CCEEPRA RFI Questions.docx

For these questions we would like to hear about your experiences, including specific examples of relevance.

1. Please describe your current knowledge and understanding of key topics critical to child care and early education (CCEE), including the current evidence base and key research, policy, and practice issues in the past 5 years specific (but not limited) to:

a. child development;

b. economics;

c. demography;

d. CCEE cost modelling;

e. survey methodology and psychometrics;

f. measuring access to high quality CCEE;

g. policies to support parental employment, training and education;

h. measures development, quality assessments, and initiatives to improve CCEE quality;

i. CCEE workforce development, well-being, recruitment, and retention;

j. nonstandard hour CCEE supply;

k. payment practices for CCEE providers;

l. families’ access to and experiences with childcare subsidy; and

m. CCEE co-payment rates for families.

2. Please describe your experiences with staffing large, complex projects similar in size, scope, and complexity (e.g., with multiple individual research activities co-occurring) in the past 5 years as detailed in the PWS to successfully address the key topics described above (a through m).

3. Please describe your experiences in the last 5 years developing systems of tracking 20-40 individual complex activities that are in progress simultaneously with varying topics, methodologies, timelines, and budgets including communication of individual activity status and budget updates, next steps, and targeted timelines.

4. Please describe and provide specific examples of your experience in the past 5 years with responding to rapid turnaround requests from ACF for policy-relevant analyses and presentation of relevant findings to meet the needs of policymakers and leaders including for a program administrator (non-technical) audience. By ‘rapid turnaround requests’ we mean a range of requests from 1-2 day turnaround requests for specific data analysis to 3-4 month turnaround requests to develop public-facing research syntheses.

5. Please describe your relationships and experiences partnering and/or collecting data with the following individuals and groups within the past 5 years:

a. CCEE researchers, policymakers, policy analysts, subject matter experts, and technical experts;

b. Staff who oversee CCEE programs at the Federal, State, Territory, Tribal, or local levels;

c. CCEE providers, including license-exempt providers, family child care providers, center-based providers, school-age child care providers, and Head Start programs; and

d. Families with children (birth-age 13), particularly those with low-incomes.

6. Please describe your experience in the last 5 years with preparing packages for the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) for full and generic information collection requests, as well as registering studies and completing necessary Institutional Review Board (IRB) requirements.

7. Please describe your experience in the last 5 years with preparing data collection instruments, including pretesting or piloting work to ensure the feasibility and appropriate use of all data collection instruments and protocols, associated analysis plans, and synthesis of policy and/or research findings.

8. Please describe your experience in the last 5 years developing products for researchers, policymakers and implementers of CCEE programs on CCEE policy and research including:

a. methodological briefs;

b. issue briefs;

c. research-to-policy briefs;

d. research-to-practice briefs;

e. research literature syntheses and syntheses of findings on key topics;

f. commentaries on research and policy reports;

g. findings from assessment and analyses of research and policies;

h. findings from secondary analyses of data;

i. web-based data visualizations and data dashboards; and

j. handouts, PowerPoint presentations, and other materials to be disseminated during briefings, conferences, and convening of experts, key constituents, and/or partners.

9. Please describe your experience in the last 5 years analyzing local, State, Territory, Tribal and/or national administrative data, including experience obtaining data through web-scraping, accessing large national datasets, linking to other relevant administrative datasets, and cleaning and transforming data into an analyzable dataset.

10. Please describe your statistical expertise, including experience in the last 5 years with both quantitative and qualitative analytical approaches with different types of constituents (e.g., families, subgroups with small samples that have high disclosure risk).

For these questions we would like to hear about your interest in and ability to provide a quote for completing this work.

11. Is your company interested in providing a proposal for this requirement in the future?

12. What information, details, or items would your company need in a Request for Proposal (RFP) in order to provide a proposal in the future? Please identify any relevant ambiguities in the PWS. Please be specific with your response.

13. Are the requirements explained clearly in the PWS in order to provide a capability statement?

14. What, if any, risks or other factors does your company foresee that may deter your company from submitting a proposal on this requirement in future?

15. The NAICs contemplated for this requirement are 541720 and 541611.

16. The contract type contemplated for this requirement is Cost Plus Fixed Fee (CPFF). Does your company have an accounting system capable of receiving a cost reimbursable contract?

a. Is it approved by any Government agency?

b. If so, which agency?