SOURCES_SOUGHT_1.docx

Special Notice of Intent to Award a Sole Source Procurement THIS IS NOT A REQUEST FOR QUOTE. THIS IS A NOTICE OF THE GOVERNMENT'S INTENT TO ISSUE A SOLE SOURCE AWARD. This Notice is to announce that the U.S. Department of the Interior (DOI), U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), National Geological and Geophysical Data Preservation Program (USGS-NGGDPP is proposing to negotiate a contract with Ray Habermann DBA. Metadata Game Changers, on a sole source basis. This requirement is for a Metadata Collection.

The proposed action is for services for which the Government intends to solicit and negotiate with only one source under the authority FAR 13.106-1(b)(1). The reason justifying this sole source procurement is that the Government believes only one responsible source can provide the services that will satisfy the agency's requirement.

THIS IS NOT A SOLICITATION. ALL COST ASSOCIATED WITH PROVIDING INFORMATION AS REQUESTED BY THIS SOURCES SOUGHT NOTICE SHALL BE THE RESPONSIBILITY OF THE CONTRACTOR. Submission is voluntary.

Salient Characteristics:

1. Provide technical assistance and tools for translating metadata from existing USGS-NGGDPP-NDC dialects/representations into standard representations, validating the content of the results, and for quantitatively determining the completeness of those translations and identifying content included/lost in the translation.

2. Provide technical assistance developing updated collection metadata and extension profiles for the USGS-NGGDPP to be used by the National Digital Catalog (NDC). Metadata elements will be refined from those developed at the ESIP-USGS-NGGDPP January 2020 USGS-NGGDPP NDC Workshop and mapped to community standards.

3. Provide advice and tools for evaluating the completeness of existing metadata and for guiding and measuring improvements required to meet the updated metadata requirements. This will include evaluation of the gaps between the existing USGS-NGGDPP metadata and the updated metadata.

4. Provide guidance in identification of definitions for metadata elements from community standards and adaptation of related community metadata elements to describe holdings.

5. Evaluate selected controlled vocabularies for specific metadata elements and update recommendations based on community standards evolution and feedback.

6. Provide technical assistance to implement embedding controlled vocabularies within mdEditor (mdTools) NGGDPP Collections profile.

7. Provide technical assistance for implementing metadata standards to support the objectives of the re-architecture of the National Digital Catalog including dashboard application(s) for metadata authoring and validation, collection entry in NDC, item-level entry in NDC, NDC inventory map and search functions.

8. Evaluate new NDC architecture, standards, and usability against other community databases. Model NGGDPP documentation ecosystem of people, connected tools, languages, coding environments and applications.

9. Provide feedback on documentation (class diagram, data dictionary, code lists, schema) and documentation environment eg. Protocols.io, associated with the release of the Metadata Profiles. Consider refinements to the profile based on ISO 19115-2/19115-1 and suggest revisions that align with “best practices” for implementing standard metadata.

10. Provide guidance for incorporating persistent identifiers (PIDs) within metadata profiles to include collection, contacts, organization, and sample identifiers using USGS-NGGDPP and community recommended PIDs and best practices.

11. Provide technical assistance mapping collection metadata elements to DataCite DOI schema for the NGGDPP DOI prefix.

12. Provide feedback to the USGS-NGGDPP development team to refine the workflow for consuming and portraying discovery level information from standard metadata via online web mapping applications.

13. Provide expertise for including USGS-NGGDPP specific guidance in community knowledge collections (e.g. the ESIP Wiki).

Deliverables Specific instances of these general tasks to be delivered as part of this task are:

Shared Vocabularies

A. List of vocabulary metadata elements in National Digital Catalog (NDC) Collection Profiles and candidate vocabularies to be used in populating those elements.

B. Updated and expanded USGS-NGGDPP controlled vocabularies in the ScienceBase Vocabularies NGGDPP folder.

C. Mechanism to embed controlled vocabularies within NGGDPP mdEditor metadata profiles.

Model and examples of sharing and selecting information related to people and organizations for population across metadata elements and profiles

A. Research how identifiers for people, organizations, collection, and samples can be integrated into metadata in the NDC.

B. Explore existing Federal Organization identifier systems for possible integration.

Refinement of NDC collection common-core metadata and extension profiles for: vertebrates, invertebrates, rock, images.

A. Identification of appropriate data models and content guidance for metadata elements included in these metadata recommendations and profiles.

Metadata validation prototypes for evaluating appropriateness (element type, format and business rules) and completeness of the required fields in the updated metadata and associated profile extensions.

A. Tools for surveying and displaying content for specific metadata elements across records.

B. Guidance and exemplars for metadata content.

Responses to this announcement are requested from (1) SBA certified Small Business HubZone firms; (2) Small Business firms certified by a Small Business Administration (SBA) district or regional office for participation in the 8(a) program; (3) Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned small Business firms; (4) Small Businesses.

In response to this announcement, please indicate your firm's socioeconomic status (e.g. small business, service-disabled veteran-owned, women owned, HUBZone, etc.) This information will assist the Government in determining how small businesses can fit into the acquisition strategy.

A firm is considered small under NAICS code 518210 with a Small Business Size Standard $35 Million Annually. Any information submitted is voluntary. If sufficient interest and capability is not received from firms in categories (1) through (4) above, any solicitation may be issued as unrestricted without further consideration.

Interested small business firms shall submit (1) NAME, ADDRESS, and PHONE NUMBER OF THE FIRM (including DUNS NUMBER); (2) a CAPABILITY STATEMENT including (a) RECENT (within the last three fiscal years) RELEVANT (similar projects to this requirement) performance history (identify the name of the owner and their point(s) of contact with telephone and fax numbers, e-mail addresses; and (b) in what capacity (e.g., prime, subcontractor etc.) they performed the work; and (3) their SIZE STATUS.

All responses must be submitted NLT December 20, 2021 at 9:00am MST via e-mail to: kmcfarlin@usgs.gov.

This is NOT a Request for Proposal (RFP) or Invitation for Bid (IFB) and does not constitute any commitment by the Government. Responses to this sources sought notice will be used by the Government to make appropriate acquisition decisions. All interested sources must respond to future solicitation announcements separately from responses to this market survey. Any solicitation that may be issued will be posted on the Federal Business Opportunities website and no paper copies will be provided.