Performance Management Web Portal

*NEW INFORMATION ADDED ON NOVEMBER 24, 2009 - PLEASE NOT THAT NO ADDITIONAL CAPABILITY STATEMENTS WILL BE ACCEPTED AS A RESULT OF THIS NOTICE* The Federal Transit Administration is currently reviewing the Capability Statements received as a result of this Sources Sought. An effort is being made to ascertain the appropriate procurement strategy. Therefore, upon identification of the appropriate strategy we will proceed accordingly and all further announcements will be posted to FedBizOpps. Thank you. ============================================================================ The following information serves as Amendment # 1 to Sources Sought Solicitation FTA-09-0529. The questions and answers posted below have come in as a result of the initial posting and ALL REMAINING QUESTIONS SHOULD BE SUBMITTED VIA EMAIL TO CHANEL.WINSTON@DOT.GOV NO LATER THAN 12 NOON, SUNDAY, JULY 5, 2009. A second amendment will be posted with the remaining questions and answers on Tuesday, July 7, 2009. Lastly, PLEASE NOTE THAT A VENDOR'S LIST WILL NOT BE COMPILED AS A RESULT OF THIS SOURCES SOUGHT. Therefore, if your firm is interested in responding to this notice, please submit your Capabilities Statement as detailed within the solicitation. ================================================================== 1) The specific requirement for this Sources Sought is that the respondent be a small business in order to be considered. The applicant would be bringing on as a teaming partner, a subcontractor with both a MOBIS and an IT 70 contract - and though the sub is currently under $15M in size, they are above the small business limit for the 541611 NAICS. Could you advise if this type of relationship is eligible for consideration? Subcontractors do not have to be small businesses. However, be aware that the prime contractor must do at least 51% of the billable work. 2) Is the master's degree a firm requirement in the job description or can experience in lieu of education be substituted? Experience can be substituted for the Master's degree. Applicant must, however, have a bachelor's degree in a related field. 3) Is the overall scope of this effort concerning performance management of IT Applications and systems or performance management. Performance management is also a term used in business to describe things like financial performance. Yes. The overall objective here is to implement an IT system to support performance management. Potential contractors will need to demonstrate expertise in performance management first, and the ability to understand the limitations and capabilities of IT systems second. We are looking for a team that can do both. FTA collects data on program outcomes and outputs to meet DOT requirements and for internal performance improvement purposes. For example, we measure how long it takes us to issue grants (our goal is to average less than 36 days) because we once had complaints that it took too long. We also count the number of rides people take on transit systems around the country (we have a goal to increase this by at least 1.5% per year). We have around 20 measures of things like that, with the data being collected in different systems around the agency. Some may involve financial performance (responding to audits) or be safety related (injuries and fatalities). This is performance management in its broadest sense. We collect the data manually now and would like to automate the collection and display to save time. 4) Is this sources sought a follow-on from a related contract. If so, would you be able to provide the contractor, contract #, and contract value. This is a new activity and is unlike previous procurements, thus the sources sought notice. 5) Will the eventual RFP (if any) come out under a MOBIS vehicle? I ask because at your $7M size standard requirement, our small business is only qualified to bid if it is a MOBIS based competition. We are not sure of our procurement strategy at this point. If we choose to use the GSA list it will be a MOBIS vehicle. If we decide we can use a disadvantaged small business, we will not need to designate it as MOBIS. 6) Would it be possible to understand what current software packages are already in place to build the performance management portal? Or is that purchase part of the eventual solicitation? We currently call the database owner who queries his data system and emails us the results. We paste it into an Excel chart and then into a Word document which gets converted to Adobe format and posted on our intranet. Data originally comes from TEAM, OTrack, and the National Transit Database (an Oracle application). 7) Is this requirement self-generated by FTA or did a vendor or consultant recommend FTA take this course of action? Self-generated 8) Would the FTA program manager or CO allow us to come in and make a presentation? No. If you are interested in presenting your firm, please submit a Capabilities Statement. 9) Is there a specific schedule for how the FTA will determine if it proceeds with an RFP or RFQ? No. How we proceed depends on the nature of the responses. 10) Would the FTA consider using GSA MOBIS as the contracting vehicle for this study and advice? Yes, if we identify providers in this process that are on the GSA MOBIS schedule and determine that procurement by this vehicle provides the best value to the government. 11) Does FTA plan on distributing tasks 1 and 2 as separate solicitations? (b) If FTA does anticipate releasing two separate solicitations, will there be any conflict of interest issues regarding implementing both tasks? Yes. We expect to issue two separate solicitations, one to develop a plan for the data collection and display system and another to implement and pilot the system. To insure objectivity in the planning process we will not select the same contractor for both solicitations. FTA will prepare initial requirements and purchase necessary software licenses. We are looking for qualified small businesses to bid on both solicitations.