70 -- LEARNING MANAGEMENT SYSTEM - RECERTIFICATION

Sources Sought to provide COTS software for a Learning Management System The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) is issuing a Sources Sought/Pre-Solicitation Synopsis to seek qualified sources capable of supplying commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) software for a Learning Management System. This procurement will implement the USPTO 21st Century Strategic Plan initiative calling for a certification program to ensure that the U.S. Patent and Trademark employees have the knowledge, skills, and ability to support USPTO goals. The procurement will utilize the newly issued Patent and Trademark Acquisition Guidelines (PTAG) which is available at http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/ac/comp/proc/. Under PTAG, the USPTO is authorized to limit the number of offerors to achieve maximum reasonable competition. Upon review of the responses to this Sources Sought/Pre-Solicitation Synopsis and if the USPTO determines that it is in the best interests of the USPTO to proceed with an open market acquisition, the USPTO will utilize a two-step streamlined acquisition approach in accordance with PTAG. Step 1: Review Capability Statements and downselect to no more than 5 most highly qualified vendors. Step 2: Issue RFP to the vendors selected from Step 1 and award to the offeror providing the best value. Those vendors who are determined not to be the most qualified will be advised. USPTO may elect to request product demonstrations as part of the follow-on technical evaluation. USPTO may also elect, in accordance with the PTAG, to negotiate only with the most highly rated vendor in Step 2. THIS PROCUREMENT IS UNRESTRICTED. IN ORDER TO BE ELIGIBLE FOR STEP 2, INTERESTED VENDORS MUST RESPOND TO THIS NOTICE. The USPTO is currently investigating training strategies and establishing USPTO training policies that comply and reflect the President's Management Agenda, personnel statutes, executive orders, judicial precedents, Office of Personnel Management (OPM) and Department of Commerce (DOC) decisions and directives and USPTO personnel management decisions and directives to design and develop guidelines, systems, and standards for employee career development, training, and occupational career management. The technical requirements of the Learning Management System are outlined in Attachment A. Systems development and integration is considered outside the scope of this procurement. Interested vendors shall submit a capability statement, not to exceed 50 pages that demonstrates the offeror's qualifications and capability to fulfill the USPTO's requirements which are outlined in Attachment A. The capability statement should address the following: (1) past performance, (2) technical capability and (3) price. In determining past performance vendors shall provide customer points of contact, description of the requirement, cost, performance accomplishments and references. In determining technical capability USPTO may test and technically evaluate the proposed systems based on the following factors: security (data encryption and integrity), proven implementation, ease of maintenance, scalability, performance, high availability, component reusability, and compatibility with USPTO architecture. Specify if software can integrate with IBM WebSphere. Include benchmarks for each platform supported, including concurrent user statistics, if available. Multiple approaches are welcomed. In determining price, vendors will submit price schedules. Ultimate vendor selection will be based upon Best Value as follows: technical and past performance when combined is more important than price. Prospective offerors must respond to this Pre-solicitation announcement in order to be considered for award of any resultant contract. Capability statements shall be submitted electronically via email in Microsoft Word or Adobe Acrobat format to hope.smith@uspto.gov no later than November 19, 2004 at 5:00pm. The USPTO will confirm receipt of all submissions. Late submissions will not be accepted.