The National Technical Information Service (NTIS), an agency at the Department of Commerce, Technology Administration, is authorized to enter into joint ventures pursuant to Section 3704b(a)(1)(A) of Title 15 of the United States Code. NTIS is looking for a joint venture partner with whom it can establish a framework for digitizing and managing federally produced audio-visual, multimedia and training collections/assets. Once digitized, collections must be made searchable with enhanced features, such as visual and textual search capabilities and must be offered to the general public in various formats. Revenue will be derived either from the sale of such materials directly to the public or from digitizing and asset management services to be offered to other federal agencies. Currently, NTIS has approximately 6,000 masters in its collection in various formats, including digital BCSP video, BCSP video, 1 inch video, 3 /4 inch video, VHS video, video discs, CD-ROM, diskettes, 35mm slides, audiocassettes, and electronic and hard copy texts. The masters include approximately 5,200 videos, 100 slides, 150 CD-ROMs, 25 Diskettes, 100 audiocassettes and 425 text masters. NTIS receives approximately 200 new masters each fiscal year. None of the masters have been digitized. NTIS will 1) conduct an active outreach program to encourage other federal agencies to use the services of the joint venture partnership to digitize, index and web-enable their own media assets and make it available to the public or their constituents through NTIS. The partner will assist NTIS in developing a Multimedia Asset Management demo to be used for this purpose; 2) conduct an active outreach program to acquire new products into the NTIS/NAC collection and transfer these new mastering materials to the partner; 3) provide bibliographic control of all audio-visual, multimedia and training material covered by this agreement; infrastructure and maintenance for web-based applications and distribution; technical support with respect to logging, indexing and setting up applicable programs; complete project management in regard to services for other federal agencies; marketing expertise geared towards increasing agency services and public sale revenues and customer service expertise in regard to customer product and billing inquiries. NTIS partner must 1) provide a secure space that will be dedicated solely to storing any mastering materials transferred to it by NTIS or on NTIS behalf and existing NTIS stock for public sale dissemination upon demand. This space must be controlled for air temperature and humidity; 2) coordinate and execute the transfer of materials, at its expense, from the Washington, DC metro area locations that NTIS identifies. This transfer includes all current and incoming audio-visual, multimedia and training mastering materials and existing stock in NTIS National Audiovisual Center (NAC) collection. Masters and existing stock previously stored in approximately 600 square feet of space. The partner will provide a schedule that will be negotiated before any of the collection is transferred. The partners agree that all mastering materials and elements provided or created will remain the property of the United States Government and may not be disposed of or destroyed without prior NTIS written consent; 3) digitize mastering materials, at its expense, making them searchable, viewable and web-enabled. The media may be produced in various formats such as videocassette, audiocassette, CD-ROM, diskette, 35mm slide, PowerPoint slide/overheads, DVD, text, multimedia training packages or other formats as the parties may agree upon. Some of the other formats include digitizing, logging and indexing media content; providing analog and digital recording and playback devices for capturing images and sound to disk and other formats, and providing hardware and software to digitize, index, catalogue, retrieve and review video clips (i.e., providing search capability) through a web browser; 4) return all masters to either NTIS or the source agency that produced the product; 5) retain control of the digitized master unless instructed otherwise by NTIS; and 6) reproduce and disseminate NTIS/NAC public sale orders on an on-demand basis. The partners will negotiate an agreement by which they will share the revenue from the sales of products to the public or digitizing/asset management services to federal agencies on a monthly basis as described above. Revenues from these services will be determined based on the nature of the service and the work that will be performed by each party. NTIS and the partner will jointly determine all prices for the sale of new products covered by this Agreement based on a mutually agreeable formula and consultation on any items that are outside the formula. NTIS will accept and process sales orders and refer them to the partner for fulfillment in the format requested by the customer. To facilitate this, NTIS will develop an automated interface to link NTIS and the partner. Upon order fulfillment, the partner will provide NTIS with confirmation via the interface. The partner will replace, at its own expense, any product that is unusable, broken, incomplete or that otherwise fails to operate properly. NTIS proposes the joint venture to remain in place for a period of five (5) years unless the parties agree to renew the agreement. Presentations may be made at the request of NTIS. Any such presentation must cover all aspects of this RFI. A revenue sharing agreement will be a result of this partnership to provide returns to the successful party. Anticipated revenue streams must be addressed in the response. The solution provided by the partner(s) will enable the partnership to provide a customized integrated solution to NTIS for use by federal agencies. NTIS will evaluate responses based on criteria listed above. Prospective partners are required to describe and reference the technical capabilities of their services, describe their technical expertise and provide a concise description of their experience and ability to provide these services to NTIS and other government agencies. NTIS has for more than fifty years fulfilled its mission of acquiring and disseminating information obtained from both government and private sector sources worldwide in response to the needs of government agencies, and the general public. NTIS is also responsible for implementing new methods or media for disseminating information, including producing and disseminating information products in electronic format. NTIS operates a clearinghouse for the information it collects, delivering bibliographic databases, and content selected by consumers in paper and electronic format, and also supports the fulfillment needs of users for the delivery of historic or archived materials produced in print-on-demand paper, demand microform or CD-ROM, or via on-line electronic access. If you have any questions about these activities, please send them via email to
contact@example.gov AND
contact@example.gov, or by facsimile to
+1 (555) 000-0000. Offerors should limit their proposal to twenty-five (25) typewritten pages, excluding graphic appendices. Offerors must provide one (1) original and four (4) hard copies of their proposal to Jennifer Hendrickson, Office of Business Development at the above address by the response date specified in this announcement.
