U.S. Department of Agriculture, Agriculture Research Service, Administrative and Financial Management, Procurement and Property Branch, 14th & Independence Avenue, S.W., Room 1310 South Building, Washington, D.C. 20250

B -- EVALUATION STUDY OF EBT CUSTOMER SERVICE WAIVERS ON RECIPIENTS SOL 15-3K06-98 POC Cheryl Norris,Contract Specialist, 202-720-7479 This is a correction to a previous notice posted on the Internet on 4/16/98. The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), Economic Research Service (ERS), seeks a contractor to evaluate the impact of Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT) customer service waivers on Food Stamp Program (FSP) recipients. The regulations governing implementation and operation of EBT systems include several customer service standards. As EBT has developed and expanded, USDA, Food and Nutrition Service has allowed States to try alternative service policies via waivers. For this requirement, the waivers of interest include: training recipients by mail versus training in person, PIN assignment versus PIN selection, and alternative procedures for card replacement. Approximately one-half of the 31 States currently operating an EBT system have implemented some combination of these three waivers. Of special interest is the effect of the waivers on elderly and disabled FSP recipients. The information provided in this study will provide estimates of the occurrence of client service problems associated with EBT customer service waivers and provide an understanding of the strategies employed by clients when encountering these problems. The contractor is expected to develop a procedure that can assess the impact of the implementation of a waiver based on how much it contributes to client burden and compare the implementation of the waivers using this procedure. The contractor is also expected to collect data from interviews with recipients, State and Federal officials and State processors. The Contractor must decide how this data is to be collected based on technical and analytical factors determining the specification of non-experimental comparison groups. This data must allow: a) the comparison of implementations with non-waiver alternatives, b) the comparison of similar implementations over time and c) the comparison of dissimilar implementations at the same time. The Contractor shall also analyze the data. The study is estimated to take approximately 24 months to complete. The solicitation will be available on the INTERNET at the following URL Location: http://www.ars.usda.gov/afm2/divisions/ppd/solicit, on or shortly after May 19, 1998. Interested parties must download the solicitation and all attachments. Please be advised that any subsequent amendments to this solicitation shall be posted at this same web site without further notice. (0132)

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