Statement_of_Work.docx

Statement of Work Daily News Briefing U.S. Environmental Protection Agency

Part I: General Information A. Summary The following details the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) requirement for daily news briefing which will summarize, interpret, and electronically disseminate print and broadcast news related to EPA interests. This news briefing will afford EPA executives, Public Affairs staff, and other EPA staff comprehensive situational awareness of important developments on EPA issues as reported in the national and international news media.

B. Background EPA’s Office of Public Affairs (OPA) is the primary office for all EPA communications. The Associate Administrator for the office serves as advisor to the Administrator on all issues concerning short-term and long-term strategic communications. The office serves as the principal news media gateway for official agency announcements, press releases and statements, speeches, congressional and public hearing testimony and other documents of public interest. In its efforts to respond to media inquiries, strategically manage agency external public communications, and better enable the dissemination of public information during an emergency response activity, OPA needs the ability to monitor breaking news, editorials, longer form journalism projects, and the larger public conversation about health impacts related to the environment and general environmental protection. A daily news briefing service affords OPA this capability.

C. Scope or Objectives The Office of Public Affairs seeks to provide its personnel, regional public affairs staff, and agency senior leadership with a customized news briefing service of national and local media coverage focusing on EPA work and other topical areas of interest selected by EPA. This service shall allow personnel to have better situational awareness, as well as better support both proactive and reactive public communications strategies. The news briefing shall be provided to EPA each day electronically and shall contain a topical index, summaries of stories, and links to media coverage. The first news briefing will be delivered each morning by 6:30 am Eastern Time to approximately 40 EPA personnel. The briefing will be a news analysis as described under the Work Requirements below and will contain a link to full news clips obtained from a third-party content provider, such as Factiva, Lexis Nexis or similar service. The third-party content provider may or may not be obtained by EPA. A second news briefing will be sent to other EPA staff by 7:00 am Eastern Time, which will contain identical content as in the first briefing except it will have links to original media coverage on the media outlets’ websites and will not contain links to the full news stories provided by the third-party content provider. A third mid-day news brief will be provided electronically to approximately 20 people by 1:00 pm Eastern Time and will be more general in nature, containing major news or breaking news that affects the United States and not necessarily focused on EPA. The news brief service shall be available via any internet-connected computer and mobile device.

In responding to the RFP, the contractor must provide a sample of the three briefing reports to EPA. EPA requests that the sample briefings be drawn from November 27, 2015—the day that quotes are due to EPA. (See “Instructions to Vendors” for more information.).

Part II: Work Requirements A. Technical Requirements The contractor shall prepare and deliver the two morning briefings written and edited by news analysts familiar with EPA’s mission and responsibilities, and one general mid-day briefing with news of interest that is more general in nature and contains breaking or major news that is not necessarily focused on EPA.

The contractor’s deliverable product must:

1. Provide proven, extensive knowledge of the federal government, EPA, and environmental policy.

2. Utilize analysts to:

a. Find and review articles and broadcasts from major U.S. newspapers, national television and cable news, newsweeklies, relevant magazines and journals, blogs, specialty press, etc.;

b. Apply its understanding of EPA’s mission and interests;

c. Determine which aspects of each story, if any, are important to the readership of the deliverable;

d. Edit out all information (not stories, but parts of stories) that is redundant or irrelevant;

e. Weave the important information together for each daily briefing topic, so that it reads like a single story rather than what it really is, a subset of myriad stories on the same topic;

f. Interweave news from all sources, including print and television; and

g. Characterize the coverage such that EPA officials can quickly get a sense of how widely various story elements were run. Note that EPA is specifically not requesting toning of articles.

3. Include a summary listing of all headlines from major papers and newscasts nationwide;

4. Provide links within the briefing to the original full-text versions when available on the original publishers’ websites and to streaming video of important television as originally broadcast;

5. Include ability to track click rates on links in the briefs and provide a heat map to see readership interest in reading the full article;

6. Include delivery of three daily briefings to EPA for their internal use via three contractor maintained listservs that send the briefings to html based email through Outlook and mobile devices/smart phones;

7. Provide exceptional customer service, including 24/7 access by EPA to contractor’s account managers, analysts, and senior managers, to permit last-minute changes to topics, deadlines, and specific guidance from the EPA to the contractor regarding stories to be included and the extent of coverage desired. All content must be extremely fresh, meaning it was published or broadcast essentially concurrent with or since the most recent previous briefing; and

8. Cover the following content areas, which will be organized at the discretion of the contractor but which should be loosely based on topics similar to those below:

a. Administrator

b. Air

c. Brownfields/Superfund/Other Cleanups

d. Budget

e. Climate change

f. Emergency Response

g. Energy

h. Enforcement

i. Environmental Justice

j. Grants

k. Hazardous waste

l. International

m. Other

n. Pesticides

o. Research and Development

p. Rules/Regulations/Policy

q. Toxics/TSCA

r. Trash/recycling/composting/solid waste

s. Water

Formatting of the briefings will be at the discretion of the contractor, but they must be easy to read with a reasonable type and size font. In addition, the briefings must be able to print on an 8.5 by 11 sheet of paper without reducing the size of the font or altering the format.

The briefings shall be current, drawn from that morning’s news sources. Coverage from weekly magazines shall be included in the Monday briefing.

The contractor shall deliver the first briefing by 6:30 a.m. Eastern Time. This briefing will go to a listserv maintained by the contractor of approximately 40 people. In addition to the analysis with requirements outlined above, this briefing shall include a link to a third-party content provider such as Factiva, Lexis Nexis or similar service obtained by EPA or the contractor, that will have the full news clips for readers.

The contractor shall deliver the second briefing by 7:00 a.m. Eastern Time. This briefing will be sent to a listserv of EPA employees, which will be maintained by the contractor. This report will have identical content to the briefing sent at 6:30 a.m. Eastern Time and as outlined in the technical requirements above. However, this report will include links to the original media coverage on the media outlets’ websites.

The contractor shall deliver the third briefing mid-day at 1:00 p.m. Eastern Time, which will focus on general major and breaking news across the entire federal government – not necessarily specific to EPA. This will go to approximately 20 people on a listserv maintained by the contractor.

EPA will provide the contractor with the names and email addresses of EPA employees who will be included in the three listservs. The listservs will be maintained by the contractor. The contractor shall provide EPA with the names of 2 to 3 individuals to whom EPA will send updates to the listservs. The contractor is expected to update the listservs within 24 hours of receiving a request, except on weekends and holidays, when the update to the listservs will occur on the next business workday.

All briefings shall be delivered daily, Monday through Friday (including stories for Saturdays, Sundays, and holidays delivered on the next business workday) and observing the legal holidays below. The two days for Thanksgiving will include Thanksgiving Day and the day after Thanksgiving. The two days for Christmas will vary based on which day of the week Christmas falls and will be worked out between EPA and the contractor.

New Year’s Day Martin Luther King’s Birthday Presidents’ Day Memorial Day Independence Day Labor Day Columbus Day Veteran’s Day Thanksgiving Day (two days) Christmas day (two days) Inauguration Day (when applicable)

EPA shall have rights to archive the daily briefings indefinitely by their employees. Redistribution to non-EPA employees, to include but not limited to other contractors or vendors, shall require prior approval from the contractor.

Part III: Supporting Information

Period of Performance The Period of Performance shall be for one year with four one year options, and shall not exceed five years total.