6100058867 - Addendum 2.docx

SOLICITATION ADDENDUM

To All Suppliers:

The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania defines a solicitation “Addendum” as an addition to or amendment of the original terms, conditions, specifications, or instructions of a procurement solicitation (e.g., Invitation for Bids or Request for Proposals).

List any and all changes:

Question #1

Jobs Requiring AOPC Interpreters: This is the most concerning area in the new contract. The new contract only lists the suggested rates on the AOPC Payment Schedule for legal jobs. The old contract allowed for an “AOPC Hourly Administrative Fee” that could be charged by interpreting agencies in addition to our regular rate on any jobs requiring AOPC.

ASL Interpreters are typically paid a premium rate for jobs in this legal setting. The other thing to consider is the rates charged by an agency like ourself are higher than the rates paid to the individual interpreters. There are additional overhead costs for our scheduling and payroll processing staff, employee benefits, software, tax processing, etc. So that is why the rate charged by an agency is always somewhat higher. That AOPC payment schedule is the suggested rates for paying interpreters under that program. Unfortunately, it is somewhat unrealistic when looking at rates paid for ASL interpreters. In fact, the lowest levels of pay for legal interpreters per the AOPC schedule comes in at slightly lower than what we must pay to secure interpreters for NON-LEGAL jobs in the community. Our standard rate we charge to the courts is actually higher than the highest rate on that AOPC schedule.

The old contract having the “AOPC administrative fee” made it very convenient for us to be able to bill the premium amounts above our regular weekday rates to cover our costs for securing the AOPC interpreters. The only time that this has ever really come up with the DGS interpreting contract was for Parole Hearings, Disability Hearings, or Workers Compensation Hearings, and having that admin fee added on to the billing allowed us to bill so as to cover our costs for the interpreters. However, if the new contract is going to limit us to only bill per that AOPC schedule, then we will not be able to support the requests we get that require an AOPC interpreter. We really want to be able to support these ongoing needs, but we will be unable to participate if the billing must be limited to that payment schedule.

Answer #1

Please see the Revised Statement of Work eff 11022023 and Attachment A – Revised Hourly Rate & Service Location Nov 2 2023.

Question #2 For Offline Captioning Transcription, will you accept an automated captioning service that is comparable in quality to human-generated captions?

Answer #2

The Commonwealth is not accepting automated captioning services for this solicitation.

Type of Solicitation: Electronic Bid (SRM) - Review the Questions section of your solicitation response to ensure you have responded, as required, to any questions relevant to solicitation addenda issued subsequent to the initial advertisement of the solicitation opportunity.

Except as clarified and amended by this Addendum, the terms, conditions, specifications, and instructions of the solicitation and any previous solicitation addenda, remain as originally written.

Respectfully,

BOP-1305

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