SOLICITATION NOTICE
D -- 541512-Request for Information, OECD New Chemicals
- Notice Date
- 3/25/2010
- Notice Type
- Presolicitation
- Contracting Office
- Environmental Protection Agency, Headquarters Procurement Operations Division, 1200 Pennsylvania Avenue, Nw, Washington, DC 20460
- ZIP Code
- 20460
- Solicitation Number
- RFQ-DC-10-00125
- Response Due
- 4/22/2010
- Archive Date
- 5/22/2010
- Point of Contact
- Point of Contact, Cara Lynch, Purchasing Agent, Phone (202) 564-4734
- E-Mail Address
-
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
(LYNCH.CARA@EPAMAIL.EPA.GOV)
- Small Business Set-Aside
- N/A
- Description
- NAICS Code: 541512 REQUEST FOR INFORMATION (RFI) FOR PLANNING PURPOSES ONLY:DESCRIPTION OF INFORMATION REQUESTEDPURPOSE The purpose of this RFI is to gather industry input for the development of a solution to submit filings associated with the New Substance Notification Project for member countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD). The EPA, as a member of the OECD Clearing House on New Chemicals, has a vested interest in facilitating the development of a solution for industry submitters of New Chemical notices. With the advent of EPA's electronic PMN solution and it's scheduled deployment in the Spring of 2010 (see Annex 1), EPA has a particular interest in ensuring that efficiencies be established for related regulatory submissions and this includes the OECD's effort to streamline New Chemical notification submission processes. It is the intent of this RFI to receive creative ideas for a potential solution and gain an understanding of the level of effort necessary to provide a solution for industry in order to assist the OECD. The OECD is in the early stages of developing a Request for Proposal (RFP) for a solution for the New Substance Notification Project. Responses to this RFI will be used to inform the OECD in the development of an RFP. BACKGROUND Certain countries require that companies submit New Chemical notifications prior to manufacturing and importing new chemicals within those countries. There are a broad array of required forms but many similarities exists in the forms, and in the data and information submitted, as well as specific procedures and processes governments used to review these submissions. Recognizing that similarities in New Chemical submissions exist internationally, a Workgroup was convened under the auspices of the OECD Clearing House on New Chemicals to look for opportunities to collaborate. "The OECD [New Chemicals Program] brings together government officials and stakeholders who review and assess notifications from companies who wish to market new chemicals and explores ways to share such work and harmonize activities to reduce work for governments and costs for industry".Various Workgroups were convened to navigate through issues ("Items") and in some cases perform pilot projects. The specific goal of the "Workgroup Item C" was to determine the feasibility of and, if feasible, to develop a solution a company could use to more efficiently submit notifications to multiple government using a single company "repository" of potential New Chemicals' data. Attempts have been made by the OECD to construct such a tool. Previous work includes the construction of a mapping spreadsheet (Annex 4 Form fields.xls) using fields from the various notification forms of member countries (Annex 3). In addition, an attempt was made to build a solution using MySQL and PHP. A developer was tasked to provide a document describing the effort that could be involved in expanding the most recent attempt to a system that would allow the import and export of xml-tagged information elements from a notifier's system into the required notification forms or into a notifier's or government's IT system. A document identified as "Proposal for Completion of the New Substances Notification Project" (Annex 2) accompanies this RFI. Also, the other documentation includes a list of the member countries for which the New Chemicals filings should be considered (in Annex 2), as well as their respective data elements (in Annex 4). SCOPE The solution will allow chemical companies to collect data required for New Chemical notifications across several countries into one system. When the data are collected, the solution will generate the forms/data of the New Chemical notification in the required format of each country, which will be submitted to the countries where the company intends to market their product. It is desirable that this solution would be built to scale to electronic submissions using XML. In addition, the response should provide thoughts on how best to properly maintain such a solution including operations and maintenance, change management, documentation and configuration management. Cost effective and creative strategies such as appropriate use of share ware and collaborative tools should be considered. To minimize effort and costs and for efficiency use of existing data standards and templates is also encouraged, e.g. OECD's harmonized templates, but not required. WHAT SHOULD BE PROVIDED IN RESPONSE TO THIS RFI Responses to this RFI should provide the following information for existing or near-term solutions that may address all or part of the requirements for providing the necessary solution or solutions:1.Descriptive information to include product literature on existing or proposed software or services capabilities as well as succinct narrative statements that describe the innovative solutions and the new or existing technological capabilities.2.Solution overview to include a general description including functionality and matters related to the overall design.3.If a similar solution has been implemented, clients and a point of contact for whom the solution was or is being developed, and a high-level description of the client's problem space as compared to OECD's as documented in the attachments.4.If options are provided compare and contrast both benefits and level of effort needed to develop and maintain the solutions. The level of effort can be a subjective estimation of the work needed to maintain the system. 5.In addition any information that helps to clarify what COTS or GOTS solutions are proposed leveraged in the solution and what level of customization maybe required?6.Responses should also indicate willingness to offer "no cost" demonstrations projects or software. All responses should be provided in writing, either as Adobe PDF or Microsoft Word documents. DISCLAIMER This RFI is issued solely for information and planning purposes and does not constitute aRequest for Proposal (RFP). In accordance with FAR 15.209(c), responses to this RFI are not offers and will not be accepted by the Government to form a binding contract. TheEnvironmental Protection Agency (EPA) will not award a contract based on this RFI. Although "proposal" and "offeror" are used in this Request for Information, responses will be treated as information only. Responses to this RFI will not be returned. CONTACT INFORMATION All attachements/annexes can be found on the EPA website at www.epa.gov/oam/hpod/index.htm#solam. Please submit all clarifications and questions regarding this RFI by 5:00 P.M. EST on 9 April 2010. Answers to all questions regarding this RFI will be posted on the EPA website (http://www.epa.gov/oam/hpod/index.htm#solam).All responses to this RFI can be submitted via email by 5:00 P.M. EST on 22 April 2010 to Cara Lynch, Contract Specialist at lynch.cara@epa.gov. Electronic submission is highly encouraged.
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