Request_for_Information_(RFI)_No._72027819R00010__-_Amendment_No._3.pdf

Subject: Request for Information No. 72027819R00010 / Amendment No. 3

Activity Name: Women’s Economic Empowerment and Leadership Activity (WEELA)

Date of Issuance: September 19, 2019

The Request for Information for the Women’s Economic Empowerment and Leadership

Activity is amended for the following purposes:

1) To announce the Co-Creation and Co-Design Workshop for the Women’s Economic

Empowerment and Leadership Activity, see attached invitation.

2) To provide the Co-Creation and Co-Design Workshop Welcome Packet.

3) To provide the Co-Creation and Co-Design Workshop Agenda.

Thank you for your continuing interest in this important development initiative.

Sincerely, Michael Ashkouri, Esq.

Supervisory Contracting Officer

ATTACHMENTS:

Attachment 1: Co-Creation and Co-Design Workshop Invitation.

Attachment 2: Co-Creation and Co-Design Workshop Packet.

Attachment 3: Co-Creation and Co-Design Workshop Agenda.

Attachment 4: Transcript on Intellectual Property and Co-creation.

Attachment 1

Invitation to Co-creation and Co-design Workshop for

Women's Economic Empowerment and Leadership Activity (RFI No. 72027819R00010)

Who: All interested firms

Where: Grand Hyatt Amman

Jabal Amman, Hussein Bin Ali Street

Amman, 11183, Jordan

When: Tuesday, October 15th, 2019

Workshop - 8:30AM – 4:30PM EST

A firm must register by 12:00pm Tuesday, October 8th, 2019 if it is interested in the Co-creation and Co-design Workshop, and if it is in good standing with the U.S.

Government. Please be sure to include the name(s) of the person(s) (maximum of two) who would represent your firm. Firms that register will then be notified of their registration status.

Due to seating limitations, participation in this Co-creation and Co-design Workshop will be limited to approximately 85 representatives of all firms. Thank you for your understanding and cooperation. In order to register for the session, please provide the information requested in the pre-registration form (see link (URL) below). Notes from the workshop will be publicly posted soon after it is completed.

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSewrowMBdCfBp1VfkIgkYtkjKKjaFKCXLxloBI1

BPCri6GCsA/viewform?usp=sf_link

If you have questions, please submit them to the following email addresses:

jordan_weela@usaid.gov.

Thank you for your interest in working with USAID.

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSewrowMBdCfBp1VfkIgkYtkjKKjaFKCXLxloBI1BPCri6GCsA/viewform?usp=sf_link https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSewrowMBdCfBp1VfkIgkYtkjKKjaFKCXLxloBI1BPCri6GCsA/viewform?usp=sf_link mailto:jordan_weela@usaid.gov

Attachment 2

Co-Creation Workshop Packet USAID/Jordan’s Women’s Economic Empowerment and

Leadership Activity (WEELA)

In this letter, we will provide the following:

● Logistics

● Workshop objective

● What to expect

● Draft Agenda

LOGISTICS:

The co-creation workshop will be held at The Grand Hyatt Hotel, Jabal Amman, Hussein Bin

Ali Street, Amman, Jordan.

WORKSHOP OBJECTIVES:

Co-creation is a new and unique approach for USAID meant to freely foster collaboration, partnership, and innovation. The purpose of this Co-creation Workshop is for USAID to build on the WEELA co-creation and co-design workshop from August 28th in Washington D.C., and to engage the local Joradnian firms in shaping the Statement of Objectives (SOO) for this activity.

WHAT TO EXPECT

You can expect an experience that will show you the power of collaboration, and just how much work can be done in a short period of time when everyone is focused on the same challenge.

After opening remarks and introductions, we will dive right into creating a shared understanding of the context and environment of the challenge, and how best to address them. This will help expose the full nature of the issues and gives participants an opportunity to share their knowledge and points of view. Though participants all represent an organization, there will also be a need to think about how to build partnerships to reach this goal. Given the breadth and depth of expertise planning to attend, this will be a full-day discussion that promises outcome based ideas. Participants should come prepared to have conversations, challenge yourselves and your peers, and think critically around the RFI that was provided.

WHAT HAPPENS AFTER THE WORKSHOP?

The notes from this co-creation workshop will be shared either as an amendment to the RFI or as an attachment to any anticipated requirements. This co-creation workshop is not an indication that USAID will proceed with a procurement of the items contained in this RFI. This RFI is an opportunity for USAID to obtain information from interested parties regarding the anticipated requirement. In accordance with FAR 15.201(e), responses to this notice are not offers and cannot be accepted by the U.S. Government to form a binding contract. Responses to this RFI are strictly voluntary. Responses to this RFI will not be returned and respondents will not be notified of the result of the review. If a solicitation is issued, it will be announced on the Federal

Business Opportunities website http://www.fbo.gov at a later date, and all interested parties must respond to that solicitation announcement separately from any response to this announcement.

This RFI does not restrict the Government's approach on a future solicitation. Participation in http://www.fbo.gov/ this workshop is not required for eligibility to respond to a future solicitation related to this activity.

DRAFT AGENDA

Attached is the tentative agenda. Be ready for a lot of engaging and productive conversations!

INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY

For information on co-creation and intellectual property, we’ve provided a link for you to view https://youtu.be/Gscp1wZlm9k or read (see attached Transcript on Intellectual Property and co-creation.

https://youtu.be/Gscp1wZlm9k

Attachment 3

DRAFT AGENDA

Co-Creation and Co-Design Workshop

Women Economic Empowerment and Leadership Activity

October 15, 2019

Grand Hyatt Hotel, Amman, Jordan

08:30 - 09:00 Coffee & Registration

09:00 - 10:10 Opening Remarks

Setting up Purpose and Expectations of Workshop

10:10 - 10:30 Break

10:30 - 15:30 Ideation Sessions to Discuss Aspects of the Women Economic

Empowerment and Leadership Activity

SESSION 1: Objectives to support the current stagnation to women's increased access to employment and to overcome the impediments to women's active participation and leadership in the economy

SESSION 2: Meaningful engagement with the private sector to increase women's participation in the labor force; Market-based approach to addressing the challenge of women's low participation and leadership in the labor market

SESSION 3: Self-reliance is a critical element of this activity.

Implementation structures, and partnerships to achieving tangible real capacity building of local partners, long-term local solutions, and sustained results; Creation of meaningful partnerships with and among local entities to further advance the objectives of this activity; Best approaches for building such partnerships and to guarantee that each of the partnering local entities would have a meaningful role in implementation.

13:00 - 14:30 Lunch

14:30 - 15:30 Continue Ideation Session

15:30 - 16:15 Q&A

16:15 - 16:30 Wrap Up and Closing Remarks

Attachment 4

Transcript: Co-Creation - Intellectual Property (3-5 minute interview)

Interviewer: Hello...my name is (state your name and title) and I am joined here with the

Agency’s Chief Innovation Counsel, Gayle Girod. Hello, Gayle.

Gayle: Hello (name of Interviewer) and thank you for having me. I look forward to answering your questions about Intellectual Property during the co-creation process.

Interviewer: Great! Can you first tell us what exactly is Intellectual Property?

Gayle: Intellectual property generally means a created work or invention to which rights can be attached, such as copyrights, patents, and trademarks. At USAID, most of our intellectual property rights issue surround copyrights in data and written documents.

Interviewer: How does USAID address Intellectual Property rights with its partners?

Gayle: Under the standard terms and conditions of our awards, our partners receive the ownership of any intellectual property created or used with USAID funding, and USAID obtains a broad license to use and allow others to use the intellectual property. So while the partner owns the IP, we are able to use the IP for government uses and sublicense such IP to third parties for government uses. There are many variations on how IP is handled, all dependant on the clauses included in the awards, but they generally fit this model.

Interviewer: In the context of co-creation, how can participants ensure their intellectual property is protected in this process?

Gayle: We start co-creation before an agreement is in place. That means that there are no agreed upon terms to address the IP that may arise during co-creation. Because of this, partners are leary, rightfully so, to disclose any IP that they want to protect. As we do in our BAA solicitation, we should let partners know that they should not disclose any IP that they wish to protect. So in essence, their written submission and discussions during co-creation should only include their higher level marketing-type materials, which are not proprietary.

Interviewer: Now I understand there is language in the Broad Agency Announcement regarding information protection. However, partners continue to bring this up during the co-creation process. Is there something else we should be doing to re-emphasize this and/or provide clarity?

Gayle: As we move forward with the partner, if there comes a time prior to entering into an agreement where the partner needs to disclose some proprietary information, work with GC or your Resident Legal Officer to determine a way forward.

Basically, as U.S. Government employees, we all have a legal obligation to protect sensitive information that we learn in the course of our employment. This includes direct hires and PSCs.

This confidentiality obligation also applies to institutional support contractors through their employers. The obligation to protect information from disclosure includes any proprietary information that a partner discloses during co-creation. There are civil and criminal penalties for a violation of this obligation. Sometimes letting the partner know about these laws provides them a level of protection.

There may be cases where the partner needs to disclose confidential information to other parties in the course of co-creation and/or they are not satisfied that the above laws alone adequately protect their interests. In such cases, you can work with your lawyer to see if there is a way to enter into a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) that the parties can sign. Note that NDAs must be carefully reviewed by legal to ensure they do not contain clauses that violate the law. Almost all of the third party NDAs I have seen need to be revised to remove such clauses, so please make sure to include legal.

Interviewer: Can a participant ask other participants to sign documents that protect its IP?

Is there a formal mechanism for this? And what happens if one or more of the other participants are unwilling to sign? How will USAID resolve such a situation?

Gayle: As parties are working together as a consortium, they can enter into, independently, any non-disclosure agreements that they’d like. We are not a party to those agreements, and so we should not be involved in reviewing them. Any conflict between parties must also be resolved by them.

Co-creation can yield huge benefits to the agency in outside perspective and know how. And co-creation is about sharing. It’s up to the partner to determine what they are comfortable with.

There may be some partners that will not participate because of this. While we can try to work with them, it is ultimately their decision whether to participate.

Interviewer: Any last words?

Gayle: While partners bring their own Intellectual Property to the table, we need to be thinking of the IP assets that are funded under our awards. The issues we just discussed on IP during co-creation are just the tip of the iceberg. We should be thinking about IP considerations when we first conceive of a program and especially before we enter into an agreement with a party, to ensure that any intellectual property that is created using USAID funding is used to its full advantage towards our development objectives. GC is happy to help think through these issues.