SOLICITATION NOTICE
D -- S&A Pro Applications: System Enhancements and Interim Maintenance
- Notice Date
- 4/22/2003
- Notice Type
- Solicitation Notice
- Contracting Office
- Department of Education, Federal Student Aid, Acquisitions and Contracts Performance, Union Center Plaza, RM 101H4 830 First Street, NE, Washington, DC, 20202-5405
- ZIP Code
- 20202-5405
- Solicitation Number
- EDOFSA03-000431
- Archive Date
- 6/7/2003
- Point of Contact
- Deborah Wrabley, Contracting Officer, Phone 202-377-3471, Fax 202-275-3477,
- E-Mail Address
-
Deborah.Wrabley@ed.gov
- Small Business Set-Aside
- Total Small Business
- Description
- I. BACKGROUND - The U.S. Department of Education, Office of Federal Student Aid (FSA) is seeking a contractor to perform system enhancements and maintenance work to an automated appeal processing system. Search & Appeal Professional (S&A Pro) is Default Management's IT system for tracking all documentation submitted by schools for its cohort default rate (CDR) adjustments and/or appeals in a given year. It is also used to capture and maintain the adjustment and appeal data and it provides basic logic to assist the caseworker with the decision making process during their review and analysis. The system, an MS access database with a visual basic front end, was developed over a 4-year period, between 1995 and 1999. Revisions and/or upgrades to S&A Pro have been made in FY 2000 and 2001 in response to system instability, FSA software upgrade to MS office suite, and to the CDR regulatory changes impacting system logic. Further system enhancements and maintenance work are required to ensure Default Management staff continues to work efficiently and effectively in a stable and reliable environment. Below are several system requirements that need to be addressed this year to resolve system deficiencies and to enhance functionality. These system requirements must be resolved and the system fully operational no later than mid-September, 2003. II. REQUIREMENTS - S&A Pro currently consists of four sub-systems - mail tracking, loan servicing, erroneous data/new data adjustment, and uncorrected data adjustment. The mail tracking subsystem tracks the submission of all appeal/adjustment documentation and appeal/adjustment determinations. The loan servicing, erroneous data/new data adjustment, and uncorrected data adjustment subsystems are used to record and review the appeals/adjustments that are submitted to Default Management. A. Development Environment Requirements - 1) System must be developed and tested by the contractor within the Department's network environment. 2) Appropriate source code must be identified and used by the contractor in the development and/or modification of the system. 3) Appropriate version control tools and procedures must be used. B. S&A Pro Modification Requirements - 1) The latest version of S&A Pro, developed by a contractor, was tested by Default Management prior to acceptance. However, due to the unavailability of the FY 2000 loan record detail report (LRDR) at the time of the testing, neither Default Management nor the contractor was aware of problems related to the year "2000" until the system was in use for the FY 2000 appeal season. The contractor for this project must resolve all problems resulting from the FY 2000 LRDR, including, but not limited to, the following: a) FY 2000 tallies not working; b) All screens showing FY 2000 as "100"; c) Problems with LRDR showing loans inappropriately when D5 and D6 loans are included. 2) At the time S&A Pro was originally developed, the five following appeal/adjustment types were included in the system: erroneous data, loan servicing, mitigating circumstances, Pell exception requests, request for adjustment. Some of these appeal/adjustment types are no longer in use, and others have changed names. The appeal/adjustment types that need to be updated to reflect current regulations are: erroneous data/new data adjustment (in place of erroneous data), loan servicing appeal (in place of loan servicing), economically disadvantaged and completion rate appeal and economically disadvantaged and placement rate appeal (in place of mitigating circumstances), participation rate index appeal (in place of Pell exception requests), and uncorrected data adjustment (in place of request for adjustment). These names should be updated in S&A Pro and in the Appeal Browser (adding the participation rate index and the two economically disadvantaged appeal types to the Appeal Browser, for a total of six adjustment/appeal types). 3) Currently, S&A Pro does not contain logic related to a school's eligibility to submit an appeal for a prior year. In general, a school is not eligible to submit a prior-year loan servicing appeal if the school is not subject to certain sanctions. A school may only submit a loan servicing appeal based on its most recent cohort default rate, unless the school is subject to loss of eligibility to participate in the loan programs due to high cohort default rates. This logic needs to be incorporated into S&A Pro to reduce the risk of error by a caseworker. C. System Generated Error Log Requirement - Currently, when an error occurs in S&A Pro, the caseworker must capture the situation verbatim, so that it can be replicated and the underlying problem identified and resolved. This requires the caseworker to create a screen-shot of the error and write up a detailed explanation of exactly what was in the operating field when the error occurred. Recall of the exact steps is very difficult and time consuming, and an inaccurate recollection will result in an inability to replicate the error. The caseworker has to delete the case from the file and recreate it. This does not correct the underlying system problem and generally the error will reoccur. Depending on the type of error, the caseworker may not be able to continue to work on the case, or any other case, until the error is fixed. Downtime can be a few hours to several days and may affect one or all caseworkers. The creation of an error log could greatly alleviate the time needed to correct errors. At the time an error occurs, a "system generated error log" would be created. The log would accurately record the error and the situation associated with the error. Thus, quicker error resolution, resulting in less "downtime" and more efficient and accurate work effort. D. S&A Pro File Organization and Documentation Requirements 1) During S&A Pro's development, there were many versions of the system placed on Default Management's shared drive (Q drive). The various versions were not adequately labeled, making it difficult to determine what is essential and what is obsolete. There are old versions of set-up programs and old documentation. The material currently residing on the Q drive must be reviewed, and irrelevant, outdated material deleted. The documentation on the Q drive needs to be organized into an easily usable format, using folders that are properly labeled so that Default Management staff and other IT contract staff can easily identify and access the information. This will help to ensure that old, outdated files are not used during future S&A Pro development. 2) The user manuals for the S&A Pro modules were developed in October, 1999. They have not been updated since that date. However, there have been enhancements, revisions and upgrades made to the S&A Pro module that are not reflected in the current manuals, entity relationship diagrams and field descriptions. In order to ensure that Default Management has the appropriate system documentation to be able to fully utilize S&A Pro, to train new users and to enable IT staff to efficiently work on the system, the manuals, entity diagrams and data field descriptions need to be updated. All system enhancements and features added in FY 2001 and FY 2002 must be documented to limit Default Management's exposure, including the ability to view previous year?s appeals in S&A Pro and the Appeal Browser. E. PEPS Update Requirement - The Postsecondary Education Participants System (PEPS) is the Federal Student Aid (FSA) management information system of all organizations that have a role in administering Student Financial Aid and other Higher Education Act programs. PEPS maintains eligibility, certification, demographic, financial, review, audit and default rate data about schools, lenders and guarantors participating in the Title IV programs. Currently, information from S&A Pro regarding revised cohort default rates and appeal/adjustment information is manually updated in PEPS. This is done on a weekly basis during the appeal season, which generally runs from October through February. This is necessary to ensure that ED staff outside of Default Management (Case Teams, etc.) has access to the most current and accurate cohort default rate information. It would be more efficient if this process could be done electronically via a file extract from S&A Pro, which could be downloaded into PEPS on a weekly basis. Overall, this would be more cost-efficient, as staff time would no longer be needed for this process. In addition, the risk of data entry error would be eliminated, and the time lag between the update into S&A Pro and the manual update into PEPS would be eliminated. III. DELIVERABLES - A. Project Management Plan-delivered within 2 weeks of the start of the contract. 1) Provides project schedule (including meeting schedule). 2) Identifies milestones and deliverables. 3) Identifies resources (people, hardware, and software). 4) Plan must be reviewed and accepted by Default Management. B. S&A Pro Interface-initial version provided to DM for testing by August 15, 2003, final version by September 15, 2003 1) Provide set-up programs for final version of S&A Pro (once all requirements have been incorporated). 2) Source code must be provided in softcopy and hardcopy to Default Management. 3) Source code must incorporate version control. 4) Must meet all requirements identified under Section II.A. and B. prior to acceptance. C. Appeal Browser Interface-initial version provided to DM for testing by August 15, 2003, final version by September 15, 2003 1) Provide set-up programs for final version of Appeal Browser (once all requirements have been incorporated). 2) Source code must be provided in softcopy and hardcopy to Default Management. 3) Source code must incorporate version control. 4) Must meet all requirements identified under Section II.A. and B. prior to acceptance. D. S&A Pro Error Log-delivered by September 15, 2003 1) Provide documentation containing error codes and description of error along with error resolution. 2) Must meet all requirements identified under Section II.C. prior to acceptance. E. Organization of files under Q:\Contractor-delivered by September 15, 2003 1) Deletion of old, outdated files. 2) S&A Pro documentation organized into properly-labeled folders for use by Default Management and IT staff. 3) Must meet all requirements identified under Section II.D. prior to acceptance. F. Updated S&A Pro User Manuals, entity relationship diagrams and field descriptions-delivered by September 15, 2003 1) Provide updated Administrative Module, Appeal Browser, Erroneous Data/New Data Adjustment/Uncorrected Adjustment Appeal Review System, Loan Servicing Appeal Review System and Mail Tracking System User's Guides, entity relationship diagrams and field descriptions. 2) Must meet all requirements identified under Section II.D. prior to acceptance. G. Provide file extract to be downloaded to PEPS-delivered by September 15, 2003 1) Provide capability to provide a weekly file extract with instructions for downloading to PEPS. 2) Must meet all requirements identified under Section II.E. prior to acceptance. H. Test Plan-delivered by August 15, 2003 - 1) Identifies testing components, acceptable to Default Management. 2) Identifies "exit criteria" in terms of system problems, acceptable to Default Management. 3) Provides for unit testing. 4) Identifies a method in which system-testing results will be provided to Default Management. 5) Delivered before testing is initiated. 6) Plan must be reviewed and accepted by Default Management. IV. PERFORMANCE MEASUREMENT STANDARDS - Performance will be measured using the following performance indicators: A. Adherence to Project Management Plan 1) Deadlines are met. 2) Deliverables meet requirements. B. Adherence to Test Plan 1) All components of the system are tested by Default Management. 2) The performance of the system meets the "exit criteria" accepted by Default Management prior to testing. C. System is Functional 1) Systems meet requirements. 2) Version control applied appropriately across all versions of S&A Pro, Appeal Browser. D. S&A Pro Documentation Properly Organized/Updated 1) System files properly labeled/organized under Q drive. 2) User manuals properly updated. V. QUALITY ASSURANCE PLAN - The contractor's performance will be monitored in the following manner: A. Preliminary Review of System Development on a Scheduled Basis B. 100 percent Testing of Completed Applications to Ensure Requirements are Met. C. 100 percent Review of Documentation Provided to Ensure Requirements are Met. D. Weekly Progress Review Meetings and Status Reports. VI. CONTRACTOR PERSONNEL SECURITY - Contractor personnel placed in key contract positions and those with sensitive access to the database may be required to obtain a Department clearance. This clearance may involve a background investigation in accordance with the Department's Handbook #11, Personnel Suitability and Security Manual Program Manual. The Department in accordance with Handbook #11 will determine clearance levels. Should key persons already have a clearance on file with the contractor, the following information will be needed by the Department to make a clearance acceptance determination: Employee's name Date and Place of Birth SSN Level of Clearance on File Date Granted Type of Investigation Done Agency Conducting the Investigation Agency Granting the Clearance This can be provided by memorandum. Should the Department decide a clearance is needed, the contractor employees will submit the appropriate security clearance paperwork necessary to obtain the correct level of clearance within one week of notification. The paperwork will be properly filled out and reviewed for completeness prior to submission to the Department. Should a clearance be denied, the affected employee will be removed from that position on the contract, or from the contract entirely if the Department finds that person unsuitable. If required, a security clearance is a dependency for completion of the contract. VII. PERIOD OF PERFORMANCE - The term of the Contractor's assignment in performing the services outlined above shall be the period from the date of issuance to September 30, 2003, with an option for two additional one-year periods, ending September 30, 2004 and September 30, 2005, respectively. The additional option years will be for ongoing maintenance/modifications to the system. VIII. EVALUATION CRITERIA - Quotations will be evaluated on the following technical measures: 1) Demonstrated familiarity with cohort default rate process, including cohort default rate challenges and appeals. 2) Demonstrated experience with Microsoft Access databases, relational database design techniques and methodology, and Visual Basic for Applications. 3) Demonstrated diverse computer programming experience with knowledge of networks and server technology. 4) Demonstrated experience in the preparation of plain language technical documentation, including user manuals. The Government is seeking a firm-fixed price for this project, i.e., a single bottom-line price rather than a variable pricing arrangement such as an hourly rate or expenses. The Government will only pay the firm-fixed price and will not reimburse the contractor for any costs incurred. Price should be reflected in the quote for the 1st year of the contract as well as broken out for each option year. In accordance with Federal Acquisition Regulation 52.217-5, except when it is determined in accordance with FAR 17.206(b) not to be in the Government's best interests, the Government will evaluate offers for award purposes by adding the total price for all options to the total price for the basic requirement. Evaluation of options will not obligate the Government to exercise the option(s). The technical evaluation is more important than cost, but as technical quotations converge, price becomes more important. The contracting officer will determine if any difference in technical merit warrants a difference in price. Quotations submitted in response to this solicitation notice should be no longer than ten (10) pages in length (Submissions over ten pages will be excluded from further review and evaluation). Quotations must be received electronically no later than 5:00 p.m. by May 7, 2003 by Deborah Wrabley at deborah.wrabley@ed.gov. Questions on this request for quotations should be addressed to Deborah Wrabley at deborah.wrabley@ed.gov.
- Place of Performance
- Address: All of the work required under this task will be performed on-site at the Department's facilities at Union Center Plaza, 830 First Street, NE, Washington, DC, and will use Department computers and related equipment.
- Record
- SN00309215-W 20030424/030422213340 (fbodaily.com)
- Source
-
FedBizOpps.gov Link to This Notice
(may not be valid after Archive Date)
| FSG Index | This Issue's Index | Today's FBO Daily Index Page |