SSN_7_03_24_FINAL_SAM_gov_1.pdf

SMALL BUSINESS SOURCES SOUGHT NOTICE

Pre-Solicitation Number: 75N94024Q00093 Title: NICHD Audio and Video Library NAICS Code: 541512 - Computer Systems Design Services Size Standard: $34M

Description:

This is a Small Business Sources Sought (SBSS) notice. This is NOT a solicitation for proposals, proposal abstracts, or quotations. The purpose of this notice is to obtain information regarding: (1) the availability and capability of all qualified sources to perform a potential requirement. (2) whether they are small businesses, service-disabled, veteran-owned small businesses; 8(a) small businesses, veteran owned small businesses; HUBZone small businesses; woman-owned small businesses; or small disadvantaged businesses and

(3) their size classification relative to the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) code for the proposed acquisition. This requirement is assigned a code of 541512 in the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS), and the small business size standard for such requirements is $34M or less.

Background:

The Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) provides direct support for research data collected from human research participants such as video and audio data sets. These recordings might be longitudinal or cross-sectional. Because these video and audio recordings often contain faces or capture other sensitive information such as geospatial location, sharing such data poses both technical and policy-related challenges.

The National Institutes Health (NIH)’s data management and sharing policy, NOT-OD-21-013, applies to all NIH research, funded, or conducted in whole or in part by NIH, that results in the generation of scientific data, including video and audio data. The objective of this initiative is to provide support to an existing informatics infrastructure to hold video and audio data sets from human research participants of interest to NICHD. NICHD will select the data sets to be deposited into the infrastructure.

As a result, NICHD is seeking for small businesses from this notice to help determine the availability of qualified companies technically capable of meeting the Government requirement and to determine the method of acquisition. It is not to be construed as a commitment by the Government to issue a solicitation or ultimately award a contract. Responses will not be considered as proposals or quotes. No award will be made as a result of this notice. The Government will NOT be responsible for any costs incurred by the respondents to this notice. This notice is strictly for research and information purposes only.

Small businesses are encouraged to respond by demonstrating prior experience(s) in the management and ethical sharing of sensitive and identifiable video and audio data sets.

Purpose and Objectives:

The overarching goal of this initiative is to provide support for the use of an existing informatics infrastructure to store video and/or audio data sets, along with associated quantitative and meta data collected from human research participants. The infrastructure must also allow researchers to use the deposited data (either the raw data or derived) in a way that is consistent with the expectations of those who deposited the data into the infrastructure. The capable small business must also provide a help desk that can answer questions and provide support to both data depositors and data requesters.

Project Requirements:

Small businesses that believe they possess the capabilities necessary to undertake this project must demonstrate and provide previous experiences of storing such data in their capability statements. The statements should provide specific information, including metrics (e.g. size of facility, staff, etc.), which demonstrate the following, based on prior experience: preferred eight (8) years of experience in curating and storing video and audio data collected from NIH-funded research in the behavioral, social, educational, developmental, and neurosciences and providing the resources necessary to accomplish the tasks and deliverables that shall include, but not limited to project management, providing appropriate security for the data, optimizing the infrastructure to support the needs of this acquisition, technical support for data archiving and sharing, and providing a web portal.

Ingesting and maintaining an audio-visual repository of highly complex and very sensitive (audio-visual) and quantitative data, for at least 5 years, capacity to make the data searchable to/by approved other researchers, and readily sharable to approved other researchers, and then a history of appropriately sharing, or not, as appropriate (based upon both posting PIs’ approval and participants’ consent) and an established data sharing agreement policy (with all relevant researchers), and having an established history of being highly visible to the research community.

Furthermore, the capable small business must have the capability to satisfy the following requirements:

A) Extensively demonstrated experience ingesting, curating, storing, and sharing photographic, video and audio (continuous) data, and associated discrete, non-continuous data collected from NIH-funded research in the behavioral, social, educational, developmental, and neuro- sciences and providing the resources necessary to accomplish the tasks and deliverables described in this SOW. Relevant experience includes project management, providing appropriate security for the data, optimizing the infrastructure to support the needs of this acquisition, technical support for data archiving and sharing, and providing a public web portal that is known to this research community. (NIH has observed a minimum of approximately 8 years as the timeframe that it takes for a vendor/organization to become a Subject Matter Expert (SME) for the services detailed above, and for the system infrastructure to be considered reliable.)

B) Able to ingest and share complex datasets as a unitary collection from an individual NIH contract or grant award in the existing infrastructure and have that collection available for sharing to authorized researchers and/or idle for no less than four calendar years.

C) The ability to handle the required number of video/audio files per contract or grant award, which is expected to be 1-10 depositors over the course of the award associated with as many as 4,500 human participants.

D) An established process for determining that photographic and video/audio data have been obtained using appropriate informed consent (e.g., a process including a data submission agreement signed by the PI and an institutional official).

E) An established and equitable process for determining which researchers are authorized to have access to and reuse of the repository data for unique research purposes, in accordance with the individual informed consent on record and NIH policies regarding data sharing and privacy.

Anticipated period of performance: The anticipated period of performance is September 15, 2024 through September 14, 2025.

Capability statement /Information Sought.

Small Businesses that meet the applicable size standard and believe that they possess the capabilities described above are required to submit one electronic version via email of their capability statements to the attention of Dana Harris, Contracting Officer at dana.harris@nih.gov and Noor Shakeeel at noor.shakeel@nih.gov by 4:00 PM EST on July 25, 2024. See http://www.sba.gov for information on what is a small business and 13 CFR §121.106 of the Small Business Size Regulations on how the SBA calculates the number of employees.

The information submitted must be in an outline format that addresses each of the elements of the project requirement and in the capability statement /information sought paragraphs stated herein. A cover page and an executive summary may be included but is not required. Capability statements must identify the business status of the organization and should be limited to no more than ten (10) pages, excluding an Appendix for resumes.

Resumes may be included in an Appendix, which does not count in the ten (10) total pages limit. The Appendix, which may only include resumes, is limited to ten (10) pages. One (1) copy of the response is required and must be in Adobe PDF.

mailto:dana.harris@nih.gov mailto:noor.shakeel@nih.gov

Capability statement /information sought.

Small Businesses that believe they possess the capabilities to provide the required services should submit documentation of their ability to meet each of the project requirements to the Contracting Officer. The capability statement must specifically address each of the project requirements separately. Additionally, the capability statement should include 1) the total number of employees, 2) the professional qualifications of personnel as it relates to the requirements outlined, 3) any contractor GSA Schedule contracts and/or other government-wide acquisition contracts (GWACs) by which all of the requirements may be met, if applicable, and 4) any other information considered relevant to this program. Capability statements must also include the Company Name, Unique Entity ID from SAM.gov, Physical Address, and Point of Contact Information. The response must include the respondents’ technical and administrative points of contact, including names, titles, addresses, telephone and fax numbers, and e-mail addresses.

Disclaimer and Important Notes.

This notice does not obligate the Government to award a contract or otherwise pay for the information provided in response. The Government reserves the right to use information provided by respondents for any purpose deemed necessary and legally appropriate. Any organization responding to this notice should ensure that its response is complete and sufficiently detailed to allow the Government to determine the organization's qualifications to perform the work. Respondents are advised that the Government is under no obligation to acknowledge receipt of the information received or provide feedback to respondents with respect to any information submitted. After a review of the responses received, solicitation may be published on sam.gov. However, responses to this notice will not be considered adequate responses to a solicitation.

All capability statements sent in response to this Sources Sought Notice must be submitted electronically via email to Mr. Dana L. Harris, Contracting Officer, at harrisd@nih.gov and Noor Shakeel at noor.shakeel@nih.gov. All responses must be received on or before 4:00 pm EST on July 18, 2024, Eastern Standard Time and reference “NICHD AUDIO AND DATA LIBRARY: 75N94024Q00093” in the subject line to be considered. Facsimile responses will not be NOT accepted.

Confidentiality: No proprietary, classified, confidential, or sensitive information should be included in your response. The Government reserves the right to use any non-proprietary technical information in any resultant solicitation(s).”

mailto:harrisd@nih.gov mailto:noor.shakeel@nih.gov