SOW Updated 08_06_2026_IGM ABIS Platform.docx

U.S. Department of State (DOS) Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs U.S. Embassy – Guatemala City, Guatemala

Automated Biometric Identification System (ABIS) for Guatemalan Migration Institute (IGM)

Automated Biometric Identification System (ABIS) Statement of Work (SOW) for the Guatemalan Migration Institute (IGM) Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs (INL) - U.S. Embassy Guatemala

SECTION 1: SOLICITATION CONSIDERATIONS

1.1 SYSTEM FOR AWARD MANAGEMENT

This solicitation requires registration with the System for Award Management (SAM) prior to award, pursuant to FAR 4.1102 and other applicable regulations and guidelines. Information can be found at www.sam.gov.

1.2 TRADE AGREEMENTS ACT (19 U.S.C. 2512(A)) (TAA)

Pursuant to the Trade Agreements Act (19 U.S.C. 2512(a)) (TAA), Federal acquisitions of supplies may be made only from offerors that shall supply products of an eligible country under any of the free trade agreements entered into pursuant to the TAA. An article is considered a product of a country only if it is wholly a product of that country or if it has been substantially transformed, in that country into a new and different article of commerce with a name, character, or use distinct from that of the original article(s). Note that any item that is a discreet article as it is sold in commerce, regardless of its ultimate function or use, cannot be considered, substantially transformed, and based solely on its integration into IT or other systems.

1.3 UNAUTHORIZED DISCLOSURE

The Contractor and its employees shall exercise the utmost discretion concerning all matters relating to their duties and functions. They shall not communicate to any person any information known to them by reason of their performance of services under this contract, which has not been made public, except in the necessary performance of their duties or upon written authorization of the Contracting Officer.

All documents and records (including photographs) generated during the performance of work under this contract shall be for sole use and become the exclusive property of the U.S Government. Furthermore, no article, book, pamphlet, email, recording, broadcast, speech, television appearance, film or photograph concerning any aspect of work performed under this contract shall be published or disseminated through any media without the prior written authorization of the Contracting Officer. These obligations do not cease upon the expiration or termination of this contract. The Contractor shall include the substance of this provision in all contracts of employment and in all subcontracts hereunder. (See FAR 3.104 for additional information).

SECTION 2: INSTRUCTIONS, CONDITIONS, AND NOTICES TO OFFERORS

2.1 INFORMATION TO CONTRACTOR

Contractors are reminded that information furnished under this Request for Quote (RFQ) may be subject to disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). Therefore, all items that are confidential to business or that contain trade secrets or proprietary or personnel information must be clearly marked. Marking of items shall not necessarily preclude disclosure when the Department of State (DOS) determines disclosure is warranted by FOIA. However, if such items are not marked, all information contained within the submitted documents shall be deemed releasable.

2.2 QUESTIONS CONCERNING THE REQUEST FOR PROPOSAL

Offerors are warned against contacting any INL personnel other than the Contracting Officer and Contract Specialist prior to award of the Contract resulting from this RFQ. If such a contact occurs and is found to be prejudicial to competing vendors, the vendor making such a contact may be excluded from award consideration.

2.3 CONTRACTOR RELATIONSHIPS

The Department of State (DOS) encourages the use of subcontractors. In addition, the Department requires that any potential Organization Conflict of Interest be identified in the proposal to ensure proper firewalls are established prior to award.

2.4 MULTIPLE PROPOSALS/ALTERNATIVE SOLUTIONS

Contractors shall not submit, nor shall the Government accept or evaluate, multiple proposals offering alternative solutions. Contractors shall not submit, nor shall the Government accept or evaluate multiple solutions within one proposal.

2.5 PERIOD OF ACCEPTANCE OF OFFERS

Contractors shall agree, if the proposal is accepted within ninety (90) calendar days (unless a greater period is inserted by the contractor) from the date specified in the solicitation for receipt of proposals, to furnish any or all of the requirements upon which prices are proposed at the price set opposite each item, performed and/or delivered at the designated point(s) within the time specified.

2.6 SPECIFIC SUBMISSION INSTRUCTIONS

Vendors shall limit the number of pages to no more than fifteen (15), 12 Point Font, Times New Roman, PDF format. Quotes MUST include the following to be considered compliant:

· PRICE: Unit and extended prices, inclusive of delivery charges in USD.

· DELIVERY DATE: Proposed delivery date.

· DESCRIPTION: Description/nomenclature of the item being quoted; product literature may be provided. Quotation must demonstrate compliance with all required features, including a detailed description of warranty terms.

· PAST PERFORMANCE: A list of contracts within the last three (3) years for the provision of comparable biometric or large database identity management systems to federal or commercial customers. The list shall include contact information (name, organization, email, and phone) and be limited to no more than five (5) references.

· CERTIFICATIONS: Certified knowledge of the company that will provide installation and support expertise, including direct OEM engineering qualifications.

· REFERENCES: Companies/Agencies that have received similar biometric equipment and integration services from the vendor.

SECTION 3: DESCRIPTION OF REQUIREMENTS

3.1 BACKGROUND

INL Guatemala is supporting the Guatemalan Migration Institute’s (IGM) modernization effort through the installation and development of a biometrics-capable migration platform. This effort includes the design and implementation of a new migration control platform with the capacity to instantly share passenger data with U.S. authorities in certain cases. In order to fully implement this new platform, Guatemalan authorities need to build a traveler biometric database to register and store biometric-based entry records.

This procurement seeks to acquire an enterprise-class Automated Biometric Identification System (ABIS) Platform, including the supporting software, enterprise infrastructure, installation, integration services, technical support, and knowledge transfer necessary to enable the Guatemalan Migration Institute to store, manage, and identify biometric records while interoperating with its existing institutional systems.

3.2 TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS

The Contractor shall provide to the U.S. Government new, not previously used, equipment in strict compliance with the specifications at the agreed-upon firm-fixed-price. In the event of non-compliance with the specifications, the U.S. Government reserves the right to demand collection(s) or reject this requirement in its entirety.

CLIN 1A: ABIS SOFTWARE PLATFORM (BASE REQUIREMENT)

The Contractor shall provide an Automated Biometric Identification System (ABIS) similar or equal to Neurotechnology Mega Matcher ABIS Platform, utilizing highly performant fingerprint, facial, and iris recognition engines, designed to support biometric identification services for Border Control, Electronic Passport, Identity Verification, and other crucial biometric workflows of the Guatemalan Migration Institute (IGM).

The proposed solution shall constitute a complete enterprise-class ABIS platform. The Contractor shall provide all software licenses, runtime components, management services, image processing services, matching services, administrative services, monitoring services, APIs, SDKs, documentation, and software components required for the complete operation of ABIS.

· Boundary of Responsibility: The Contractor shall not be responsible for developing IGM's enrollment application, business workflow, user interfaces, or institutional applications. Those systems shall remain under IGM's exclusive responsibility. Nothing in this Statement of Work shall be interpreted as requiring the Contractor to replace, redesign, or redevelop IGM's existing enrollment systems, border control systems, electronic passport systems, or other institutional applications. The Contractor's responsibility is limited to providing the ABIS Platform and the manufacturer-supported APIs, SDKs, and professional integration services required for interoperability without replacement of existing institutional applications.

1A.2 Functional Components

· Enterprise ABIS Platform

· Fingerprint Recognition Engine

· Facial Recognition Engine

· Iris Recognition Engine

· Matching Services

· High Availability Components

· Production Licenses 1A.3 Functional Capabilities The solution shall support:

· Multimodal Identification: Fingerprint, Facial, and Iris Recognition.

· One-to-One Verification (1:1), One-to-Many Identification (1:N), and Many-to-Many Duplicate Search (N:N).

· Candidate Ranking, Similarity Score generation, and Automatic Deduplication.

· Configurable Matching Thresholds and Watchlist Search.

· Biometric Quality Assessment.

· Template Generation, Storage, Update, Deletion, and Retrieval.

· Bulk Import of biometric records through supported interfaces.

· Bulk Export of biometric records, templates, and associated metadata using standardized, non-proprietary formats.

· Biometric license capacity: The license must be capable of registering 160,000,000 fingerprints, 16,000,000 facial records, and 32,000,000 iris records.

· High-Concurrency Simultaneous Searches: The ABIS matching engine and infrastructure architecture must be capable of executing multiple simultaneous, parallel, and multi-threaded queries (1:N and N:N) across the entire biometric database, maintaining peak processing performance, high accuracy (optimized False Accept and False Reject Rates), and enterprise-grade operational reliability under maximum daily concurrent workloads.

1A.4 Integration Services The Contractor shall provide manufacturer-supported Integration Services allowing IGM systems to consume the ABIS services. The APIs shall allow existing IGM applications to perform biometric operations without requiring modification of the internal architecture of the ABIS Platform. The Integration APIs shall constitute the supported mechanism for communication between IGM applications and the ABIS Platform. Direct access to internal databases shall not be allowed.

The Contractor-supplied Integration APIs and communication interfaces must guarantee high-efficiency operations and low-latency data exchange between services and external applications. The API middleware must be designed to handle high transaction throughput under sub-second response time constraints to prevent any operational bottlenecks in the border control workflow.

1A.5 APIs and SDKs The solution shall include manufacturer-supported Integration APIs and SDKs. Minimum requirements:

· REST API and/or gRPC service endpoints.

· SDK, complete API/SDK Documentation, Developer Guide, and Integration Guide.

· Sample Source Code, Client Libraries, Versioned Interfaces, and Error Code Documentation.

· The APIs, SDKs, and all associated integration components supplied under this contract shall correspond to the same software version and release of the proposed ABIS Platform.

The Contractor shall ensure full compatibility between the delivered ABIS Platform, APIs, SDKs and all associated documentation throughout the warranty and maintenance period.

The Contractor shall identify the version number of the proposed ABIS Platform, APIs, SDK’s and associated integration components as part of the technical proposal. Any subsequent updates shall maintain backward compatibility or include the corresponding updated APIs, SDK’s and documentation necessary to preserve interoperability with IGM-developed applications.

All provided SDK and API documentation must be highly detailed and structured to facilitate proper, long-term system support, troubleshooting, and self-managed maintenance by IGM engineers.

1A.6 Compatibility The solution shall integrate natively with IGM's existing enrollment systems, border control systems, electronic passport systems, and existing biometric capture devices without requiring replacement of those systems. The proposed solution shall preserve complete interoperability with the existing IGM operational environment and shall not require replacement of operational software or biometric capture equipment currently in service.

1A.7 Ownership of Biometric Data All biometric data, biometric templates, metadata, indexes, audit records, transaction logs, and any other information generated or stored within the proposed ABIS Platform shall remain the exclusive property of the Guatemalan Migration Institute (IGM). The proposed solution shall not impose technical restrictions that prevent IGM from accessing, exporting, backing up, or migrating its biometric data.

1A.8 Vendor Lock-In Protection The proposed solution shall not require proprietary mechanisms that prevent future migration of biometric records, templates, or associated metadata to another ABIS Platform. The Contractor shall provide all documentation necessary to export the biometric repository in accordance with open industry-supported formats.

1A.9 Operating System and Containerization Support The proposed ABIS platform software core, matching engines, and database connectors must natively support deployment on enterprise Linux operating systems (including but not limited to Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Rocky Linux, or Ubuntu Server).

The entire solution must be designed to operate efficiently within a containerized environment (e.g., Docker, Podman, Kubernetes, or Linux Containers - LXC) to allow microservices orchestration, rapid provisioning, and ease of maintenance.

1A.10 Software Scalability and Communications The ABIS software platform must be designed to operate and be installed in a scalable architecture capable of growing horizontally (scaling out) by adding application, processing, or matching nodes without requiring code changes or system downtime.

The platform services must utilize high-performance, low-overhead gRPC protocols for internal and remote procedure calls between decoupled service nodes to ensure rapid processing and real-time synchronization during horizontal scaling.

1A.11 Biometric Standards and Interoperability Compliance The proposed ABIS platform and its matching engines must be aligned with industry-standard, non-proprietary biometric template and exchange formats. The platform must support ANSI/NIST-ITL standards and ISO/IEC international standard formats, specifically including but not limited to ISO/IEC 19794-2 (fingerprint minutiae), ISO/IEC 19794-4 (fingerprint image), ISO/IEC 19794-5 (face image), and ISO/IEC 19794-6 (iris image).

To guarantee fingerprint template interoperability and ensure optimal performance for high-accuracy identification, the proposed fingerprint matching and extraction engines must be fully compliant with the NIST MINEX III (Minutiae Interoperability Exchange) standard (or superior equivalent certified by NIST), ensuring compliance and seamless secure data exchange with global security partners.

1A.12 Headless Architecture and Programmatic Administration (Intentional Omission of Administrative GUI) Intentional Architectural Design: The Government explicitly and intentionally does not require a graphical user interface (GUI) or a native pre-built Administrative Console for user provisioning, record insertions, database management, or operational workflows.

Programmatic Control via SDK/API: The proposed ABIS platform must operate strictly as a "headless" system. The Guatemalan Migration Institute (IGM) will perform all administrative tasks including but not limited to biometric record enrollment, record updates, identity management, deletion, and user role execution—programmatically through a custom, locally developed application built in C#.

Contractor Responsibility Limit: The Contractor is solely responsible for delivering fully functional, comprehensive, and robust SDKs and APIs capable of executing these administrative commands. The Contractor is strictly excluded from providing, licensing, or configuring any visual administrative software console or operational user interfaces.

CLIN 1B: SOFTWARE COMPONENTS

· Disaster Recovery Platform Licenses: Standalone standby runtime and matching engine licenses to enable real-time replication.

· Geographic Replication Module: OEM module designed to handle automated synchronization between the Primary Data Center and the Secondary Disaster Recovery site.

· Active-Active Synchronization Architecture: Advanced clustering and multi-node transaction coordination middleware.

· API Gateway and Advanced Reporting Suite: Secure token exchange, developer endpoints management, and audit visualization tools.

CLIN 2A: INFRASTRUCTURE FOR ABIS PLATFORM

The Contractor shall design, provide, install, and configure the complete enterprise-class infrastructure required specifically sized for the proposed Automated Biometric Identification System (ABIS) Platform.

The proposed infrastructure shall be fully compatible with the proposed software architecture and shall provide sufficient computing, storage, and networking resources to ensure reliable, secure, and continuous operation of the ABIS platform.

The Offeror shall propose the hardware architecture required to support the proposed ABIS Platform. The proposed infrastructure shall be dimensioned to guarantee compliance with all biometric capacity requirements, transaction volumes, response time objectives, availability requirements, integration services, and future scalability defined in this Statement of Work. The architecture may consist of one or more physical or virtual servers, if it satisfies all functional, performance, availability and scalability requirements defined in this Statement of Work, including diagrams and documentation.

The proposed infrastructure shall be based on enterprise-class hardware currently supported by the manufacturer and shall include all hardware components required for production operation.

2A.1 Infrastructure Requirements

· Compute Infrastructure: The Contractor shall provide a fully integrated, rack-mountable server architecture utilizing high-performance multi-core processors, error-correcting code (ECC) enterprise memory, and redundant hardware components (including hot-swappable power supplies and storage controllers) engineered to sustain continuous biometric matching workloads.

· Physical Enclosure Clarification: IGM has the physical rack cabinet enclosures. The Contractor is only required to provide the rack-mountable server chassis along with its respective sliding installation rails compatible with standard 19-inch (482.6 mm) four-post rack cabinets.

· Storage Infrastructure: The proposed infrastructure shall include high-reliability storage sufficient to support the Operating System, the ABIS Platform, the Biometric Repository, the Image Repository, System/Audit Logs, and future database growth. Storage shall support RAID redundancy and protection against single-disk failure.

· Networking: The infrastructure shall include all networking components necessary for the proposed architecture, including high-speed network interfaces, redundant network connectivity, and secure communication channels between ABIS components.

· High Availability (HA): The proposed architecture shall eliminate single points of failure for software services. The Contractor shall document the High Availability architecture, failover mechanism, service recovery procedures, and redundancy strategy. High Availability Components shall include all software licenses required to implement the proposed High Availability architecture.

· Backup and Restore: The proposed solution shall include mechanisms to perform full system backups, scheduled backups, and complete restoration of the ABIS platform, biometric repositories, and configurations.

· Scalability: The proposed infrastructure shall support future expansion without requiring replacement of the proposed platform. The Offeror shall indicate the maximum supported biometric population, concurrent transactions, storage capacity, and hardware growth strategy.

Daily Processing Throughput: The infrastructure and core engines must be sized to process continuous transactional workloads up to 3,000 passport enrollments and 270,000 migration records every 24 hours, maintaining the response time objectives required for Border Control.

Explicit Absence of Hardware Minimums: The Government intentionally does not prescribe specific hardware component minimums (such as exact CPU core counts, gigabytes of RAM, or physical drive capacities).

Offeror Empowerment and Responsibility: The Offeror is entirely empowered and contractually required to engineer, size, and deliver the complete hardware suite based strictly on the performance metrics, database volumes (160,000,000 fingerprints, 16,000,000 faces, 32,000,000 irises), and daily transaction throughput specified in this Statement of Work.

Under-Sizing Risk: Any performance degradation, system bottleneck, or storage shortage derived from an incorrect sizing analysis during the 3-year contract period shall be corrected and upgraded by the Contractor at no additional cost to the Government.

· Security: The infrastructure shall support secure administration, firmware management, hardware monitoring, secure boot, time synchronization, and event logging.

· Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) Infrastructure: Quantity and Redundancy: The Contractor shall provide two (2) identical, independent, and redundant UPS units to protect the ABIS infrastructure. Capacity: UPS unit similar or equal to APC Smart UPS line interactive 3kVA must have a minimum capacity of 3000VA (3kVA) / 2700 Watts or superior.

Form Factor: Standard 2U or 3U rack-mountable form factor, including the complete heavy-duty 4-post rack installation rail kits.

Electrical Configuration: Units must support a nominal input/output voltage configuration of 110V-120V (single-phase) or 220V-240V dual-voltage auto-sensing, equipped with standard enterprise-grade input plugs (e.g., NEMA L5-30P for 110V or equivalent locking type) matching the current facility capabilities of IGM.

Batteries and Management: Hot-swappable batteries, internal bypass, network management card (NMC) for remote IP monitoring, and automated graceful shutdown software compatible with the deployment's virtualization layer.

2A.2 Architecture Documentation The Offeror shall submit a complete infrastructure architecture description, including hardware, computer, storage, network, high availability, and backup architecture, along with component interaction diagrams.

2A.3 Infrastructure Compliance The Offeror shall provide a technical description of the proposed infrastructure, including Manufacturer, Model, Technical specifications, Quantity, Function within the proposed architecture, Operating system compatibility, Software compatibility, Hardware supports lifecycles, Manufacturer warranty, Expansion capability.

CLIN 2B: DISASTER RECOVERY INFRASTRUCTURE

· Secondary Data Center Hardware Node (Standard Rack server matching iNST 2A specs): To host the standby/failover ABIS node.

· Storage Replication SAN Nodes: Dual-controller SAN block engineered for continuous low-latency storage array replication.

· Centralized Security/Encryption Appliance: Physical HSM or hardware-based token management engine for biometric data protection in transit.

CLIN 3: INSTALLATION, CONFIGURATION, AND INTEGRATION SERVICES

The Contractor shall provide all professional services necessary to install, configure, integrate, test, validate, and commission the proposed Automated Biometric Identification System (ABIS) Platform and its supporting infrastructure. The Contractor is responsible for delivering a fully operational, hardened solution integrated with the existing IGM systems.

3.1 Pre-Installation Site Verification

Before ordering equipment, the winning contractor shall conduct a site visit to make sure location complies with requirements.

3.2 Installation Services

The Contractor shall perform the installation of all hardware, software, operating systems, databases, ABIS core engines, image processing services, administrative interfaces, backup systems, and monitoring agents. System hardening must be conducted in strict accordance with the software manufacturer's security guidelines.

3.3 Integration Services

The Contractor shall provide the technical assistance necessary to integrate the proposed ABIS Platform with IGM-developed applications via the supplied APIs and SDKs.

3.4 Functional Validation

Upon completion of the installation, the Contractor shall validate platform startup, user authentication, API/SDK functionality, multimodal enrollments (fingerprint, face, iris), match/verify actions, audit logging, and automated backup/restore execution.

3.5 Performance Validation

The Contractor shall demonstrate that the proposed solution operates within the expected performance parameters, including startup times, concurrent transaction limits, and overall resource utilization.

3.6 Documentation

The Contractor shall deliver a complete set of documentation, including installation, Configuration, Integration, and Functional/Performance Validation Reports, alongside As-Built Architecture and Network Configuration documents.

3.7 Information Security Restraint (Network Documentation)

Due to institutional security protocols and data protection regulations, detailed documentation regarding IGM’s internal production network architecture—including specific VLAN configurations, switching infrastructure topology, and internal Fiber Channel/SAN architecture—will NOT be disclosed to offerors during the solicitation and proposal period. Comprehensive networking, IP routing, and architectural details shall be provided exclusively to the winning Contractor after contract award under a strict non-disclosure agreement.

CLIN 4: KNOWLEDGE TRANSFER, TECHNICAL TRAINING, AND DOCUMENTATION (BASE REQUIREMENT) The Contractor shall provide comprehensive knowledge transfer, technical training, and technical documentation necessary to enable designated IGM personnel to independently administer, operate, maintain, integrate, and support the proposed Automated Biometric Identification System (ABIS) Platform.

4A.1 Training Requirements The Contractor shall provide fifty (50) hours of instructor-led technical training, organized according to the following minimum distribution provided by technical personnel fully fluent in Spanish:

· ABIS Platform Administrators – 7 people: 16 hours

· Infrastructure Administrators - 6 people: 14 hours

· Software Developers and Integration Engineers - 7 people: 20 hours Each training as per above breakdown is independent from one another and participants on each will vary. Training shall be delivered using the software version, APIs, SDK’s and infrastructure supplied under this contract. Practical exercises shall be performed using a production-equivalent environment and shall reflect the operational configuration delivered to IGM, The Government will accept a hybrid delivery format, provided that the total requirement of 50 hours is fully met and that a mandatory on-site phase is included to cover advanced administration topics.

4A.2 Technical Documentation The Contractor shall provide complete technical documentation in electronic format. Documentation shall include, at minimum: System, integration, infrastructure and operational documentation, in Spanish.

4A.3 Training Delivery Format

· Hybrid Training Program: Training may be delivered through a hybrid format combining virtual instructor-led sessions on-site workshops, in Spanish. The Contractor shall ensure that advanced platform administration modules, disaster recovery simulation labs, and practical API environment validation labs are conducted strictly on-site (in-person) at the designated IGM facilities in Guatemala City.

CLIN 5: FACTORY ACCEPTANCE TEST (FAT) AND SITE ACCEPTANCE TEST (SAT)

The Contractor shall plan, execute, and document all acceptance activities necessary to demonstrate that the proposed ABIS Platform fully complies with the functional, technical, performance, interoperability, and availability requirements of this SOW.

· Factory Acceptance Test (FAT): Completed prior to shipment to verify software configuration, license validation, and core engine performance.

· Site Acceptance Test (SAT): Completed on-site at IGM facilities to validate biometric operations (1:1, 1:N, N:N), API/SDK functional connectivity with active IGM systems, high-availability failover (if applicable), and backup/restore procedures.

5.1 Acceptance Documentation

Upon completion of the acceptance activities, the Contractor shall provide, at minimum:

Final acceptance of the solution shall be granted only after successful completion of all acceptance activities described in this CLIN and correction of any deficiencies identified during the FAT or SAT process.

Any functionality that fails to comply with requirements established in this Statement of Work shall be corrected by the Contractor prior to final acceptance, at no additional cost to USG.

Successful execution of the Factory Acceptance Test shall not constitute Final Acceptance of the solution. Final Acceptance shall only occur after successful completion of the Site Acceptance Test and correction of all deficiencies identified during FAT or SAT.

SECTION 4: CONTRACT AND LOGISTICAL PROVISIONS

4.1 TYPE OF CONTRACT

This requirement will result in the award of a Fixed price (FFP) contract in accordance with the specifications of this statement of work (SOW). No additional sums will be payable due to any escalation in the cost of materials, equipment, or labor, or because of the Contractor’s failure to properly estimate or accurately predict the prices or difficulty of achieving the results required by this contract. Nor will the contract price be adjusted on account of fluctuations in currency exchange rates.

4.2 WARRANTY

The warranty for all software and hardware must be three (3) years on-site, starting from the date of final written acceptance by the COR. The Contractor shall be registered to do business in the host country or have an established local partner registered to do business in Guatemala to guarantee immediate on-site hardware maintenance, repairs, and spare parts provisioning.

4.3 DELIVERY, LOGISTICS, AND INCOTERMS

All equipment shall be delivered to the specified freight forwarder in Doral, FL, no later than (NLT) 30 calendar days from receipt of the award notification.

· Incoterms and Delivery Allocation:

The Contractor shall deliver all hardware components FOB Destination to the designated freight forwarder in Doral, FL (address below). The U.S. Government (INL) will serve as the importer of record and handle international transit and customs clearance to Guatemala City. Software licenses, SDKs, and professional remote/on-site integration and training services shall be deployed directly at the IGM facilities in Guatemala City upon notice to proceed.

· Florida Freight Forwarder Shipping Address:

Order No. (provided at time of award) - GUATE SUVI Global Services

11380 NW 34TH ST

DORAL, FL 33178-1828

UNITED STATES

· Partial Shipments: Partial physical shipments are NOT allowed, while partial physical shipments of hardware components to the Miami Freight Forwarder are strictly prohibited, this restriction does not apply to the electronic delivery of software licenses, SDKs, APIs, and activation credentials. Software components and digital access documentation may be delivered electronically to IGM prior to the physical hardware arrival, provided that their formal implementation, testing, and final acceptance remain contractually tied to the successful installation and hardening of the physical infrastructure.

· Documentation: The Contractor must file all required export declarations. Commercial invoices and packing lists must be emailed to the COR in advance.

4.4 CUSTOMS CLEARANCE AND TAX EXEMPTIONS

INL Guatemala is the importer of record and will be responsible for the clearance of goods and the exoneration of duties. The U.S. Government will be responsible for customs clearance and obtaining duty-free exemption certificates from the Government of Guatemala.

4.5 INSPECTION AND ACCEPTANCE

Final inspection and acceptance of all items shall be performed by the U.S. Government upon arrival at the IGM facilities. INL Guatemala will have ten (10) business days to inspect and accept all items after on-site delivery.

4.6 PERIOD OF PERFORMANCE (POP)

· Hardware Delivery: 30 calendar days from award to deliver hardware components to the Miami Dispatch Agent.

· Installation, Integration, and Training: Once equipment is in country, vendor will receive a notice to proceed and shall complete installation within 90 calendar days.

4.7 PLACE AND HOURS OF PERFORMANCE

Services and installations will take place at:

INSTITUTO GUATEMALTECO DE MIGRACION (IGM)

6ª Ave 3-11, zona 4 Guatemala City, Guatemala Working hours: Monday – Friday from 7:00 – 15:00 hrs.

SECTION 5: SOURCE SELECTION AND EVALUATION FACTORS

5.1 BASIS FOR AWARD - BEST PRICE/TECHNICAL TRADEOFF

The Government will evaluate each Offeror’s proposal received before the closing date established in this solicitation and use the results in the source selection decision. The source selection process will determine the overall merits of each proposal in terms of its potential to satisfy the needs of the Government.

The Government will use the cost-technical tradeoff source selection process, as defined in Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) 15.101-1 (Tradeoff Process). The proposal offering the best value is the one that is most advantageous to the Government, price and other factors considered. Such an offer may not necessarily be the one offering the lowest price or receiving the highest non-price rating.

For this solicitation, all technical evaluation factors, when combined, are significantly more important than price. Awards will not be automatically determined by numerical calculation or formula relationship between the non-price factors and price. As technical factors, when combined, become more equal, the evaluated price rises in importance and may become the determining factor.

To be eligible for award, offerors are required to meet all solicitation requirements. Failure to comply with all solicitation requirements may result in the offeror being removed from award consideration. The Government may reject, without consideration of price, any proposal that has been rated “Unacceptable” under any technical factor.

5.2 EVALUATION APPROACH

All proposals shall be subject to evaluation by the Source Selection Team (SST). The Government reserves the right to reject an offer if:

1. The Offeror fails to submit any of the required proposal documents specified in the Pliego instructions.

2. The Offeror submits a cost/price proposal that cannot be adequately explained or substantiated.

The overarching evaluation approach for all factors and subfactors is as follows:

· Adequacy of Response: The proposal will be evaluated to determine whether the Offeror’s methods and approach have adequately and completely considered, defined, and satisfied the requirements specified in this SOW.

· Feasibility of Approach: The proposal will be evaluated to determine the extent to which the proposed approach is feasible and the end results achievable. This includes assessing the extent to which successful performance is contingent upon proven devices and techniques, and whether the offeror is expected to be able to complete the tasks successfully within the required schedule.

Categorical Definitions

· Significant Strength: A significant outstanding or exceptional aspect of the Offeror’s proposal that exceeds the specified performance requirements in a way to benefit the Government and either will be included in the contract or is inherent in the Offeror’s process and greatly increases the likelihood of successful performance.

· Strength: An aspect of the proposal that increases the likelihood of successful contract performance.

· Weakness: A flaw in the proposal that increases the risk of unsuccessful contract performance.

· Significant Weakness: A flaw that appreciably increases the risk of unsuccessful contract performance.

· Deficiency: A material failure of a proposal to meet a government requirement or a combination of significant weaknesses in a proposal that increases the risk of unsuccessful contract performance to an unacceptable level.

· Risk: The potential for unsuccessful contract performance. The consideration for risk assesses the degree to which an offeror’s proposed approach to achieving the technical factor may involve risk of disruption of schedule, increased cost, degradation of performance, the need for increased Government oversight, and the likelihood of unsuccessful contract performance.

5.3 TECHNICAL EVALUATION FACTOR

The Government contemplates awarding a contract using commercial item procedures under FAR Part 12 and FAR 13.5. The Government will award a contract to the responsible offeror whose offer conforms to the requirements of the solicitation and is evaluated as being the most advantageous to the Government, cost or price and other factors considered. The Technical Evaluation Factors (i.e., non-Cost/Price) will be evaluated using an adjectival rating scheme (Superior, Acceptable, Marginal, Unacceptable). The following technical factors and evaluation criteria shall be used, with the percentage of overall non-price rating representing the level of importance (weight) for each factor:

FACTOR 1 - Proposed Infrastructure Architecture, Hardware Sizing, and Virtualization (25% of overall non-price rating) Offeror's proposal must clearly demonstrate architectural design, compute/storage sizing, and physical deployment strategy engineered to sustain the baseline database capacity (160,000,000 fingerprints, 16,000,000 faces, and 32,000,000 irises) and daily processing throughput (3,000 passport enrollments and 270,000 migration records every 24 hours).

The proposal must document:

· Provisioning of Tier-1 server hardware (Dell, HPE, Cisco, Lenovo) with sliding rail kits compatible with standard 19-inch 4-post rack enclosures.

· Native virtualization and containerization support (certified Proxmox VE 8.4.4, Debian LTS, Podman/Docker orchestration).

· Complete backup and recovery integration with Proxmox Backup Server (PBS 4.0.18).

· Redundant line-interactive Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) units (2 x 3kVA / 2700W) equipped with Network Management Cards (NMC).

· Architectural design for secondary data center node, SAN storage array replication, and disaster recovery failover (CLIN 2A, CLIN 2B, CLIN 3).

FACTOR 2 - ABIS Core Software Platform, Biometric Engines, Algorithms, and Accuracy Standards (30% of overall non-price rating) Offeror's proposal must clearly demonstrate the functional capabilities, matching accuracy, and integration middleware of an enterprise-class ABIS platform Brand Name or Equal to the Neurotechnology MegaMatcher ABIS Platform.

The proposal must document:

· Multimodal matching engines (Fingerprint, Face, Iris) compliant with ISO/IEC 19794-2, 19794-4, 19794-5, and 19794-6 exchange standards.

· Official independent benchmark validation from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST MINEX III for minutiae interoperability and NIST FRVT/FRTE for facial recognition).

· High-concurrency, multi-threaded parallel query execution supporting sub-second response times for 1:1 verification, 1:N identification, and N:N duplicate search.

· Manufacturer-supported REST/gRPC APIs and C# SDK integration client libraries corresponding to a "headless" architecture (absence of pre-built administrative GUI; programmatic control via IGM's custom application).

· Complete data sovereignty guarantees confirming 100% IGM ownership of biometric data and non-proprietary export mechanisms to prevent vendor lock-in (CLIN 1A, CLIN 1B).

FACTOR 3 - Warranty, Training, and Knowledge Transfer (15% of overall non-price rating) Offeror's proposal must clearly demonstrate experience and proven capabilities in providing syllabus, and acceptance execution plans required to ensure long-term operational sustainability for IGM.

The proposal must document:

· A comprehensive three (3) year on-site warranty covering all hardware, software modules, patches, and spare parts.

· An instructor-led technical training program of at least fifty (50) hours (7 ABIS Admins - 16 hrs; 6 Infrastructure Admins - 14 hrs; 7 Software Developers - 20 hrs), explicitly committing to a mandatory on-site (in-person) phase in Guatemala City for advanced administration, failover simulation, and API validation.

· Detailed Factory Acceptance Test (FAT) and Site Acceptance Test (SAT) execution plans and deliverables (CLIN 4A, CLIN 4B, CLIN 5A, CLIN 5B, CLIN 6).

FACTOR 4 - Past Performance and Regional Experience (30% of overall non-price rating) Offeror's proposal must clearly demonstrate a recent (within the last 3 to 5 years) and relevant record of successful performance in deploying enterprise-class biometric identification systems or large-scale identity management databases in Central or South America, as detailed in the Past Performance assessment criteria below.

TECHNICAL RATING

The following technical adjectival ratings will be assigned to each technical factor (Factors 1 through 3):

Note: To receive consideration for award, an overall rating of no less than "ACCEPTABLE" must be achieved for Factor 1 (Technical). If any technical subfactor is rated "Unacceptable," the overall non-price rating will be "UNACCEPTABLE."

PAST PERFORMANCE EVALUATION (FACTOR 4)

For the purpose of evaluating past performance, the Government will consider the collective past performance of the proposed contract team (Prime Offeror, joint venture partner, and major subcontractor[s] performing more than 15% of the effort).

(a) Evaluation Process The past performance evaluation considers each Offeror's demonstrated recent and relevant record of performance in delivering services that meet contract requirements. Performance confidence is assessed after evaluating the recency, relevancy, and quality of past performance.

(b) Recency Assessment An assessment of past performance information will be made to determine if it is recent. To be recent, past performance must be ongoing or completed within the past five (5) years from the date of issuance of this solicitation. Performance older than 5 years will not be evaluated.

(c) Relevancy Assessment The Government will evaluate recent performance information to determine how closely the products provided and services performed relate to the requirements of this SOW. Consideration will be given to similarity of database scale (>2.5 million biometric records), technical complexity, and geographic execution in Central or South America.

(d) Performance Confidence Assessment Offerors will receive an integrated Performance Confidence Assessment rating based on relevancy and quality assessments:

PRICE EVALUATION FOR TRADEOFF ANALYSIS

Price is not scored with points or percentage weights. The principal basis for evaluating price for award purposes will be an evaluation of price reasonableness and completeness across the total overall proposed price (Base CLINs + Evaluated Option CLINs).

1. Price Reasonableness: Evaluated in USD using price competition and proposal analysis techniques stipulated in FAR 15.404.

2. Cost Buildup: While certified cost or pricing data are not required, Offerors must show the detailed buildup of direct and indirect costs (hardware, software licensing, engineering labor, and training delivery).

3. Tradeoff Assessment: The Source Selection Authority (SSA) will compare technical score margins against the total evaluated price to determine the proposal offering the true Best Value to the U.S. Government and the Guatemalan Migration Institute.

SECTION 6: POINTS OF CONTACT

6.1 TECHNICAL AND CONTRACTING REPRESENTATION

All administrative and technical inquiries regarding this Statement of Work must be directed exclusively to the following designated U.S. Government representative:

(Rest of Page Intentionally Left Blank) image1.png