on Non-distressed Properties

· Price Series along property type: Single Family, Condo and All.

· Seasonally-adjusted data

· Non-seasonally adjusted data

· The bulk-downloads shall be provided as: sas7bdat, .csv, .txt, or .dat files

· The modeling methodology and source data used in estimation of HPI shall be sound and widely accepted. Methodology should be well-documented for non-disclosure states.

4.2 Data Set - Descriptive Details for Each Observation

The Data Set shall contain the following variables; month (or quarter); year; property type; geography indicators (including state, county, CBSA, and zip code) and crosswalk files linking various geographic locations; HPI at the following levels of granularity; 1) aggregate 2) price-tier level 3) single family vs. condo 4) distressed vs. non-distressed. In addition, there shall be flags for each market indicating stressed/non-stressed (e.g., whether REO sales were used to support the data); and disclosure/non-disclosure (e.g., whether sale price is available to the public in the market).

4.3 Data Set - Updates

The historical and current data in the Data Set shall be updated quarterly, but monthly is preferred. Changes to the data or the inclusion of new data shall be clearly identified in each update.

4.4 Data Set - Accessibility

The Data Set shall be Section 508 Compliant and accessible to allow OCC employees and contractors to extract the datasets and convert them into a standard database program. OCC employees and contractors shall be able to (1) share the datasets with other OCC employees and contractors, regardless of location; (2) make public presentations of their analysis of the dataset, in written, graphical or chart form; (3) use their analysis of the dataset to publish journal articles, working papers, or other articles; and (4) use the analysis of the dataset in their bank examination role.

4.5 Data Set - Technical Support

The contractor shall provide technical support to OCC users of the dataset, including guiding OCC users through the use of the data.

5.0 Deliverables

The contractor shall submit the documentation regarding the Data Set within 7 days of contract award. The documentation shall meet the following requirements:

(a) Data sources. The name and basic descriptive features of all the source database(s) and file(s) from which the Data Sets were developed. They shall include detailed information on crosswalk between the geographic coverage and these source database(s)/file(s). The documentation should explain how home price index is calculated in both disclosure and non-disclosure states and what databases are used to calculate it.

(b) Methodology. A detailed explanation of procedures (e.g., assumptions, econometric methodology, statistical test, etc.) by which the Data Sets were developed. This shall include a deep explanation of the supporting database used to develop the historical and current HPIs (e.g., transaction data vs. appraisal data; data age; inclusion of REO sales; minimum/median number of observations used in each geographic unit; explanatory variables used such as property features as well as neighborhood characteristics; etc.). The vendor is expected to provide detailed technical documentation of how the price index was calculated (Case-Shiller method vs. Bailey Mouth and Norse method vs. any other methods)

(c) Data definitions. Clear definitions of all data items provided.

The contractor shall throughout the course of performance of the contract provide responses to clarifying questions regarding the deliverables listed in items (a) - (c) above.

6.0 Method of Delivery

6.1 Bulk data electronic downloads. The contractor shall provide software or contractor services that shall allow quarterly or monthly historical and current HPI data tracing back to 1990 to be downloaded by the OCC on an ongoing monthly basis through a bulk data download. The contractor shall provide technical support associated with the Software usage to the OCC in order to download these data. The data shall be provided as .csv, .txt., or .dat files.

6.2 Documentation. The Documentation shall be delivered as electronic files, preferably as PDF documents.

7.0 Personnel Management

Contractor Point of Contact (POC). The Contractor shall identify a point of contact for this contract to interface with the OCC Point of Contact (POC).

8.0 Place of Performance

The contractor shall perform contract activities at its facilities.

9.0 Section 508

The Contractor shall provide and maintain Information Communications Technology (ICT) that meets applicable standards of Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, as amended. This applies to all software user-interfaces, web-based user-interfaces, and documents such as reports, job aids, guides, and plans. Resource for further details on these standards can be found at:

· Section 508 - https://www.access-board.gov/guidelines-and-standards/communications-and-it/about-the-ict-refresh/final-rule/text-of-the-standards-and-guidelines

· Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) - http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG20/#conformance

Electronic Content such as PDF, Word, and HTML delivered under this work statement shall meet the following standards:

· 302 – Functional Performance Criteria

· 602 – Support Documentation

· 603 – Support Services

· WCAG 2.0 level A and AA success criteria – applies to all Web-based deliverables Exception authorized: Non-Web documents are not required to meet the following WCAG 2.0 criteria: 2.4.1 Bypass Blocks, 2.4.5 Multi-ways, 3.2.3 Consistent Navigation, and 3.2.4 Consistent ID