Peace Corp AI ChatBot

The Department of the Interior's Interior Business Center, on behalf of the Peace Corps Office of Volunteer Recruitment and Service, is seeking a FedRAMP High authorized, commercially available Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) conversational AI chatbot solution to enhance recruitment, outreach, and public engagement on peacecorps.gov. The solution must maintain 99.9% uptime during business hours, integrate seamlessly with the Peace Corps website, support multilingual functionality using Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) technology with a curated English-language dataset of 1,000-10,000 pages, and provide advanced natural language processing with live agent escalation capabilities and comprehensive analytics dashboards. Key contract requirements include FedRAMP compliance with continuous monitoring, FIPS 140-2 encryption both in transit and at rest, Section 508 accessibility standards compliance, and robust data privacy protections, along with detailed deliverables including a Requirements Specification Document, Design and Architecture Documentation, comprehensive testing plans, and training materials. Award will be made on a best-value basis with technical approach and past performance weighted equally and more heavily than price. Questions must be submitted by April 10, 2026, at 12:00 P.M. EST, and quotations are due by May 4, 2026, at 10:00 A.M. ET via email to Contracting Officer Michael McGuire and Contract Specialist Jacqueline Hernandez.

This solicitation is a total small business set-aside with no incumbents identified in the available documentation. The contract is structured as a Firm-Fixed-Price Purchase Order with a one-year base period beginning June 1, 2026, and May 31, 2027, followed by four optional one-year periods through May 31, 2031, for a potential five-year total duration. Specific budget amounts are not publicly disclosed, though a budget has been allocated. The NAICS code is 541519 (Other Computer Related Services) with a $34 million small business size standard, and the PSC code is DA10 (IT and Telecom – Business Application/Application Development Software as a Service). All work must be performed onshore within the United States, and the contractor must complete final deployment within 60 days of successfully completing all documentation, testing, and cybersecurity assessments, with anticipated website traffic of approximately 14.3 million views and 3.9 million active users annually, expected to increase 12-14% in calendar year 2026.