SOURCES SOUGHT
99 -- Application Service Provider (RFI)
- Notice Date
- 10/18/2005
- Notice Type
- Sources Sought
- NAICS
- 518210
— Data Processing, Hosting, and Related Services
- Contracting Office
- National Archives and Records Administration, NAA, Acquisition Center, 8601 Adelphi Road, Room 3360, College Park, MD, 20740-6001
- ZIP Code
- 20740-6001
- Solicitation Number
- NAMA-06-R-0002
- Response Due
- 11/1/2005
- Archive Date
- 11/16/2005
- Description
- Background The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) Congressional Affairs and Communications Staff is responsible for Internet and Intranet web sites for the National Archives. The Congressional Affairs and Communications Staff is issuing this Request for Information (RFI) for Application Service Provider (ASP) or Internet Presence Provider (IPP) services as they conduct a review of their current operations and plan for future requirements. Please note NARA is seeking ASP services and not software development or programming services. Service sought will be performed at the ASP?s site and not provided at a NARA site. Currently the Congressional Affairs and Communications Staff is responsible for maintaining the web sites in Table A. The Internet sites and Intranet Sites are maintained in similar manners with development, test and three production servers (See Figures 1 and 2). The Web Program staff performs development tasks on their desktop systems with the development server appearing as a local drive. Updates and modifications are posted to the test and staging environment as required using FTP. Items placed in the staging environment are automatically replicated to all of the Production servers within minutes. On a weekly basis the Internet test server is overwritten from the production site. Employees of the Federal Register post critical, time-sensitive information each business day to the Federal Register section of the Internet site, from a location other than that of the Web Program staff.. Both the Intranet and Internet sites host NARA?s employee locator application. The Internet locator is based upon a Common Gateway Interface (CGI) script running against a text file to render search results in a browser window. The Intranet uses a PHP scripted page running against a text file. Each web site also provides a means to enter feedback to the appropriate staff member through a form mailer script. The Intranet site provides the user the ability to view their local weather data on the fly from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric (NOAA) web site. This information is pulled from the NOAA web server and written to the Intranet servers. At this time NARA is not running a back-end database, but this will be a future expansion of functionality requiring OEM of development, test and production environments. In the event of a site redesign, a development area must be provided that will be mirrored to production upon completion of the redesign effort. Table A ? NARA Maintained Web Sites URL Type Description www.archives.gov Internet NARA?s primary public web site consisting of approximately 12,000 documents hoover.archives.gov Internet The web site of the Hoover Presidential Library consisting of approximately 700 documents nixon.archives.gov Internet The official source for the historical materials created and received by the White House during the administration of President Richard M. Nixon (1969-1974). Approximately 500 documents. clinton1.nara.gov Internet Copies of each iteration of the Clinton Presidential web sites consisting of approx 103,000 documents. clinton2.nara.gov Internet clinton3.nara.gov Internet clinton4.nara.gov Internet clinton5.nara.gov Internet clinton6.nara.gov Internet www.nara-at-work.gov Intranet Intranet Web Site for NARA Users Only. Consists of approximately 10,000 documents In addition to the web sites in Table A, NARA also maintains sites hosted by third-party vendors. These sites are listed in Table B. NARA would like to consolidate these sites into a single hosting site in the future. The archives.gov web site represents NARA?s main bandwidth consumer. On a normal workday, usage averages .5 Gbps between the hours of 6 am and 5 pm. However during peak periods such as the days immediately following a presidential election, bandwidth usage rises to levels as high as 5Gbps as users visit the Electoral College section of the site. Table B ? Third Party Maintained Web Sites URL Type Description www.ourdocuments.gov Internet A site featuring 100 milestone documents in American history along with a teachers guide and other related materials 1930census.archives.gov Internet A comprehensive guide to the 1930 census. While the current systems work for the NARA requirements, NARA is seeking to establish a relationship with an ASP that will provide a managed hosting solution for web sites, tools and databases as well as up-to-date technology, and technical guidance in how they could better utilize today?s web-hosting technology and position themselves for future technologies. Software Applications: NARA currently utilizes a number of applications to support and maintain their web sites (See Table C). While over the long term NARA is not committed to these applications, in the short term the applications functionality will need to be supported. Table C ? NARA Site Support Applications Application Purpose Description Verity Ultraseek Search engine. Three instances are used to provide search indexes for the Presidential Libraries, Clinton Presidential Materials and the NARA Intranet site. WebTrends Monitor Site Activity Provides statistical reports on site usage. LinkScan Link Checking Provides weekly link checking, orphaned file identification and other error checking. Apache 4.3.10 Web Server Web Server PHP 4.310 Scripting Language Open source Scripting Language. Hardware: Currently, NARA is running dual-processor 280R Sun servers with the Solaris 9 operating system with a planned upgrade scheduled for FY 2006 to meet projected increases in visitor traffic. NARA may turn these servers over to the ASP or migrate the web sites to the ASP owned hardware per best practices recommended by the ASP whether managed hosting, shared hosting or another solution. Requirements: In order to move the NARA hosted applications to a commercially managed hosting solution NARA requires an understanding of the ability of a commercial ASPs ability to support the NARA web sites described herein and provide the following support: 99.9% guaranteed up time; 24/7 technical support; Incident tracking and reporting; Support for XHTML, PHP, or other dynamic web page technologies such as, but not limited to, ASP and Cold Fusion Back end database support including development, test and production environments Hosting location within the continental United States; A clearly defined and tested Continuity of Operations Plan; Ability to provide flexible bandwidth allowing the NARA sites to readily adapt to changing user environments; A dynamic posting solution that ensures rapid posting of content changes; Knowledge and experience in scaling, designing and hosting web delivered content; Virus Protection and Security Screening and monitoring to mitigate hacking of the web sites; and Guaranteed secure access to the Intranet Site for NARA personnel only. Response Instructions Responses are limited to a total of 20 pages, and must be in Microsoft Word format. Page size must be 8.5 x 11", font must be 12 point or larger, and margins must be at least 1". Briefly describe your company, your products and services, history, ownership, financial information, and other information you deem relevant. Provide points of contact, including name, address, phone/fax number, and email. Discuss technical feasibility alternatives and provide non-binding order of magnitude cost and schedule estimates. Indicate whether your product is commercially available or is on the General Services Administration Federal Supply Schedule. Supplemental product brochures or marketing materials outlining specifications and capabilities may also be submitted, and will not be counted in the overall page count limits. Contact Information Please submit responses via email not later than 4:00 PM on November 1, 2005 to stuart.hitchings@nara.gov. The subject of the email should be "Application Service Provider RFI". Responses submitted after this date and time will not be accepted. Submit 3 copies each of any supplemental hardcopy materials or electronic materials on hard media (CD, diskette), to: Stuart Hitchings (NAA) National Archives and Records Administration at College Park, 8601 Adelphi Road, RM 3340, College Park, MD 20740-6001 The Government will not request additional information or discuss submissions received in response to this RFI with individual responders. Disclaimer This RFI is issued for information and planning purposes only and does not constitute a solicitation. The Government does not intend to award a contract on the basis of this RFI or to otherwise pay for information received in response to this RFI. All information received in response to this RFI that is marked Proprietary will be handled accordingly. Responses to the RFI will not be returned. Information provided in response to this RFI will be used to assess tradeoffs and alternatives available for determining how to proceed in the acquisition process for the RCPOS and may lead to the development of a specification for the RCPOS. In accordance with FAR 15.201(e), responses to this RFI are not offers and cannot be accepted by the Government to form a binding contract. Responders are solely responsible for all expenses associated with responding to this RFI. Original Point of Contact Stuart Hitchings, Contract Specialist, Phone (301) 837-0310, Fax (301) 837-3227, Email stuart.hitchings@nara.gov
- Place of Performance
- Address: 8601 Adelphi Road, Rm 3340, College Park, MD
- Zip Code: 20740-6001
- Zip Code: 20740-6001
- Record
- SN00917452-W 20051020/051018212130 (fbodaily.com)
- Source
-
FedBizOpps.gov Link to This Notice
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