D -- Request for Information - Technology Review

The Commerce Business Systems (CBS) Support Center has been tasked to examine the underlying technology base of the Department of Commerce (DoC) Core Financial System (CFS) and predict the usability, sustainability, and extensibility of the underlying technology base. The Commerce Business Systems (CBS) Support Center seeks information from Industry on how best to accomplish this objective and to facilitate development of requirements for the study. BACKGROUND The Department of Commerce has implemented a Department-wide financial information system to support its full range of financial management activities. This system, the Commerce Business System (CBS) has and will continue to improve financial management Department-wide by automating redundant, error-prone manual functions and by streamlining many financial management processes through a re-engineering of the way the agency does business. The system standardizes and integrates several subsidiary systems and eliminates the need to maintain several accounting systems in Commerce. CBS is comprised of a standard Core Financial System (CFS) which is integrated with Department-wide functional systems for time reporting, payroll, data warehouse, and purchasing. It was acquired as a COTS product in 1994 and has been modified to fully support Departmental business functions. CBS is also be linked with those bureau-specific systems that capture financial transactions and/or support general ledger improvements and standardization of administrative management processes across the Department and greatly improves the quality and timeliness of financial and administrative data urgently needed for sound program management decisions. The CFS is connected to a data warehouse where bureaus can get data on budget and costs refreshed daily. CBS is maintained by the CBS Support Center (CSC) in Gaithersburg, Maryland, which is responsible for the programming, testing, design control, change management, training, documentation, and other activities associated with the maintenance and deployment of the CBS software. The CSC provides maintenance through a set of contract vehicles with technical contractors managed by the CSC staff. The CFS environment is based on Oracle's integrated product suite, Oracle RDBMS Installed with Distributed Option software developed in PL/SQL, Forms, C programs, and UNIX Shell Scripts. The CFS Data Warehouse, a - read-only reporting environment, is implemented using Oracle RDBMS Java enabled with Server The User can access data via Oracle Forms, and additional OLAP tools such as Discoverer. The Government is looking for the following information: (1) What is entailed in doing this type of work? (2) What kind of information should be provided and requested? (3) What kinds of resources are necessary? (4) What would be a reasonable timeframe for accomplishing the work? (5) What would be the parameters for performing a trade off analysis of SQL-based system versus other approaches, i.e. looking at the Oracle path versus other paths? Currently under consideration is to request that the contractor should look at technical cost, effort and cost to switch to other approach, and availability skilled work force for other approach. (6) What does it mean to change the language of CFS'what is involved? (7) What new investment will CBS have to make if CFS is re-developed/converted to another technology? (8) What would be the licensing costs for development and deployment if we changed technology vendors? (9) What are the elements in determining how useable, sustainable, and extensible is the current CFS technology? Do we need to separate this question from usability, sustainability and extendibility of Oracle? (10) What are the inventory of elements/ considerations that go into technology being usable, sustainable, and extensible (11) What does the private sector do to extend the life of their enterprise business systems; what technologies do their systems employ? What is their underlying technology? What hardware and software do they use? What are the technologies used in ERP vendor products like SAP, People soft, Oracle Financials, AMS/Momentum? Responses are required no later than 5:00 p.m. (EST) on November 12, 2004 and can be sent to Carol Silverman, Contracting Officer, via e-mail at csilverman@doc.gov, facsimile transmission to 301-258-4525, or mail to CAMS Support Center, 209 Perry Parkway, Suite 5, Gaithersburg, MD 20877. This is a request for information only. There is no solicitation.