USDA, Office of Operations, Procurement Operations Division, Room 1547-South Building, 1400 Independence Avenue, SW, Washington, DC 20250-9850

D -- BROADCAST FACSIMILE SERVICES SOL RFP-OO-99-1003 POC Eugene M. Feinberg, Contracting Officer, 202-720-6864 (FAX 202-720-9226) E-MAIL: Use this address to contact the Contracting Officer, gene.feinberg@usda.gov. The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS), Market News (MN) has a requirement for broadcast facsimile (fax) transmission services, including electronic mail interface, facsimile on demand, and World Wide Web (WWW) and File Transfer Protocol (FTP) internet support services. MN data reports contain information about the movements, grades, and prices of agricultural commodities. Generally, reports are faxed to one central location from the approximately 70 MN offices and are then delivered to recipients of a distribution list maintained by the sending office. Reports are time sensitive and of greatest value at the moment of release. Accordingly, upon receipt of a document, file, or electronic mail; the contractor selected shall be required to simultaneously attempt delivery to all fax machines on a distribution list or electronic mail address list within 15 minutes 90% of the time and within 30 minutes 100% of the time. Other requirements are: successful upload of electronic documents through modem pool, fax machine, or computer on the first attempt 95% of the time and on the second attempt 100% of the time; 14.4 baud in support of transmissions through fax machines and 28.8 baud in support of the contractor's modem pool; a 99% error-free transmission rate within the contractor's network; service capable of sending 1,000 simultaneous MN reports or other documents, with a growth capacity of 100 additional reports each option year; to broadcast fax MN reports or other documents and sending or receiving electronic mail within the continental U.S., Alaska, Hawaii, and Canada, and to or from international sites, including Europe, Latin America, Africa, and the Pacific Rim; service with redundancy capabilities in the event subcontractor (local exchange carrier) services or equipment becomes inoperable; trained and qualified customer service support staff available from 7 am to 9 pm EST Monday through Friday with a pager response time of 2 hours at all other times; on-site installation of hardware and software when required for the contractor's solution; 32-bit software for creating and updating distribution lists that supports exporting all fields of all records to an ASCII delimited text file, on-line help, and the ability to send attachments such as spreadsheets, databases, wordprocessing files, and graphics; software that runs under Windows95, Windows98, and WindowsNT; software upgrades at no cost; and billing and management reports, such as status reports that are available through the internet. All services, software, or equipment provided must be Year 2000 compliant. For Fiscal Year 1998, the following traffic was generated: Domestic minutes, Peak 1,115,158; Domestic minutes, Off-Peak 42,949; International minutes, Peak 33,248; and International minutes, Off-Peak 808. A firm, fixed-price indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity contract is contemplated with a base year and four one-year option periods. This synopsis is for the acquition of commercial items; therefore, the solicitation of offers and their evaluation shall be in accordance with Part 12 of the Federal Acquisition Regulation. Offers shall be submitted 30 days after the issue date of the solicitation. Evaluation of offers shall be conducted on a pass-fail, low-bid basis. The Government reserves the right to make award on the basis of initial offers without further discussions. This is an unrestricted solicitation. All responsible sources may submit a proposal which shall be considered by the agency. Interested firms shall respond to this synopsis within 15 days after its publication. Posted 10/08/98 (W-SN260544). (0281)

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