R -- Sole Source Notice - JPPSO Customer Service Software Maintenance

SOLE SOURCE NOTICE: The proposed contract action is for supplies or services for which the Government intends to solicit and negotiate with only one source under the authority of FAR 13.106. Interested persons may identify their interest and capability to respond to the requirement or submit proposals. This notice of intent is not a request for competitive proposals. However, all proposals received by 1200 MST Monday, 14 May 07 will be considered by the Government. A determination by the Government not to compete with this proposed contract based upon responses to this notice is solely within the discretion of the Government. Information received will normally be considered solely for the purpose of determining whether to conduct a competitive procurement. Sole Source is based upon this vendor being the only manufacturer/vendor able to satisfy this requirement: Sole Source also based upon the authority FAR 6.302-1(2)(C)(ii) which allows for sole source purchase if it is considered a follow-on contract for the continued development of a system when the award would result in duplication of cost. Interactive Northwest, Inc (INI) originally developed the specified software to provide client self service, automated call routing (customized for the JPPSO), call back messaging, expected wait time and proactive justifications that are currently running on three JPPSO servers. The software is a combination of INI proprietary application software and customized application software developed specifically for this use. An alternate contractor would need to be an Avaya (the telephone system provider) certified Independent Software Vendor (ISV) and be a business partner of Nuance Communications authorized to re-sell maintenance contracts for the underlying speech recognition and text-to-speech software used in the JPPSO system. An alternate contractor would also need to procure rights to the source code for INI proprietary software and obtain and understand the custom software and speech recognition grammars developed specifically for the JPPSO system. The cost for contracting with an alternate vendor that could meet these requirements would greatly exceed the cost of this maintenance contract.