Cultural Property Prototype

The Department of State Office of Acquisition Management seeks a prototype for an AI-powered cultural property identification tool as a proof-of-concept for testing by U.S. law enforcement, with quotations due September 21 at 5 pm EDT and questions due September 16 at 10 am EDT. This is a Total Small Business set-aside under FAR simplified acquisition procedures with firm-fixed pricing.

Place of performance is the United States. The prototype must be standalone and trained on cultural property categories from Ukraine and at least one additional country covered by 19 CFR 12.104g import restrictions; the contractor independently sources representative test data and arranges data-sharing agreements at no additional Government cost. The contractor must demonstrate expertise in AI/machine learning image recognition, federal AI governance, data curation, and familiarity with cultural property trafficking and law enforcement operations. Code must achieve minimum 90% test coverage and be free of medium- and high-level security vulnerabilities, with Software Composition Analysis scanning at each deployment.

The contract is awarded as a single firm-fixed-price purchase order for nine months beginning the day after award. NAICS code is 541511, Custom Computer Programming Services; PSC is DA01. The procurement is governed by FAR 52.227-11 (patent rights) and FAR 52.227-14 Alternate IV (data rights) for software developed under contract; the Government receives Government Purpose Rights permitting use and sharing with other U.S. Government agencies for up to five years, while the contractor retains commercialization rights.

All offerors must submit active SAM.gov registration, complete the mandatory Cybersecurity Supply Chain Risk Management Questionnaire and Secure Software Development Attestation Form (unless the prototype uses only listed commercially available products), and acknowledge Amendment 0001. Responses require three volumes: Volume 1 (Go/No-Go compliance), Volume 2 (Technical Quote not exceeding 15 pages), and Volume 3 (Firm-Fixed Price with detailed labor and cost breakdown). Evaluation uses a Go/No-Go gate for compliance, then conducts price-technical trade-offs with technical factors weighted significantly more heavily than price.