Household Food Purchases and Health, and Retail Sales and Store Characteristics

The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), Economic Research Service (ERS), in Washington, DC intends to negotiate on a sole source basis a contract with Information Resources, Inc (IRI), 150 N Clinton St, Chicago, IL 60661-1402, for data and supporting documentation of full calendar year data for four distinct types of information: 1. Characteristics and location of all stores in a defined universe of food retailers; 2. Prices and quantities of food items purchased by a representative panel of U.S. households (who record daily purchases throughout a calendar year), and demographic information characterizing each household; 3. Data and information on each household's health status; and 4. Weekly prices and quantities of food sales in all U.S. stores within the defined universe of food retailers. These data and information are needed to support a variety of USDA research to understand the influence of the broad economic forces that shape consumer food choices and food market outcomes. USDA requires detailed (item-level) household food purchases with links to detailed price and sales information of the competing foods at the stores visited by a given household as well as similar information for the stores that consumers decided not to shop at, but were in close proximity to their store of choice. Furthermore, USDA needs to account for the influence of store characteristics in its analyses. Household purchase data must be linkable (or linked) to the following items: 1) item-level price and sales information of other foods at the stores visited; 2) other item-level price and sales information of other retailers; 3) store characteristics; and 4) household health status. The USDA will use the data and information for economic and policy research purposes only, and often in collaboration with external expert economists and researchers. The findings will be disseminated through journal or USDA publications, the USDA web site, and presentations at meetings of professional economics associations. Before public release, all publications and reports will be reviewed by USDA to meet data disclosure requirements and to strictly maintain privacy and confidentiality requirements of data purveyors. The USDA will retain the right to use the data and information indefinitely to conduct research both internal to USDA as well as in collaboration with external experts, as needed. The circumstance permitting other than full and open competition is FAR 6.302-1(2)(ii) and 41 USC 253(c)(1), which specifies that supplies and services may be deemed to be available only from the original source in the case of a follow-on contract when it is likely that award to any other source would result in (A) Substantial duplication of cost to the Government that is not expected to be recovered through competition, or (B) Unacceptable delays in fulfilling the agency's requirements. This proposed contract is a follow-on to contract number AG-32SB-C-12-0010; the original source for the aforementioned contract was IRI. Selection of any other source would require substantial duplication of cost to USDA and significant rework of previous tasks which would involve time implications as well. This rework would greatly impact ERS's ability to meet its mission and successfully complete other mission-oriented tasks, as outlined in the following projects: (a) Cooperative Agreement 58-5000-3-0069 "Understanding the Statistical Properties of IRI Store-based and House-based Scanner Data", which was completed using data from the original source. The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) requires that Federal Statistical Agencies (of which ERS is one) have documentation on sample construction and selection, data collection and construction procedures, and the statistical characteristics and properties of data used in its analyses, and this cooperative agreement satisfied the OMB requirements. Selection of any other source would require duplication of this project for the new source's data, which cost $345,000. In order to fulfill ERS' mission of providing high-quality and objective analysis based on sound data, many USDA research projects rely on the information provided by these statistical properties studies. Research undertaken without an understanding of the data may be subject to significant revisions or result in flawed conclusions; therefore, many projects are dependent on the completion of these studies before proceeding. A change in vendors would require ERS to duplicate this process for the new source's data, leading to significant, multi-year delays in providing timely, relevant research to public and private decision makers using these data. The vast majority of cooperative agreements with external collaborators that are funded by the Food Economics Division rely exclusively on this household and retail data to complete their research goals and to adhere to established quarterly and yearly reviews. All of these projects (both those currently in progress from previous years and new projects that are funded and will be initiated on October 01, 2017) would be significantly delayed if selection of the data from another source is pursued. (b) Task Order AG-32SB-D-16-0232 "Developing the Food Price Environment for the 2nd Round of FoodAPS" Task 1, Optional Task 1, Optional Task 2, and Optional Task 3, which is a continuation and expansion of the original Food Acquisition and Purchase Survey (FoodAPS). The aforementioned tasks have been designed to use the data from the original source, and if any other source is selected, those tasks would have to be repeated in order to adapt the project to the new source's data, at a cost of $453,189. Two years of work have been executed on the above task order using the current vendor's data. With a change in vendor, this project would be delayed until the delivery and processing of data from a new source could be completed. The already-completed tasks would need to be repeated using the new data set and no additional work could be completed in the interim, resulting in a multi-year delay on this project. (c) Task Order AG-32SB-D-14-0281 (part of the IDIQ contract number AG-32SB-C-12-0011) "Develop Linkage Between USDA/ARS Nutrition Data and Retail Purchase Data", which is a joint effort between ERS, the Food and Nutrition Service (FNS), the Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion (CNPP), and the Agricultural Research Service (ARS) to link multiple sets of data from across the aforementioned agencies. Selection of any other source would require duplication of this task order, at a cost of $1,567,958. The total duplication of costs to the Government in the event of the selection of any other source would be at least $2,366,147. Additionally, there are other duplication costs that the Government would incur that are very difficult to quantify. First, the list of quality control standards (see Appendix B to the SOW), which was developed by ERS staff, would need to be totally redeveloped based on an alternate source's data and data structure. In addition, all other internal and external procedures and processes to load, document, and access the data would need to be redeveloped for the new data source, requiring duplication of both internal efforts as well as those from ERS' data management contractor, NORC. Also, CNPP would incur significant costs because they would be required to completely redevelop the prices that are used in the Dietary Guidelines. Anticipated Date of Award: 09/30/2017 THIS NOTICE OF INTENT IS NOT A REQUEST FOR PROPOSALS. This notice is for informational purposes only and is not to be construed as a commitment by the Government. Vendors that believe they can provide the services listed above are invited to submit substantiating documentation in writing to the identified point of contact. Information received will be considered solely for the purpose of determining whether to conduct a competitive procurement. Oral communications are not acceptable in response to this notice. A determination by the Government to compete this proposed contract based on responses to this notice is solely at the discretion of the Government.