NCES_Education_Projections_General_QA.doc

United States Department Of Education

Office of the Chief Financial Officer

Contracts and Acquisitions Management

NCES EDUCATION PROJECTIONS REQUIREMENT

November 26, 2013

General Questions

1. Is there an incumbent contractor performing the current statement or work, or a subset of this work? Can you identify that incumbent?

Response: IHS Global, Inc. is the current contractor.

2. Can you provide an estimate of hours that will be required to fulfill each task within the SOW?

Response: This information will be included in the instructions; however for quick reference, estimated hours for each task is:

3. In order to provide the best value to the government, we propose to separate Project Director/Chief Statistician into two separate roles, providing a separate Project Director as well as a Chief Statistician. Please verify that this approach is acceptable.

Response: The government will consider the proposed labor categories in your response; however best value will also be considered. The government does not anticipate a position of Project Director solely for leadership of the contract/task work. The ideal candidate should be able to conduct some of the task work as well as serve as a director in a leadership capacity.

4. Should we provide past performance references in our response to the performance work statement? If so, how many should we provide?

Response: Answer to this question will be in the Instructions to Offerors.

5. It is stated on page 10 of the PWS that “NCES data must be used and maintained on machines that are not networked into a company’s general network; work must be done in a physical space that allows access only by staff with appropriate clearance and independent from other work that would raise conflict of interest issues; must have sufficient secure storage and restricted access of hours.” Can you clarify whether access to any computers containing NCES data need to be physically separated from other staff (i.e., kept in a locked room). Would this stricture apply to all data utilized for the NCES models?

Response: The government does not envision computers used by staff working under this contract will be in a locked room; however we do expect that access to the computers and data can only be gained through a series of security efforts (secure ID and password; security card to log on, timeout of the screen if computer is not used within a certain period of time; mechanisms that treat materials as confidential and unreadable if someone not assigned under the contract is standing next to the desk).

6. Section VIII identifies a transition period. Should we budget for a transition period at the start of the contract? If so, under what task should this effort be placed, or should a separate task be created?

Response: Twenty hours for each of the three staff positions the government identified) (a total of 60 hours is anticipated for Transition at the beginning of the contract. You should budget and cost these hours and show them separately (under a heading titled, Transition) from the other task costs you propose under the contract.

Task 3 Questions

7. Task 3 requires the contractor to obtain access to historical values and forecasts of national variables. What data product is NCES currently using to provide these historical values and forecasts of national variables? Will the contractor be required to utilize the same, or does NCES prefer the contractor to solicit new sources?

Response: The historical values and forecasts of national variables are currently being supplied to NCES by the incumbent contractor, IHS Global, Inc. The government has been satisfied with the current source however the offeror can chose another source that also supplies the historical values and forecasts of the needed national data.

Task 4 Questions

8. What is the software platform currently used to produce these models?

Response: The models are currently in a system comprised of the computer programs Visual Basic and EViews.

9. Task 4 states that both the first set of three models and the second set of five models will be executed at least four times. Can you please clarify (preferably) an exact number, or (alternatively) the minimum and maximum number, of times that the contractor will be required to execute each type of model in each contract year?

Response: The number of times the models are executed varies by model. For the upcoming Projections of Education Statistics to 2022, the Data Transformation Model, the Elementary/Secondary Enrollment and High School Graduates Model, State Enrollment and High School Graduates Model, College Enrollment by Race/Ethnicity Model were each executed once; the Earned Degrees by Level Model and the Elementary/Secondary Current Expenditures Model were each executed twice; and the Elementary/Secondary Teachers Model and the College Enrollment Model were each executed four times. While the numbers of times each model is executed does vary from year to year, it is the case that the purely demographic models need to be executed fewer times than those with economic variables as well, such as the College Enrollment Model.

Task 5 Questions

10. Can you clarify the number of times that the contractor could be required to perform special programming requests?

Response: The number of special programming requests varies from year to year though we have never had more than four such requests in a given year.

11. What is the expected level of effort for each of these special programming requests?

Response: In some instances, the contractor will write code to output variables that have already been created within the NCES Education Modeling System. In other instances, the contractor will first write code to transform existing variables to produce the desired variables and then write the code to output these new variables.

Task 6 Questions

12. Task 6 requires an upgrade to the NCES Education Modeling System. Can you provide more detail about what would comprise an upgrade? For example, would this impact only one model, or multiple models? Would this require a change in software utilized?

Response: One type of update might be to simplify one or more of the models in order to eliminate parts of the model(s) that are no longer needed. (The original version of the model was developed in the early 1990’s and the model in its current form was developed in the early 2000’s.) Another type of upgrade might be to update the table generation system. A third type might be to change the software used for some parts of the modeling system.

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