Employability Skills: Connecting Ready-to-Work Americans to Jobs and Measuring Hard-to-Measure 21st Century Competencies

The purpose of this Modification to this FBO Notice is to formally issue Solicitation ED-VAE-15-R-0034 for Employability Skills:  Connecting Ready-to-Work Americans to Jobs and Measuring Hard-to-Measure 21st Century Competencies.

Questions regarding this Solicitation are due no later than 11:00 a.m. Eastern Time, June 25, 2015.  Questions must be submitted electronically to Endrias Leuleseged at endrias.leuleseged@ed.gov, with copy to Stephen (Steve) Scheffer at stephen.scheffer@ed.gov.

Responses to the Solicitatin must be sent in sufficient time to be fully received no later than 11:00 July 17, 2015.  Responses to the Solicitation must be sent electronically to Endrias Leuleseged at endrias.leuleseged@ed.gov, with copy to Stephen (Steve) Scheffer at stephen.scheffer@ed.gov.

Interested parties are reminded that the Department is not able to receive any single electronic transmission that is larger than 20 MB.  If the size of your response is larger than 20 MB, you must submit your response in multiple transmissions.  If this is necessary, you must include the Solicitation Number in the Subject Line and indicate the sequence of the transmission (e.g., 1 of 3, 2 of 3, 3 of 3). 

The U.S. Department of Education, Office of Career, Technical and Adult Education (OCTAE) is seeking a contractor with the technical capability to support a new procurement titled:  Employability Skills: Connecting Ready-to-Work Americans to Jobs and Measuring Hard-to-Measure 21st Century Competencies. As a part of its mission to administer both the Carl D. Perkins Career and Technical Education Act of 2006 (Act) and the Adult Education and Family Literacy Act (AEFLA) of the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA), OCTAE has undertaken an employability skills initiative.  In accordance with Ready-to-Work: Job-Driven Training and American Opportunity, the Department is taking concrete steps to make education programs and policies more focused on imparting relevant skills, including employability skills, with job-market value, more easily accessed by employers and job-seekers, and more accountable for producing positive employment and training outcomes for the people they serve” (page 4).  To achieve this goal, the contractor shall meet the following objectives:

 1.    Understand the current status of measurement efforts and provide access to existing instruments,

2.     Convene an expert panel (technical work group) and identify straightforward, easy steps or “low hanging fruit” for developing measures,
 
3.      Maintain and create new materials for the Employability Skills website,
 
4.    Identify existing measures related to adult, as well as career and technical education, in extant repositories maintained by entities like the National Science Foundation and RAND, and
 
5.    Seek employer and industry association validation of the Employability Skills Framework.

The Department has a preference for award to small businesses, and especially small businesses that are also certified to be HUBZone small businesses and Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned small businesses.
 
The Department intends to award a firm fixed-price contract to execute this requirement.  The anticipated date for issuance of Solicitation ED-VAE-15-R-0034 is June 18, 2015.

Questions regarding Solicitation ED-VAE-15-R-0034 should be submitted no later than 11:00 a.m. Eastern Time, June 25, 2015.  Any such questions must be submitted electronically to Endrias Leuleseged at endrias.leuleseged@ed.gov, with copy to Stephen (Steve) Scheffer at stephen.scheffer@ed.gov.

Responses to Solicitation ED-VAE-15-R-0034 must be submitted in sufficient time to be fully received by the Department no later than 11:00 a.m. July 17, 2015.  Responses shall be submitted electronically to Endrias Leuleseged at endrias.leuleseged@ed.gov with copy to Stephen (Steve) Scheffer at stephen.scheffer@ed.gov.