questions.docx

1. Given conflicts in time and travel raised by the Thanksgiving holiday, we would like to ask if the government would consider a one-week extension of the proposal due date to December 8.

The Government will grant an extension till 12/8/14 at noon EST for all volumes of the proposal.

2. Section L, page 18 says “The offeror shall provide a response to include four volumes: Volume I –Technical Proposal, Volume II - Past Performance Information, and Volume III - Price Proposal.” A fourth volume is not described. Has this description been omitted? Related to this is the absence of any reference in the described contents of the three listed volumes to the Representations and Certifications or the subcontracting plan. If these are not supposed to be included in the fourth volume, where should they be submitted?

That is an error and has been corrected to read “…include three volumes…”

3. Section L gives a page limit for Volume 1 (50 pages) and a separate page limit for key personnel resumes (2 pages each). Do the key personnel resumes count against the 50-page limit or are they in addition to the 50-page limit?

The resumes will not count against the 50 page limit. Table L-6 has been updated to reflect the clarification.

4. L-9 says that the Offeror shall mail or hand carry the proposal for delivery. Is a package delivery service considered to be an acceptable form of “mail” delivery?

Yes, if an offeror wishes to use a delivery service, i.e. UPS, Fedex, etc., that would be acceptable. The offeror is responsible for timely submission.

Section C, page 10 says “proposals should assume that services under tasks 1-4 will end at the end of FY 2019.” In all other sections of the contract (for example, Table B.1 on page 5), Tasks 1-4 are indicated as ending on 3/27/19. Which is correct?

To further clarify, Table B.1 now contains two CLIN’s for tasks 1-4, with separate POP’s, that will be issued as distinct task orders.

Section C, page 33 says “The current contract includes TRC services through the end of FY2015. As such, proposals should provide Technical Review Committee activities starting in FY2016.” We believe the end date for the TRC task in the current contract is 4/30/15. Should proposals start TRC activities on 5/1/15 instead?

TRC activities shall begin on 5/1/15—the text has been updated accordingly.

Section C, page 34 says “The current contract provides Data Files, File Maintenance and User Services through the end of April, 2015. As such, proposals should include Technical Review Committee activities starting in May, 2015.” We assume the second sentence should read “As such, proposals should include Data Files, File Maintenance and User Services activities starting in May, 2015.”

Correct. It has been updated to: ‘As such, proposals should include Data Files, File Maintenance and User Services activities starting in May, 2015.’

Section C, page 74 lists Task 16 as “Post Survey Tasks for Round 26 NLSY79.” We believe the correct title for this task should be “Post Survey Tasks for Round 18 NLSY97” as in Table B-1, and all subsequent references to the NLSY79 or Round 26 throughout the text of this task should be corrected to refer to the NLSY97 or Round 18. Is this correct?

Correct. The text in Section C shall be updated to Round 18.

Section C, page 84 lists Subtask 17.1 We believe this is incorrectly numbered and should be 19.1.

Correct, p.84 should read 19.1.

Several deliverables appear to be due before the contract will be in effect. Referring to the Tasks AQL Table in section C, we have the following concerns:

· Task 5, R26 Post-Survey, 1. Created variable plan. This is due 3 months after the start of main fielding, which would give a projected due date of February 10, 2015. Can we suggest a revised deliverable date of 30 days after the contract starts.

Task 5, Deliverable 1 shall be amended to read ‘Due 30 days after the start of the contract’.

· Task 6, R17 Pretest, 2. OMB clearance documents. These have already been submitted under the current contract. Should this deliverable be removed?

Task 6, Deliverable 2 has been removed from Section C and the AQL table.

· Task 6, R17 Pretest, 3. Fielding Plan and Survey Sample Management Plan. These are due 9 months prior to the start of the pretest. The pretest is scheduled for June 2015, which means that these plans would have been due in September 2014. Can we suggest a revised deliverable date of 30 days after the contract starts? (However, please also see question 14 about the difference in deliverable dates between Section C text and the AQL table. If the Section C text is correct and the final plans are due after the pretest, we would suggest submitting draft plans 30 days after the contract start date and revising after the pretest if necessary.)

The due date for Task 6, Deliverable 3 as listed in the AQL has been updated to read, ‘Final version is due no later than 30 days after the end of the pre-test period’.

Task 19 covers R28 fielding for the main NLSY79, and Task 24 covers R28 fielding for the child and YA. R28 fielding is projected to end in June 2019, well after the stated contract end date of 3/27/2019. How should we approach this?

The Period of Performance for a task order can extend beyond the IDIQ contract end date, as long as the period of performance for the task order begins before the IDIQ expires.

A number of deliverables fall after 3/27/2019, the stated end date of the contract. The se include:

a) Task 16, deliverables 3, 4, and 5. These R18 data files are due 13-15 months after the end of NLSY97 R18 data collection, which is scheduled to end approximately 6/2018. Due dates would therefore be 7/2019-9/2019.

Anticipated POP for Task 16 extends beyond the contract end date.

b) Task 19, deliverables 2 and 3. These are deliveries of data files related to the end of R28 NLSY79 fielding. R28 fielding is projected to end in 6/2019. We cannot deliver the data before the end of the contract period.

Anticipated POP for Task 19 extends beyond the contract end date.

c) Task 21, deliverables 1, 4, 5, and 6. The NLSY97 R19 pretest is projected for 6/2019. We therefore cannot conduct the pretest or deliver pretest data (deliverable 4) before the end of the contract period. The R19 main fielding is projected to start 9/2019. Therefore deliverables 1 (post CAPI/CATI questionnaire online), 5 (main fielding respondent materials) and 6 (interviewer training materials), related to the start of main fielding, also fall after 3/27/2019.

Anticipated POP for Task 21 extends beyond the contract end date.

d) Task 22, deliverables 1, 2, and 3. The pretest for Round 29 does not appear in this RFP but assuming that the same schedule is maintained, it would be projected to start in June 2020. Deliverable 1, preliminary questionnaire, is due 9 months before the pretest, or September 2019. Deliverable 2, Survey Sample Management Plan (preliminary version), is due 12 months before the pretest, or June 2019. Deliverable 3, Fielding Plan (preliminary version), is also due 12 months before the pretest, or June 2019. How should we approach these deliverable items?

Anticipated POP for Task 22 extends beyond the contract end date.

According to Section C, the final reports for each round should provide “a brief summary of design, preparation, fielding, and data dissemination” (R26-Task 5.3 on page 46, R17-Task 8.3 on page 54, R27-Task 12.3 on page 66, R18-Task 16.3 on page 78). The deliverable dates for these reports in the AQL table are listed as 3 months after the end of the field period. It is not feasible to report on data dissemination a full year before the final data files for the round (geocode and zipcode/Census tract) are released (15 months after the end of the field period). We also would not have a complete sense of “problems with coding that might affect researchers” until the data processing task is complete. Finally, timings and interviewer characteristics require a significant amount of processing time and would not be available within the 3-month time frame. We would suggest that either the RFP be amended to drop these tasks from the description of the report content or the deliverable date be adjusted to not earlier than 15 months after the end of the field period. Note that if the deliverable date is adjusted, the new date for NLSY97 R18 will fall after the end date of the contract (it will be approximately 9/2019).

· The deliverable dates in the AQL have been modified.

· The anticipated POP for R18 extends beyond the contract end date.

The text in Section C for each round of the Pre-Test task lists output 3 as “Fielding Plan and Survey Sample Management Plan, revised based on pre-test experience” (R17-Task 6 on page 49, R27-Task 10 on page 60, R18-Task 14 on page 72, R28-Task 18 on page 84, R19-Task 21 on page 91). However the AQL table says “final version due 9 months prior to the start of pre-test fielding” (R17-page 100, R27-page 101, R18-page104, R28-page 106, R19-page 109). Which is correct?

Section C is correct and the AQL has been updated accordingly.

A number of items are mentioned as deliverables in the text of section C but are not listed in the AQL table or in the formal lists of deliverables at the end of each task. For example, we noticed this discrepancy with

· The annotated outline and preliminary questionnaire draft mentioned in each survey planning task;

· the pretest plan, pretest respondent materials, and pretest report mentioned in each survey preparation task; and

· the weighting plan mentioned in each post survey task.

· There is also no delivery date specified for the user outreach plan in task 4.4.

Tentative dates for the first three bullets have been added to the AQL. Task 4.4 is due no later than 1 year from the start if the contract.

On page 117, section H.7, Small Business Subcontracting Plan, the RFP says “the offeror representing a large business shall submit a Small Business Subcontracting Plan, based on the Small Business Subcontracting template in Section J.” There is no Small Business Subcontracting template in Section J of the RFP. Is a Small Business Subcontracting Plan required and, if so, can you provide the Small Business Subcontracting template that should be in Section J?

The solicitation has been amended to reflect the addition of a subcontracting plan template in Section H.16. The RFP now refers to the template as being located in H.16

The solicitation states that the contractor must comply with the “Moderate Baseline of security controls catalogued in the most recent version of NIST SP 800-53.” We would like to request clarification of what will be expected of the contactor with regard to NIST SP 800-53 Appendix J, Privacy Controls. NIST provides the following guidance on this appendix: “While the security controls in Appendix F are allocated to the low, moderate, and high baselines in Appendix D, the privacy controls are selected and implemented based on the privacy requirements of organizations and the need to protect the PII of individuals collected and maintained by organizational information systems and programs, in accordance with federal privacy legislation, policies, directives, regulations, guidelines, and best practices.”

Since there is no mapping between the Moderate Baseline and these controls, will the contractor be expected to implement them? If so, which of these items should we plan to implement? The implementation of additional controls will have significant budget implications so we will need to know in advance if they will be required under this contract.

Appendix J shall be removed from the solicitation.

The solicitation states on page 21 that “All applications are fully functional and operate correctly as intended on systems using the United States Government Configuration Baseline (USGCB)…” However, USGCB is applicable only to desktop operating systems, not server operating systems (Windows Server 2008/12, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5/6). Can the contractor assume that this section is therefore only applicable to desktop operating systems? If so, could the solicitation be updated or amended to read as suggested below?

“All applications are fully functional and operate correctly as intended on desktop systems using the United States Government Configuration Baseline (USGCB), if available for that system, see http://usgcb.nist.gov/. Other systems should use selected security checklists, with guidance from ‘NIST SP 800-70 Rev. 2, National Checklist Program for IT Products: Guidelines for Checklist Users and Developers.’”

The USGCB can apply to more than desktops. Currently the only USGCB (United States Government Configuration Baseline) established are for desktops. We think the language can stay as is. The contractor can assume the provision is applicable to any system for which a USGCB is available.

19. Neither the current contract nor the new RFP has a deliverable covering the submission of the NLSY79 Round 26 pretest data to BLS. Does BLS want us to deliver this data and, if so, on what schedule? We would note that the pretest is being conducted now and should end in the next few weeks, so a deliverable date of 4 weeks after the end of the pretest would fall before the start date of the new contract.

This proposed contract does not include a deliverable for the Round 26 pretest. Questions regarding the current NLS contract should be directed to the CO.