Social Security Administration, Office of Acquisition and Grants, 1710 Gwynn Oak Avenue, Baltimore, MD 21207

70 -- SEARCH ENGINE DUE 091198 POC Madeline Y. Tims, (410) 965-9488 E-MAIL: Contracting Officer, madeline.tims@ssa.gov. The Social Security Administration (SSA) is attempting to identify responsible vendors that can provide a search engine robust enough to meet current and anticipated knowledge management system requirements. The search engine must be fully compatible with the NT 4.0 platform as well as the UNIX platform running the Sun Solaris 2.5+ operating system. It must be compatible with Microsoft and Netscape's 4.x browsers and provide ODBC (Open Database Connectivity) driver support for both Microsoft's ODBC and Solaris' Intersolv DataDirect Connect. Web servers supported must include Lotus Domino and Microsoft IIS. The installation should be wizard driven to ensure that the product can be installed quickly and easily. Administration should be possible from any browser. The product must have a plain English interface and support query-by-example. Because of the complexity of the searches anticipated, the product must support the Bayesian inferencing network that combines multiple source calculations involving the frequency of the appearance of specific terms within a specific context to determine a relevancy score. Using a natural language query must be possible to refine search results further than is possible using a simple key word search. Testing of simple key word searches have demonstrated that this technology alone is insufficient when searching against documents containing issues as complex as the social security programs. When doing a search, the user must be able to use a combination of natural language, Boolean commands or proximity operators within a single query. The product must use tokenization and normalization to enhance context-sensitive searching by recognizing words in their various tenses and forms. All indexes are updated automatically. The search engine supplied must be able to search against multiple formats across many servers simultaneously (ability to operate in a distributed, multi-host environment) and merge the results into a single list that provides the best matches first. Searching across gigabytes of data should produce search results within seconds even when searching across disparate sources. The user should be able to selectively search data sources to search either all or specific sources. The engine should be able to understand and correctly index a large variety of formats including but not limited to HTML, SGML, Lotus Notes, BMP, GIF, TIFF, JPEG, CGM, TIFF CCITT Group 3 & 4, RTF, dBase, Lotus 1-2-3, E-mail formats (cc:Mail and Exchange 5.x), Microsoft Office, news feeds, ODBC databases, Word Perfect, as well as other industry standard formats. The search interface must be fully customizable to allow various groups the searching options that best fit their needs. In addition, the tool must support automatic delivery of content to allow users to be notified when new information from a specific source becomes available. The knowledge management tool must support source browsing to allow users to see which concepts and people are referenced the most frequently for a given source as a source of management information. On-the-fly mining of people, companies or concepts is required to allow users to see the relationship between the people and the concepts they are linked with. In addition, the tool must automatically capture search and retrieval results that can be mined in itself to create a pool of knowledge. The tool must be Year 2000 compatible, include documentation and technical support. SSA has identified one source capable of satisfying its needs in this area. Therefore, if no other responses are received, or if responses received are unable to satisfy SSA's mandatory requirements as detailed above, SSA shall issue a sole source award under FAR PART 13 to Sovereign Hill for current and future purchase and support of the Inquiry 5.x search engine and knowledge management tool as required by the agency. Responsible organizations possessing the requisite expertise and resources are invited to submit information concerning their pricing, capabilities, experience, and other pertinent data (including GSA contract information). Any literature, or information submitted as a response to this notice, must contain enough information attesting to the capability of a product offered to meet SSA's requirements. RESPONSES TO THIS ANNOUNCEMENT ARE DUE BY COB SEPTEMBER 11, 1998, to the address at the beginning of this announcement. Refer to Inquery Search Engine. No faxes are permitted and the Government does not intend to pay for any information provided. Posted 09/04/98 (W-SN246310). (0247)

Loren Data Corp. http://www.ld.com (SYN# 0338 19980909\70-0012.SOL)