Department of the Treasury, U.S. Customs Service, Procurement Division, Room 4210, 1301 Constitution Ave., NW, Washington, DC 20229

D -- SOFTWARE DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT SOL CS-97-020 DUE 040397 POC Stanley Carr, Contract Specialist, 202-927-1132 The U.S. Customs Service intends to negotiate with Ellsworth and Associates for a 4-month firm-fixed price contract for the continued development of software for the Application Development Division (ADD) of the Office of Information and Technology. This interim contract will provide development and maintenance support services until award of the new support contract. Customs must award this "bridge" contract to provide continued uninterrupted coverage and provide an acceptable level of service and support to its user community. Any lack of software support services for ADD will greatly impact the ability of Customs to support and maintain the mission critical operation and services of ADD. Because of the overwhelming complexity and size of the ADD make it infeasible to employ the services of another Contractor. Also, because of the magnitude of the system, the lengthy transition period and the enormous learning curve, employing services of a new contractor for this 4-month effort would not be practical. A Contractor experienced in the development and maintenance of the ADD support services contract will reduce the risk to Customs, eliminate the need for transitioning of responsibilities from one Contractor to another, and ensure the successful operation of the system. The incumbent contractor, Ellsworth and Associates, Inc. has the technical skills and the institutional knowledge of the system required to support the continued operation of ADD. Such technical skills include expertise in the design, development, testing, implementation and maintenance of large scale (batch and online) transaction processing systems in an IBM compatible mainframe environment utilizing command level CICS, CA-ROSCOE or TSO/IPFF, INTERTEST, IEF or another interactive debugging software library management system, CA-DATACOM/DB or another mainframe relational database system, OSJCL and COBOL II. Additionally, the contractor must have experience with MS/DOS, WINDOWS, UNIX, the "C" programming language and Local Area Network (LAN)technology to assist ADD Project Teams in the development of future LAN-based applications and working knowledge and experience in developing and translating national Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) message syntax to assist in expanding the electronic interchange of transactions within the Customs EC community. Based on the authority 41 U.S.C. 253(c)(1), FAR 6.302-1 award to Ellsworth and Associates, Inc. without full and open competition is planned. This is not an Request for Proposal, nor is a RFP available. See Note 22.***** (0078)

Loren Data Corp. http://www.ld.com (SYN# 0040 19970321\D-0002.SOL)