061311-RFI-Distributed Database.docx

Department of Treasury, Financial Crimes Enforcement Network Request for Information Project: Improve Analytical Query Performance

Background

As reflected in its name, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) is a network of people and information brought together to fight the complex problem of money laundering, terrorist financing and other abuses of the financial system. Since its creation in 1990, FinCEN has worked to maximize information sharing among and the dissemination of information to law enforcement agencies and other partners in the financial and regulatory communities.

Mission

FinCEN, a bureau within the Department of Treasury, is the largest overt collector of financial intelligence in the United States. The mission of FinCEN is to safeguard the financial system from the abuses of financial crime including terrorist financing and money laundering. FinCEN achieves this mission be administering the Bank Secrecy Act (BSA), supporting law enforcement, intelligence and regulatory agencies through information sharing and the analysis of financial data submitted by financial institutions as required by the BSA.

Objective

Based on its mission, FinCEN has a requirement for in-database analytics that can provide improved performance of analytical queries made against the BSA data repository that contains approximately 9TB of data. The product solution should be a single, integrated solution that is designed to reduce complexity and have the capability to create a queryable distributed database that resides between the analytical application (SAS Fraud Framework) and the Sybase database that contains the BSA data. Note also that the product should be easily convertible to work with data in an Oracle database since the transition to Oracle will occur in early FY12. In addition, the proposed solution should include, but not be limited to, the following characteristics:

· An asymmetric parallel processing architecture with inherent redundancy.

· The capability to work with SAS Fraud Framework and multiple database products such as Sybase and Oracle.

· A high performance adhoc query and reporting capability that works without the use of indexes or partitioning.

· Provides utilities to, for instance, import and export data for offline analysis and for high speed load and unload.

· Open database connectivity, such as ODBC and JDBC, for example.

· A low administration requirement – that is, no database tuning – no tablespace sizing and minimum configuration.

· A flexible, scalable and transparent capability for growth.

*The contractor shall provide their capability statement ensuring the above objectives are met. In addition, pricing and delivery information, the availability of a proof of concept, complete specifications of the proposed solution, other capabilities of the proposed solution, and questions regarding this requirement should be submitted. Responses are limited to 10 pages in Microsoft Word format.

The Government does not intend to award a contract or otherwise pay for the information required. FinCEN will assess the ability of the market to meet the needs as stated above based on the information received. Dependent upon the results of this market survey, FinCEN may subsequently issue a Request for Quotation (RFQ) to acquire the appropriate solution.

Information sent in response to this request shall be sent to the attention of Maxwell Sarpong at Maxwell.sarpong@fincen.gov no later than Tuesday 5 July 2011 at 1000 EST. Please note that no RFQ document is available at this time.