transcript.doc

PSC-ED-OVAE

Moderator: Sheryl Adler

05-09-12/1:11 pm CT

Confirmation # 5598429

PSC-ED-OVAE

Moderator: Sheryl Adler May 9, 2012 1:11 pm CT Coordinator:

We would like to thank all parties for standing by and to advise you we’ve placed your lines on listen-only until the question-and-answer segment of today’s conference. At that time you will press star 1 on your touch-tone phone to ask a question.

This conference is being recorded. Should you have any objections, please disconnect at this time. I would now like to turn the call over to Sheryl Adler.

Sheryl Adler:

Thank you (Rheanne) and thank you everybody for joining us today and your interest in our new procurement, adult education and immigrant integration. This is a new requirement for the Office of Vocational and Adult Education and so we’re very excited to be doing this Webinar to talk a little bit more about our requirements.

I’m going to do a brief round of introductions here so that you know who is in the room with us. Again my name is Sheryl Adler and I work in OVAE’s executive office.

Heidi Silver-Pacuilla:

Good afternoon, this is Heidi Silver-Pacuilla. I’m in DAEL, the Division of Adult Education and Literacy.

(Carl Moline):

My name is (Carl Moline). I’m the Contract Specialist on this procurement.

(Melanie Parton):

Hello, I’m (Melanie Parton) with the (unintelligible) office small business program.

(Patricia Gomez):

Hello, this is (Patricia Gomez). I’m also with DAEL.

(George McFranz):

Good afternoon, my name is (George McFranz). I’m also with DAEL.

(Debra Suarez):

Hi, this is (Debra Suarez) and I’m also with DAEL.

Sheryl Adler:

Great. Just to remind you as we go through today’s presentation, there are two ways for you to ask question. You may use the chat feature through the WebEx if you would like to write your question or you can wait till the end of the call where we will have operator assistance Q&A where the lines can be unmuted and you can ask us a question.

Please note that the PowerPoint, the transcript of this call and also the participants will be listed on the federal business opportunity Website www.fbo.gov and also just as a reminder, your participation and questions in this call are not private so we’re going to go ahead and get started. If you would just - I’m going to take this opportunity - and turn this over to Heidi.

Good afternoon. I just want to clarify. We’ve gotten a few private messages that some of us were hard to hear. I hope that I’m sitting close enough to the phone and that I’ll be clear. The audio is only coming through the phone so I suppose that only those of you who are on the phone can hear that but I hope that we don’t have any more audio issues this afternoon.

Everything will be posted so if there’s a challenge, you’d be able to pick up from the transcript. The Webinar and capabilities statement, I’m just going to start with a few details about what we’re doing today and what’s going to happen next in this process. Some of you are new to us so that we want to make sure that you know how this process will work.

The purpose of this Webinar is what the Department calls market research. We’re interested in promoting the opportunity to be involved in this project as widely as possible knowing that this is a new area for us and hope to encourage interest in this procurement.

In addition we want to promote transparency in contracting, facilitate strategic partnerships by publishing the firms that have participate today on the fed biz opp site so that you can make contact with others who may be interested.

It’s the same site that you signed-up on and we want to hear from potential offers of any barriers they identify in the Performance Work Statement or PWS that would inhibit their participation. The PWS that’s posted is a draft and we sincerely want to hear from offers if they consider any of the task timelines or expectations to be a barrier.

The purpose of requesting capability statements is to collect from potential offers demonstrations of their expertise in this area. Capability statements are not required to participate in this procurement and they are not being used to select or invite proposals.

The 15-page limit is firm except for the appendix in which you can detail your feedback on the draft PWS, that is the barriers, concerns or questions you may have. We expect that you do not simply repeat the language we’ve provided but that you use your page limit to demonstrate your firm’s capabilities and expertise in three critical areas.

The expertise, knowledge and experience in immigrant integration of proposed personnel, experience with and existing resources that support immigrant integration, describing how these position you to effectively and efficiently meet the purposes and objectives of the contract and your experience in managing and/or providing large-scale technical assistance in an educational context and the key message you use for successful management of that technical assistance.

This activity is authorized under Title II, Adult Ed and Family Literacy Act or AEFLA of the Workforce Investment Act of 1998, Public Law 105.220 Section 243 National Leadership Activities.

These activities provide funds to enhance the quality of adult education and literacy programs nationwide and for those of you who may be unfamiliar with the adult education context, here’s a quick summary. Our programs are taught across the country in every state.

We focus on basic skills below the post-secondary level with a strong emphasis on helping adults aged 16 and above prepare for transitions into post-secondary ed or occupational training. Most of our classes are offered at no cost to the students and attendance is voluntary. The technology infrastructure in our programs is uneven.

Some are well-equipped and others have virtually no technology for teaching and learning. Over 40% of our students enroll to improve their English proficiency including immigrants and refugees whether they are low-skilled or high-skilled, undereducated or highly educated, immigrant students who are limited English proficient are eligible to receive services funded under AEFLA.

Our programs attend to diverse needs such as limited English proficiency and career pathways so in summary it’s a very diverse and challenging context and just so you know, we are not using video today so we’re going to send a quick message to someone. As mentioned, immigrant students who are limited English proficient are eligible to receive services funded under AEFLA.

The successful integration of immigrants is vital to the social and economic strengths of the United States; however, immigrants often face challenges which hinder their full integration and participation in the American spheres of work, school and community.

These challenges include limited English proficiency as we said, lack of access to job training and retraining, lack of access to credentialing and licensing, limited understanding of the U.S. educational system, lack of understanding about U.S. civic engagements, lack of access to employers and professional networks and lack of access to technology.

There are three important pillars that if implemented effectively will enable the integration of immigrants into the fabric of American society, linguistics, civics, and economics.

Linguistic integration involves improving immigrants’ access to effective and innovative English language programs. Civil integration enables immigrants to increase civic participation such as providing support on their path to citizenship through naturalization.

And finally economic integration provides support for career development. Career development may involve training low-skilled or (unaided) immigrants for workforce entry or advancement.

Career development may also involve training higher-skilled professionally-trained immigrants for professional re-entry in the United States and certainly there are programs nationwide which attend to the different needs of immigrants in any or all of these categories. However, services are often delivered independently of other related services and efforts lack alignment.

So with this procurement the Department seeks assistance in identifying integrative and innovative approaches that reduce linguistic, academic and employment barriers for low-skilled and skilled immigrants and refugees and that facilitate their integration or reintegration into the U.S. workforce and support their success through appropriate technical assistance.

The Department is interested in identifying promising practices that more strategically coordinate across services and service providers to promote immigrants’ linguistic, civic and economic integration particularly as it relates to low and high-skilled immigrants with limited English proficiency.

The tasks in this procurement, there are six of them and we’re going to touch on them but not go into great depth. They are in the performance work statement and note that though these tasks are numbered sequentially, the timeline given in the performance work statement and schedule of deliverables indicates that some of the tasks are to be conducted simultaneously.

The first task - management of the project - is fairly standard and we won’t spend too much time on it now except to say that this contract will involve close coordination with OVAE through regular monthly meetings including an initial kick-off meeting with the Department and ensuring accountability through reporting.

The second task is to convene a technical working group or a TWG. The purpose of the technical working group is to advise the contractor throughout the project and bring additional expertise to the effort.

The contractor should identify and recruit members of such a TWG but not have such experts make contractual commitments yet. As you’ll see in the PWS, the contractor proposes a roster of well-qualified experts but the final selection is made by the Department.

You should plan to convene the TWG in Washington, D.C. for three face-to-face meetings throughout the period of performance. Such meetings would be held at Department facilities so you would not need to budget for meeting space.

In Task 3 the contractor will articulate and evidenced-based framework to guide technical assistance and create a technical assistance implementation plan designed to support place-based initiatives and leverage strategic partnerships. The goal is to support the provision of coordinated services.

We anticipate that not all of the needed services will be appropriately provided under AEFLA or with AEFLA funds. Therefore, the framework shall clearly and explicitly identify the need for appropriate strategic partnerships.

The framework shall describe the types of potential partnerships such as partnerships with public and private stakeholders, organizations, and/or education institutions in order to maximize capacity to serve the linguistic, civil and economic needs of local and regional immigrant populations.

The framework may also outline how traditional adult ed services might be appropriately altered to better meet the needs of these two distinct immigrant subpopulations.

Task 3 also involves creating a technical assistance implementation plan which will describe the overall plan for design, coordination and implementation of the project. It is anticipated that sites will be implementing and documenting the project in unique ways to meet local needs so coordination with the sites will be critical.

Just as a note, it is not the intention of the Department that funds from this project be utilized for Website development as part of the technical assistance. A (druple code) comments community practice with document storing and sharing capacity will be made available to the project through the LINCS project and you can see that at http:\\lincs.ed.gov.

This platform will be relaunched in (druple code) in the summer of 2012 and that’s where the technology will be available for you so you’re encouraged to consider how to maximize the use of that provided platform and minimize other expenditures of efforts on proprietary or public platforms. That URL is included in this statement of work. You can find it there.

The fourth task is to recruit and select the sites that will receive the technical assistance. The Department is seeking sites that collectively represent the range of populations, geographic diversity and needs that are representative of the targeted populations.

Therefore, strategic and innovative awareness campaigns and dissemination techniques to promote the opportunity will be warranted. The site selection plan should include proposed outreach and recruitment strategies as well as timelines and a proposed process for qualitatively selecting from diverse, interested place-based initiatives that are focused on immigrant integration.

Sites should be encouraged and supported to apply for this opportunity. Selection of these sites will be accomplished in coordination with OVAE. It’s anticipated that no fewer than five sites will be chosen to receive technical assistance.

Task 5 is to deliver and document the approved technical assistance. The contractor will provide oversight to each site via ongoing communication with the coordinator. Technical assistance may take place in person, via phone or virtually as described in the TA implementation plan from Task 4. At least one visit to each of the selected sites should be in person.

The contractor should plan to coordinate with participating sites to propose data collection and analysis in order to document the effectiveness of the models and practices in relation to the purposes and objectives as described in the PWS.

Documentation can include analysis of existing data indicating success or failure rates of participant outcomes, interview data with individual students, teachers, staff, employers, community members or other relevant stakeholders, observational data of classroom practices and programmatic activities, samples of student work, survey data with relevant stakeholders and/or action research and data reports or other ideas that you have.

These are just some “such asis” from our side. The purpose of the data is to provide evidence for the effectiveness and/or limitations of the integration model and also to provide a base of evidence for subsequent recommendations regarding replication of these innovative integration practices and other localities.

Note that data collection plans will be subject to the information collection rules of OMB and also the timelines. There’s a link to the OMB site in the performance work statement. Task 6 the last one is to disseminate the design and lessons learned from implementation.

The contractor is expected to disseminate information on the lessons learned in immigrant integration through multiple venues such as the annual state directors of adult education meeting which happens in D.C., the (T-saw) conference and/or LINCS community of practice guest discussions or others that you may propose.

To document the TA, the contractor will be drafting two summary reports that share lessons learned summarizing the programs, practices, outcomes and impact of the project components and will serve as a resource for replication of programs and practices.

These reports will be intended for publication through the Department. The summary should be well-grounded in the theoretical and empirical research literature and as appropriate demonstrating the grounding of the technical assistance and promising practices in the adult education field and so that’s the performance work statement, all six tasks.

And as I said, I wanted to just say what happens next in the process so the PowerPoint and transcript from today along with a list of vendors who registered for the Webinar will be posted on the federal business opportunity Webpage dedicated to this solicitation, the one that you’ve already seen and that usually happens within three to four days.

The URL is there at the top of the screen. Capability statements are due May 14th. They will be read and comments to the performance work statement will be considered. When the final performance work statement is posted, we’ll also be providing instructions to offers and the evaluation criteria.

At that time a due date for full technical and business proposals will be posted. There will be a short period for offers in which they can ask questions of the Department about the performance work statement and answers will be released to all vendors, then an award will be expected on the solicitation by the end of September.

And that is the details that I have. I’m turning it back to Sheryl Adler so she can talk about the details of the capability statement, etcetera.

Great. Thank you Heidi. Again the case of statements are due to the department on Monday, May 14 at 2:00 pm.

You need to send them to Colin Allen. His email is C-O-L-I-N.alleyne, A-L-L-E-Y-N-E@ed.gov with a courtesy copy to me. And you can see that my email is also posted on the PowerPoint.

As a reminder if you did not have an opportunity to RSVP but you would like your name to appear on the participant list please feel free to send me an email after the Webinar has concluded and we'll be sure to add your name and the name of your vendor to the list.

So now we’re going to take this opportunity and open it up for questions. So (Rheanne) can you please - can we have your assistance now?

Coordinator:

At this time if you like to ask a question please press Star 1 on your touch-tone phone. Once again it's Star 1 on your touch-tone phone to ask a question at this time.

It will be just a moment for the first question, Sheryl.

Okay thank you. We do have a question over the Chat feature. How much money is available and what's the expected length of the grant.

This is a contract and it will be for a 36 month period of performance. The government will not release its independent government cost estimate.

Okay the next question is will the procurements be issued as an RFP or GSA or something else?

Currently we’re in market research and based on the answers that we will get from the case statement we will make a determination of whether this needs to go small business or unrestricted or through another form of vendor. And that's part of our purpose in doing the Webinar today.

Is this part of a broader research/TA plan? I'm going to turn that over to Heidi to answer.

The Office of Vocational and Adult Education is very interested in the students that we serve under AFA and in other areas as well including corrections and in the CPE world.

The immigrant population is not going to go away from our radar screen. But I can’t say at this time that there are other things immediately following.

It's just something that we’re recognizing as part of our data. This is a big part of our student population. We welcome more questions in the Chat or by phone.

I do have a question on the phone if you'd like to go ahead with that?

Sheryl Adler:

That would be great. Thank you.

Coordinator:

(Nicole Sisarani) you may ask your question.

(Nicole Sisarani):

Sure. In the capability statement it says large scale technical support. How do you guys define large scale? Is there metrics?

Woman:

No there aren't metrics but I think that it's safe to say that we will consider multi-site, multi-locality, not small. So that's getting you toward large.

(Nicole Sisarani):

Thank you.

Coordinator:

That was the only question I'm showing at this time.

Sheryl Adler:

Okay we've got some more in the Chat. Hang on and I'm going to scroll back up. Thank you for sending us so many questions.

Woman:

I think we answered those.

Here's one from, a question regarding high and low scale. I'll read it and see if I can answer it.

Regarding recipients of the site based technical assistance must each site have programs inclusive of both high and low skill?

I think it's fair to say that a lot of sites are focused on one or the other. So we are interested in a mix overall of the entire cohort. It would be a stretch to assume that all sites would have - serve both well.

The next one is will some of the data to be collected be about success and failure need to conform to NRS requirements?

Woman:

Let me just back up for a second and say what NRS is. Programs that are funded with AFLA money are required by accountability to keep track of student data.

And you can find out more about the NRS. Actually we'll take that as a comment to the PWS and we'll include a link in the PWS.

But you can get to the NRS data and see what's collected about students from our OVAE Web site.

If this - the data collection plan will be negotiated as you select sites. So I think that there isn't a yes or no answer to this question but we would expect if the sites are getting AFLA funds now that we would see some of the NRS data come in in the data collection plan.

The next question says how many contracts are you looking to reward? And I'm assuming that means award.

We are going to award one contract. As part of this contract the contractor will be helping the department select some sites to conduct the technical assistance work.

But we are planning on using one vendor with the caveat that a (core) department always looks favorable upon small businesses.

So if this is not exclusively to small businesses there will be a small business factor as part of the evaluation criteria.

Do you want to take the next one? Do we have an estimated level of effort?

Woman:

We do but we are not releasing it. The government will not be releasing our independent government cost estimate.

Sheryl Adler:

The next one is are capability statements required in order to compete for the final solicitation?

And the answer is no they are not they're not using capability statements to select sources.

Woman:

Okay.

And that's kind of the next answer also. (Kate)’s statements are welcome. They will teach us what you can do and it's a way for you to address questions to us but they’re not being used to select.

Here is another question. Given the desire for this initiative to address integration needs holistically do you expect or anticipate the cross agency initiatives at the state or county level will be eligible for TA or only adult and workforce prep agencies or programs?

Thank you. I think that cross agency initiatives will be eligible and that as you read the performance work statement you will see a very heavy emphasis on strategic partnerships.

As I mentioned we anticipate that not all services that are required in an integrated effort are eligible to be delivered under AFLA funds or with AFLA funds so strategic partnerships are critical to this effort.

There’s another question here that says one of the goals is to improve access to effective online and hybrid learning opportunities yet it appears that you want the contractor to rely on the links collections.

Will the development and facilitation of online and hybrid resources including courses be supported?

This is a question that I think is mixing two things. The technical assistance, I mentioned they we would provide a (drupal)’s common community of practice platform to provide technical assistance.

The question reads more like the technology for students. This project will not be developing student learning materials.

So I'm not sure that your question applies to the technical assistance. Although you may want to do some professional development with this site so that would be something that we could talk about.

You can talk about it in your case statements. It would be developed in the implementation plan.

We've got a couple more on (Kate)’s statements not being used to screen offers so I think we've answered those two.

Here is another one about the technical assistance. Are you expecting technical assistance recipients to already have a track record in integration or potentially embarking newly on a project or partnership?

That's a great question. I think it will shake out as you are recruiting sites to participate. Certainly sites that already have something going on would be able to show that favorably.

But if sites are anxious and ready and have partners on board ready to start an initiative they may be eligible also.

There should be a lot of recruitment and a lot of technical assistance even before sites are selected during the application process so all of that would come into play at that time. There's nothing decided in the performance work statement.

The next question is it was mentioned a minimum of five sites. Is there a maximum or ideal number? And the answer is no there’s not.

Someone asked on task four are their geographic preferences or limitations to the site locations? The answer is no there are not limitations but we would expect representation geographically and also with the populations.

We would welcome more questions if there are any on the phone?

Coordinator:

I do have another question on the phone. (Nicole) you may ask your next question.

(Nicole Sisarani):

Thanks. I just had a question about the criteria. If the different sections of requirements are weighted differently how is the evaluation done to record where there may be strength and weakness?

Well in the capability statements we don't review them in that way and they are not being reviewed and weighted.

The evaluation criteria once it's published will make - will also be publishing and will make obvious the rubric in the weighting criteria. So you will see them.

(Nicole Sisarani):

Great, thank you.

We have another question through the Chat feature. Is this a completely new project or does it build on the existing immigrant integration efforts or programs?

This is a new requirement for the department. So it doesn't build upon anything and there is no incumbent contractor.

The other question we have is will you have any privacy concerns/instructions related to data collection?

Absolutely. And that's why we mentioned that the off - the successful offer will have to work with OMB and work with the guidelines that are published on the Web site. The URL is included in the performance work statement.

Woman:

Great. We would welcome more questions on the phone.

Coordinator:

I'm not showing any questions on the phone at this time.

Woman:

Okay. We'll give you a few moments if you have any additional questions and then if not we’ll be signing off.

Woman:

Great some coming in.

Woman:

Okay we have a couple.

Woman:

If you're holding your (unintelligible).

Woman:

Very good.

Woman:

When do you expect to issue the procurements? I believe that we went over this. But the procurement, we’re hoping to issue the procurements in mid-June and hope to award by the end of September.

All right here's a question here for (Jazz 6). I believe under dissemination. You mentioned a variety of possible venues and how many are required thinking about cost and budget?

We’re open, certainly different ways to budget this. We’re open to dissemination. We’re open to your creative thinking on this.

We've given some suggestions. A nonnegotiable probably is at the adult ED state directors meeting. We would request that you come and present to our grantees.

Other dissemination mechanisms would be up to your proposal.

Next question we have is is there written information about this project already and where is it? The draft performance statement of work is available on the Federal Business Opportunities Web site.

Again that Web site is www.fbo.gov. And the solicitation number that you can review in order to look up this information is EDVAE12R0058.

(Rheanne) are you showing any additional questions through the phone?

I do have a question. (Lance Sulfa) you may ask your question.

(Lance Sulfa):

Okay. Yes I was just going to ask what is in your mind is sort of the conceptual difference between the framework and the plan? Is it just simply a question of general ideas on implementation? And do you have sort of page limits or scopes about what those two entail?

I'll take that one. The framework is really looking at how the sites will be delivering services to immigrants.

Any limitations, page limitations or further instructions will be in the performance work statement and in instructions to offers.

The plan is a technical assistance implementation plan. And that's really focused on what the contractor will be doing with the sites. So they are distinct efforts.

(Lance Sulfa):

Thank you.

Thanks for your question. And there's one similar to it. In the scope of work would you be expecting a completed framework as a proof of concept, et cetera?

I think when you read the performance work statement you'll see that there will be a lot of back and forth on the framework.

So the proposal itself is giving us ideas of how you would approach it. It's not asking that you put into the proposal a fully fleshed out framework. That's part of the work of the project.

We have another question using the Chat feature. It says are subcontracts acceptable? Subcontracts, although we don't know which type of vehicle we’ll be pursuing more than likely is yes the contract will be acceptable.

There's another question in the Chat. Is this intended to have nationwide reach or to be a pilot that can later be expanded geographically?

I think by saying that by saying that a minimum of five sites it's clear that it's a little bit of both. We’re hoping for some geographic diversity, population diversity as I mentioned. But it's also not large enough to be nationwide at the moment.

A little bit bigger than a pilot, first cohort. OVAE has the tradition of creating these innovations and running them through a small cohort originally before the lessons learned are shared out with the rest of the states.

So I think you can think about it that way. We’re running a first cohort.

Do we have any more questions over the phone?

Coordinator:

Not at this time.

Woman:

I think with that we will end of the call. Again thank you for joining us. We do look forward to reading your capability statements.

And we would highly encourage you especially if you are a small business to submit a capability statement to us as we will be using these to help us decide which vehicle we use for source selection.

Again case statements are due at 2:00 pm on May 14 to Colin Allen and to Sheryl Adler. And we will be posting the transcript and the PowerPoint for this Webinar on the Fedbiz ops sites in the next few days.

So again thank you for joining us and we appreciate your time and your interest in the department’s procurement.

Thank you for joining...

Woman:

Thank you.

Coordinator:

...today’s conference.

Woman:

Thank you.

Coordinator:

You may disconnect at this time.

END