Loren Data's SAM Daily™

FBO DAILY ISSUE OF MAY 20, 2007 FBO #2001
SOURCES SOUGHT

58 -- Request for Information / Sources Sought for Foreign Media Monitoring Systems (FMMS) Capability, Communications Equipment.

Notice Date

5/18/2007
 

Notice Type

Sources Sought
 

Contracting Office

US Army C-E LCMC Acquisition Center - DAAB07, ATTN: AMSEL-AC, Building 1208, Fort Monmouth, NJ 07703-5008
 

ZIP Code

07703-5008
 

Solicitation Number

W15P7T07QM216
 

Response Due

6/4/2007
 

Archive Date

8/3/2007
 

Small Business Set-Aside

N/A
 

Description

The U.S. Army, Sequoyah Transition Management Office (S-TMO), Fort Monmouth, NJ is conducting a Request for Information (RFI) Sources Sought (SS) for Foreign Media Monitoring Systems (FMMS) Capability. Solicitation number W15P7T-07-Q-M216. NOTE: Th e use of a solicitation number in this RFI / SS is for tracking purposes only. This request for information is for planning purposes only; this is not a request for Quotations or Proposals. No solicitation document exists and formal solicitation may or m ay not be issued by the Government as a result of the responses to this RFI / SS. The Government will not be liable for payment of any response preparation expenses. Interested parties are responsible for adequately marking proprietary or competition sen sitive information contained in their response. All interested firms that possess the capabilities and facilities addressed herein are encouraged to respond to this RFI / SS by providing the information specified below, on or before 1700 hours on 4 JUNE 20 07. Responses to this RFI / SS should be unclassified. Responses may be sent via email to Michael Hier at michael.hier@us.army.mil and Jean Choi at jean.choi@us.army.mil Technical questions should be addressed to Ms. Jean Choi at above email. Include W15P7T-07- Q-M216 RFI / SS in the subject line. All reque sts for further information must be via email; telephonic requests for additional information will not be honored. You may forward request for additional information to Contract Specialist, Michael Hier at michael.hier@us.army.mil or Contracting Officer K athleen Rizzo at kathleen.rizzo@us.army.mil. Vendors who meet the requirements below may be invited to discuss the contents of their White Papers (outlined below) with system demonstration during a one-on-one session where it is envisioned the parties will engage in an active information exchange. P roducts must comply with the Buy American Act and the Berry Amendment S-TMO, under the Product Director Signal Warfare of Program Executive Officer (PEO) Intelligence and Electronics Warfare Systems (IEW&S) in Fort Monmouth, NJ are continuously seeking the means to satisfy the immediate need for production and deployment of FMMS in support of the Information Operations in the Operational Iraqi Freedom (OIF), Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF), and Global War on Terrorism (GWOT). In support of Information Operations in OIF, OEF, and GWOT in the South West Asia (SWA) theater, a reliable FMMS capability that enables the warfighter to understand the local indigenous media is needed. The capability should support but not be limited to the following functional areas: Psychological Operations (PSYOP), Public Affairs (PA), Civil Military Operations (CMO), public diplomacy, and other supporting capabilities of IO. The FMMS should: 1) monitor 24/7 continuously the interested Area of Respons ibility (AOR) media (including any combination of or all of the following media sources: regional and international television, radio, newspaper, and Internet) in selected DOD Strategic languages, which include Modern Standard Arabic, Iraqi Arabic, Turkish , Kurdish, Pashto, Dari and Farsi; 2) provide an accurate and ready to use near-real time language transcription and translation of the foreign media; 3) receive, process, store, display, and disseminate uninterrupted flow of both source and target informa tion; 4) provide multi-string search capability in English or in source language thru the exploitation of all-source intelligence data mining and/or analysis applications that enhance the ability of intelligence analysts and linguists to answer to intellig ence requirements (for example, Priority Intelligence Requirement (PIR), Request for Information (RFI)) in a timely manner and to effectively produce increasing volume of actionable intelligence products; 5) be flexible, scalable, modular designed, and eas ily upgraded in the field; 6) be user-friendly, uncomplicated and easy t o use; 7) be ruggedized to function reliably in harsh military operational environments; and 8) be highly robust, reliable, network-ready, and interoperable as web services for distributed systems. Interested parties responding to this RFI / SS should have: 1) a strong background and detailed knowledge in human language speech transcription, automated machine translation, and information extraction and distillation; 2) a proven and demonstrated capab ility of developing, integrating, and prototyping diversified emerging natural language processing and Machine Foreign Language Translation System (MFLTS) technologies as well as transitioning product(s) from concept and laboratory phase to commercial mark et and field; 3) a demonstrated and detailed working knowledge of the DoDs MFLTSs, particularly understanding the operational, tactical all-source intelligences needs for MFLTS capability; 4) a proven and demonstrated capability in complex systems archi tecture with emphasis on collaboration, interface, database and workflow management issues; 5) a demonstrated capability and experience to provide logistics in COCOM AORs, particularly in CENTCOM and SOCOM, that can readily support detailed coordination wi th users, and installation, operation and support of the system; and 6) possess security clearances up to and including Secret and/or Top Secret. The FMMS capability will be needed in the theater of operation approximately 60 days after a decision is made by the Government to field it. Interested parties possessing the qualifications outlined above are requested to provide an unclassified white paper describing at a minimum: 1. Corporate capabilities, past and current relevant performance information, available facilities and assets capable of FMMS production to include: current production rate for a system; current methodology for subcontractor/vendor management; identificati on of risks for production and associated risk mitigation plans; production and test plans and procedures currently in use; production management initiatives, specifically those related to product quality. 2. Minimum technical documentation of FMMS is to include detailed design and architecture documentations to address the following features and specifications: a. Input media- type, format, bandwidth, etc. i. Video- analog or digital satellite, cable, video capture configuration ii. Audio- radio frequency, sampling rate, signal to noise ratio iii. Internet- networking, security, information assurance b. Output- type, format, metadata generation, exported media format c. External Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) 3. Technical description of the FMMS and its components to include: a. Functional capability i. Languages, dialects supported ii. Language ID, speaker ID, topic ID, multiple conversations detection iii. Dictionary- size of terminology; subject coverage (e.g. general-purpose or a list of special domains); user dictionary and any limitation iv. Storage capacity- media storage size, cache algorithm v. Number of channels, program scheduling vi. Translation speed, throughput, accuracy vii. Translation aids- translation memory, editing tool, terminology updates and management b. Components description including characteristics and identification of developers and manufacturers- ASR (automatic speech recognizer), machine translation engine, translation memory, electronic dictionary, entity extraction, etc. c. Physical specification- weight, size/dimension, footprint, ruggedization, portability d. Operating environment- power, temperature, humidity, cooling system e. Hardware- processing capability, memory, hard disk space, etc. f. Software- operating system, database, client software, etc. g. Upgradeability/ interoperability of heterogeneous computing components 4. Provide any U.S. government, international, and/or industry-led quantitative and qualitative evaluation or assessment results on the system and its components - e.g. utility assessments from the operational customers, NIST/DARPA/R&D labs, and industry associations, etc. Desired quantitative results might be based upon the following metrics: ILR (Interagency Language Roundtable), WER (W ord Error Rate), BLEU (BiLingual Evaluation Understudy), METEOR (Metric for Evaluation of Translation with Explicit ORdering), GTM (General Text Matcher), or TER (Text Edit Rate). 5. All requisite supporting documentation to include: User training guide, Administrator training guide, Operation and Maintenance manual, Troubleshooting guide, etc. 6. A cost estimate on a Rough Order of Magnitude (ROM) to accomplish each of the notional capability requirements outlined under paragraph three. Provide optimal economic order quantity for a price break. Provide a cost estimate to provide separate additi onal languages and domains. 7. Supportability and logistic plan and its associated cost- training, maintenance and support, warranty, spare and repair, upgrades, CONUS/OCONUS shipping, etc. 8. Identification of existing customers for the system 9. Identification of any strategic partnering alliances that permit acceleration of component delivery or obtaining priority subcontracted support services 10. Identification of any commercial/industrial certifications or quality systems in use 11. Identification of Technology Readiness Level (TRL) of the system and its components 12. Corporate assessment of technology to include identification of system performance capabilities and limitations and associated technology roadmap 13. Name, telephone number, fax number, street address and e-mail address for Program, Technical, Security and Cost points of contact information Responder Assessment Guidance: With quick reaction deliverables within theatre (60 days from after award.), operating and available Non-Developmental Item (NDI) and Commercial Off-The-Shelf (COTS) MFLTS, will be the intended purchase. For consideration of Information Evaluation, inform ation on products will meet a criterion set against the minimum quick reaction requirements, which include, at minimum, Language, Domain, and Platform, to support OIF immediate needs. Languages of interest are one or more of the following: Modern Standard Arabic, Iraqi Arabic, Kurdish, Turkish, Pashto, Farsi, Dari. The domain preference is for translation in area of force protection, police information, public affairs, civil affairs, intelligence, law enforcement, medical, legal, and incident investigatio n. For the languages of interest, responders shall provide functional specification and performance parameters necessary for government evaluation and certification prior to fielding. Government Evaluation of Product, if necessary, shall include a series of evaluations as follows: 1. Laboratory testing for translation accuracy subject to noise conditions, domain coverage, user and foreign language variations; output intelligibility and system reliability i.e. software stability, power management. 2. User evaluation in the form of operational assessment that measures usability, translation accuracy, suitability, speed, and ease of training. For the purpose of assessment, the Government may require 4 sample production units delivered at TBD Government/contractors facilities. Responders sample units as well as logistics and training support at no cost to Government shall be required. All HW/ SW loaned to Government shall be returned to responders at the end of Government evaluation.
 

Place of Performance

Address: US Army C-E LCMC Acquisition Center ATTN: AMSEL-AC-CC-RT-A, Building 1208 Fort Monmouth NJ

Zip Code: 07703-5008

Country: US
 

Record

SN01298286-W 20070520/070518221446 (fbodaily.com)
 

Source

FedBizOpps Link to This Notice
(may not be valid after Archive Date)

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