SOURCES SOUGHT
R -- Efficient and Effective Information Retrieval and Sharing
- Notice Date
- 9/15/2005
- Notice Type
- Sources Sought
- NAICS
- 541690
— Other Scientific and Technical Consulting Services
- Contracting Office
- General Services Administration, Office of the Chief Acquisition Officer (V), GSA Headquarters Contracting Division (VC), 18th & F Streets, NW Room 4020, Washington, DC, 20405
- ZIP Code
- 20405
- Solicitation Number
- GS00V05PDC0062
- Response Due
- 10/7/2005
- Archive Date
- 10/22/2005
- Description
- 1. Purpose The U.S. General Services Administration?s (GSA) Office of Governmentwide Policy, in conjunction with the Office of Management and Budget OMB, seeks information related to government-wide efficient and effective information retrieval and sharing. The objective of this initiative is to identify and promote the most cost-effective means to search for, identify, locate, retrieve, and share information, and assess the net performance difference (including cost-benefits) of assigning metadata and/or a controlled vocabulary to various types of information versus not doing so. That is, does current search technology perform to a sufficiently high level to make an added investment in metadata tagging unnecessary in terms of cost and benefit? This objective is characterized throughout this RFI using various terms including most commonly retrieval and sharing. Such terms refer to the complete objective. In accordance with Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) 52.215-3, Request for Information for Solicitation and Planning Purposes (October 1997), this notice is for informational purposes only and does not constitute a solicitation or Request for Proposal. This notice is not to be construed as a commitment by the government to contract for services. Please be advised that the government will not pay for any information provided as a result of this notice and will not recognize or reimburse any cost associated with RFI submission. Please mark any proprietary or confidential information as such in your response. Any segments of the RFI response that are marked proprietary will NOT be made available to the public or other private firms. This RFI serves several purposes: 1) to inform the government about potential approaches for information retrieval and sharing; 2) to inform the government on the type and scope of work expected; and 3) to receive information and feedback on interest and capabilities of potential sources. We request that respondents replying to this RFI provide a response to each question listed in Section 4. 2. Background The Federal Government is the largest single producer, collector, consumer, and disseminator of information in the United States. Government information is a valuable national resource and the free flow of information between the government and the public is essential to a democratic society. It provides the public with knowledge of the government, society, and economy past, present, and future. It is a means to ensure the accountability of government, to manage the government's operations, to maintain the healthy performance of the economy, and is itself a commodity in the marketplace. It is also essential for the government to minimize the Federal paperwork burden on the public, minimize the cost of its information activities, and maximize the usefulness of government information including effectively sharing it among agencies to improve mission performance. Efficient and effective sharing of information is needed for virtually every business function in government and is especially apparent in the areas such as health and benefits programs and national/homeland security. Today, Federal agencies are making increasing investments in information technology products and services providing information search, retrieval, and sharing capabilities. There are many different technical approaches for providing these capabilities including the use of sophisticated search technologies and adopting metadata tagging. The primary goal of this RFI is to evaluate various approaches and carefully consider factors such as cost, ease of implementation, interoperability, and sustainability of operations to identify ways to promote greater public access to and Federal agency sharing of information. 2.1. Example Scenarios To help provide the context necessary to elicit quality responses from respondents, this RFI provides seven scenarios describing various common information discovery, retrieval, aggregation, and sharing needs. Respondents are encouraged to use the scenarios below to provide context and examples for their responses to the specific questions found in section 4 below, specifically sections 4.2 and 4.3. In addition, respondents may develop their own scenarios to provide better context for their responses. The following scenarios are included: 1. Researching Unexplained Illnesses among Defense Contractors 2. Performing a Search for an Expert 3. Performing Academic Research 4. Conducting an Information Audit Trail 5. Sharing Law Enforcement Information across Jurisdictional Boundaries 6. Possible Forged Identity 7. Citizen looking for all online government information regarding a unique topic 2.1.1 Researching Unexplained Illnesses among Defense Contractors Supporting U.S. Military Operations A primary care physician is treating a patient suffering from an unexplained illness. He learns this patient was a defense contractor, having supported U.S. military operations in various countries worldwide. The physician suspects that his illness might be linked to his participation in these operations, but needs to perform detailed research in a fairly short period of time to confirm or deny that hypothesis. Given the relatively small population sample involved, there is little research available in academic or commercial medical literature definitively addressing the patient?s symptoms. Therefore, the physician needs to perform a fairly exhaustive search for government information on the topic of unexplained illnesses among U.S. military veterans, the hypothesis being that illnesses impacting veterans will also likely impact the contractors deployed with them. The physician knows intuitively that the Department of Defense (DOD) and the Department of Veterans? Affairs (VA) are two good potential sources of information on this topic. What he does not know is that there are also government information holdings addressing this topic at other agencies, including National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), the National Institute of Health (NIH) and the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), as well as the legislative branch (the House, Senate, the Library of Congress, and the Government Accountability Office), and some state and local governments. Relevant information is also potentially available from non-government sources, such as commercial entities (e.g., insurance companies) and academic organizations (e.g., research universities). Relevant information exists in a wide variety of formats: electronic documents (e.g., plain text, HTML, XML, Adobe PDF, and other formats), tabular data (e.g., spreadsheets, databases, etc.), multimedia (e.g. sound, video, etc.), and biometric (gene databases, etc.). Some of these information resources are ?deep web? or ?hidden web? assets, not easily accessible from typical Internet search engines. When conducting his search, the physician needs to be able to aggregate, analyze, and manipulate the information relevant to the topic. For example, he needs to correlate general symptoms with information found in his patient?s medical records. These records are mostly hand-written forms that have been digitized. He might also need to correlate data geospatially (i.e. compare his patient?s overseas travels with overlays showing disease patterns in various locales worldwide). Since time is of the essence, he needs to have the ability to analyze large data sets quickly and accurately. Once he is completed with his research, the physician will probably want to publish a paper to share his findings with the medical community. This scholarly paper will contain citations to electronic government records available on the Internet. The physician will want to ensure that his citations will still be attainable at some arbitrary point in the future. Finally, the physician will want to be automatically notified if any new government or other information concerning unexplained military service-connected illnesses is published. 2.1.2 Performing a Search for an Expert The government needs to rapidly set up a work group to study an urgent, complex, yet relatively obscure technical issue. The government wants to identify personnel throughout the Federal Government (civil servants, military personnel, retirees, and contractors) who are true experts in this area, and for that reason does not want to rely solely on self-selection (volunteers) or manager selection. Since the technical issue is relatively obscure, it is unlikely (but still possible) that the skills related to it have been captured in human resources (HR)/personnel management systems. A more likely source of identifying experts in this field will be through an analysis of subject matter related work products or websites the individuals or their employing organizations have created or helped to create. Many of these work products are published on agency public websites, but some are located on internal Federal Government information systems or elsewhere outside the government. Some of these information resources are ?deep web? or ?hidden web? assets, not easily accessible from typical Internet search engines. Depending on how many Federal experts are found, the government might also want to broaden the search to include experts from state/local/tribal governments and the private sector, especially academic and non-profit organizations. 2.1.3 Performing Academic Research A student is preparing a class report on Poland?s involvement in the Cold War including the extent to which the Poles, their leaders, and security services, were reluctant or willing participants with the Soviet Union. In addition, the student seeks to discover the significant impact that Pope John Paul and Lech Walesa had in contributing to the end of the Cold War. As a part of his research for this report, he wants to locate and quickly analyze all government and other information resources covering this topic. As a part of this analysis, he wants to be able to: 1. Identify all government and other resources related to the Cold War pertaining specifically to Poland, with a preference for primary sources (e.g., reports, photos, maps, military unit histories, etc.) over secondary sources (e.g., textbooks, encyclopedias, etc.). 2. Sort through all available information and retrieve those information resources most pertinent to his specific area of interest. 3. Translate any multi-lingual content into English. 4. Derive an outline (taxonomy) describing the Poland?s involvement in the Cold War at a high level through an analysis of these resources. 5. Extract relevant facts, summaries, and text passages from these resources ? including some facts about Poland?s involvement in the Cold War that have not been widely reported and therefore providing a unique and valuable insight into this important period of history. 6. Download maps of various Cold War hotspots, and add overlays to these maps to provide additional description and clarity. 7. Organize everything using the outline created in step 2 above. 8. Publish this information as both a paper and a website. 2.1.4 Conducting an Information Audit Trail An individual or organization (e.g., policy official, land developer, commercial entity, etc.) must identify and track the flow of electronic information on a specific topic between government agencies to understand how and where that information was processed. This individual also wants to identify the extent to which the information is accurate, relevant, timely, and complete. This requirement may be driven by a routine or non-routine process such as an application filing, environmental findings, historical research, or a need to find more authoritative sources on this information. 2.1.5 Sharing Law Enforcement Information across Jurisdictional Boundaries A small local police department raids an apartment on a tip from a citizen alleging drug trafficking and other illegal activities. A search of the apartment reveals documents containing handwritten notes in a foreign language, as well as a ledger documenting what appear to be financial transactions. The investigators are able to lift numerous usable fingerprints from the apartment. Moreover, the walls of the apartment are decorated with fresh graffiti (they are unfamiliar with gang tagging and thus unequipped to decipher it). The investigating officer processing the crime scene collects and inventories the documents and fingerprints, takes photos of the graffiti, and then submits these materials to the desk sergeant at the precinct, who digitizes everything and posts the materials to the appropriate regional law enforcement information sharing exchange. An investigator in a large municipality receives a notification that these documents, fingerprints, and photos have been posted to the regional information exchange. The investigator translates/interprets the documents and photos, analyzes the materials, and correlates the information with other relevant information obtained from various law enforcement organizations at the Federal, state, local, and tribal levels. The investigator?s analysis reveals the local investigation is related to broader national-level gang related activities being investigated at the Federal level. 2.1.6 Possible Forged Identity A credit card company has discovered a series of accounts that were fraudulently established on behalf of a group of unaware individual victims. The credit card company notifies these victims who in turn must notify all pertinent organizations with which they have a financial relationship and governmental agencies they currently or potentially receive services from including Federal agencies. 2.1.7 Citizen looking for all online government information regarding a unique topic A citizen is searching for all available Federal Government information about a particular topic including information located on government websites. A successful search will help her avoid using the complex, lengthy, and potentially costly Freedom of Information Act process. There is no way to know in advance what any single individual citizen may be interested in but invariably the same, similar, or related government information is located at more than one Federal agency and comes in various types of online information. Some of these information resources are ?deep web? or ?hidden web? assets, not easily accessible from typical Internet search engines. 3. RFI Questionnaire 3.1. General Approach 3.1.1 Using the above scenarios as context, describe your overall approach/vision for enabling the searching, discovery, retrieval, and sharing of information: a. Across legal/jurisdictional/organizational boundaries b. Among stakeholders who are dispersed geographically c. Across multiple physical data sources, including databases, websites, repositories, record management systems, and other data assets d. Comprising many different formats, including documents, email, multimedia (video and sound), geospatial data, structural/tabular data (e.g., fields and records), biometric data (e.g. fingerprints, etc.), and others. e. Leveraging existing capabilities found across the Federal Government 3.1.2 To what extent does your approach require explicit work performed in advance to prepare content for retrieval (e.g., metadata tagging, cataloging, etc.)? To what extent does this time investment improve the precision and retrieval of information in a cost effective way? Can you approximate the relative performance increase over no advance preparation? 3.2. Specific Capabilities 3.2.1 Please describe your approach for performing the aggregation and integration of information resources comprising many different formats into value added information products where the value of the end product exceeds the value of the sum of its parts. Data types include documents, email, multimedia (video and sound), geospatial data, structural/tabular data (i.e., fields and records), biometric data and others. Examples of complex, value added knowledge products include: a. A weather map, combining geospatial data and meteorological data b. A law enforcement case file linking case notes with related documents and related database records c. A crime analysis map, combining geospatial data and crime statistics 3.2.2 Please describe your approach to organizing/presenting/visualizing large data sets in an understandable, user-friendly manner. 3.2.3 Please describe your approach for executing a search that includes in its results those information resources that are relevant yet do not contain any of the terms in the original query. 3.2.4 Please describe your approach to providing comprehensive search coverage of all available information resources, and advising users where coverage gaps might exist (e.g., ?deep web? or ?hidden web?). 3.2.5 Please describe your approach to providing search query refinement and disambiguation (i.e., recommending alternate queries based on the content of the original query). 3.2.6 Please describe your approach to calculating relevance when sorting search results. Does your approach use a paid inclusion option and if so are paid inclusion results segregated from typical results? 3.2.7 Please describe your approach for assisting users in determining the quality or authenticity of information resources. 3.2.8 Please describe your approach in ascertaining the durability of a given electronic resource (i.e., the likelihood of the resource continuing to be accessible at a given location indefinitely). 3.2.9 Please describe your approach to identifying the likelihood the source information located will continue to be available over the long term (e.g., through archival). Alternatively, is this only possible through advance preparation by the owner/producer and if so is their an automated way to do this or does it demand human intervention? 3.2.10 Please describe your approach to notifying authorized users when an information resource of interest has been added to, altered or removed from the network or other shared computing environment (e.g., based upon one?s most recent past search). 3.2.11 Please describe your approach to implementing the extraction of specific factual information (e.g. people, organizations, locations, dates, concepts, etc.) from large collections of unstructured resources (e.g., text or multimedia). 3.2.12 Please describe your approach for discovering non-obvious yet potentially useful knowledge from large collections of unstructured resources (e.g., text or multimedia). 3.2.13 Please describe the interoperability standards implemented/supported by your approach in the following areas. Alternatively, you may also explain why you believe the following are not necessary or cost effective: a. Data Exchange: This category defines the set of standards supporting the interchange of information between multiple systems or applications. Examples include XML, RDF, HTML, PDF, and others. b. Service Transport: This category consists of the protocols and standards defining the format and structure of data and information when accessed either from a directory or exchanged through communications. Examples include HTTP, SOAP, LDAP, WSDL, UDDI, ISO 23950, and others. c. Metadata interoperability: This category defines the set of standards supporting the interchange of metadata between middleware, registries, and modeling/development tools. Examples include XSD, OWL, XTM, UML/XMI, ISO 11179, XSLT, and others. 3.3. Acquisition Strategy 3.3.1 Assuming your approach is viable and currently available in the market place, either as a standalone service or product or combination of same, what is your recommended acquisition approach (e.g., government-wide or individual agency procurement)? 3.3.2 What types of pricing models would you propose (e.g., one-time purchase or transaction based/fee-for-service)? 3.3.3 Provide any other acquisition considerations that you think are relevant. 3.4. Implementation 3.4.1 Describe the high level steps involved in planning, preparing, and implementing your approach and include estimated timelines. 3.4.2 Describe instances when your approach was implemented in a similar context or environment. 3.5. Program Management 3.5.1 Describe your methodology to managing the proposed approach. Will your approach be centrally managed or within individual agencies? 3.5.2 Describe the team structure and skill mix required to execute your proposed approach. Include both governmental and non-governmental resources. Do you believe these skills are present in the Federal Government? If not, how will the government acquire these skills? 3.5.3 Identify any significant concerns, potential pitfalls and/or risks related to the implementation of your approach. Include both near and long term considerations. How would you track and manage the critical risks around your approach? 3.5.4 Describe your performance management methodology. What measures would you use to evaluate the effectiveness of your approach? 3.6. Cost & Benefits 3.6.1 What are the high-level cost estimates and benefits for your proposed approach? For example, should your approach require advance preparation of information by the owner/producer (either extensive or minimal; e.g., metadata tagging or cataloging), provide the approximate performance increase resulting from the advance preparation. 3.6.2 What are the estimated costs (e.g., services, products, and people) of implementation? 3.6.3 What would the costs of ongoing operations be for your proposed approach? 4. Instructions to Prospective Respondents Responses to the RFI must be submitted to GSA by 5:00 p.m. EST, October 7, 2005. E-mail a soft-copy and mail one-hard copy of all response files to: Arthur Brunson Contracting Officer Office of Governmentwide Policy Office of Acquisition Policy General Services Administration 1800 F Street, NW Room 2015 Washington, DC 20405 Ph: (202) 501-1126 eeirs@gsa.gov In addition to a written response to the RFI, respondents may choose to provide GSA with a formal demonstration of their approach. If you would like to schedule a time to present a demonstration in addition to your written response, please email your request to eeirs@gsa.gov Questions regarding any aspect of this acquisition should be emailed to eeirs@gsa.gov. Questions and/or responses concerning the RFI process may be posted as an amendment to the Efficient and Effective Information Retrieval and Sharing RFI at the government?s discretion. Respondents are invited to attend one of two Efficient and Effective Information Sharing Practitioners Days for Government & Industry: Washington D.C., September 27, 2005 Santa Clara, CA, September 29, 2005 You are requested to RSVP, with attendee names by noon EST, September 21, 2005 to eeirs@gsa.gov. Location and direction information will be forwarded to you with attendance confirmation. 5. Disclaimer (1) Any segments of the RFI response that are marked proprietary will NOT be available to the public or other private firms (2) This notice is for informational purposes only and does not constitute a solicitation or Request for Proposal. This notice is not to be construed as a commitment by the government to contract for services. Please be advised that the government will not pay for any information provided as a result of this notice and will not recognize or reimburse any cost
- Place of Performance
- Address: 1800 Street, NW,, Washington, DC
- Zip Code: 20405
- Zip Code: 20405
- Record
- SN00896616-W 20050917/050915212926 (fbodaily.com)
- Source
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