D -- WEB CONTENT MANAGEMENT SYSTEM (CMS)

Notice Date

December 10, 2001

Contracting Office

Office of Procurement, United States Senate Sgt-at-Arms, Postal Square-6th Floor, Washington, DC 20510

ZIP Code

20510

Solicitation Number

2002-R-006

Response Due

January 14, 2002

Point of Contact

Cheri Allen, SoS Webmaster (202) 224-2020; Lawrence B. Toperoff, Contracting Officer (202) 224-2547

E-Mail Address

Click here to contact the contracting officer via (acquisitions@saa.senate.gov)

Description

The United States Senate invites submission of qualifications and proposal data from interested firms that are qualified on the basis of experience and capability to provide the services. This announcement constitutes the only solicitation for this service. No due date extensions from closing date will be granted. Interested parties may request the Statement of Work (SOW) from the United States Senate, Office of the Secretary by email address below (acquisitions@saa.senate.gov). This solicitation is organized into 5 parts: 1. Scope and Background; 2. Detailed Technical Requirements; 3. Project Deliverables; 4. Format of Proposals and a list of several questions to be addressed therein, and 5. Evaluation Criteria. The United States Senate Office of the Secretary is in the process of redesigning its public Web site. The overall project has 2 components: (1) implementation of a Web Content Management System; (2) implementation of an XML-tagging solution for some content; and (3) follow on maintenance support. This solicitation is for the creation and implementation of a Content Management System and includes a Mandatory Option for item 2 implementation of an XML-tagging solution, and item 3. Graphical element design and Web page layouts will be done in-house by Senate staff. The target launch of a CMS-based Web site is anticipated for September 15, 2002. The complete project (in-house and contracted phases combined) will result in a complete redesign of the current site accessible at http://www.senate.gov. This project is limited to the central areas of the Senate Web site which are under the authority of the Secretary of the Senate (all portions of the site except Senators' and Committees' Web sites). Specifically, referring to the 7 main categories on the current www.senate.gov navigation bar, this project covers content found in: all items under Senators, Committees, and Contacting the Senate, until arriving at a Senator's or Committee's Web site which can be identified by a different graphical design); all items under Legislative Activities, noting that some reports are generated, and will continue to be generated, from our internal legislative information system (LIS) and are copied to the Web server each evening via FTP; and all items under Learning About the Senate, Visiting the Senate, and Search. The CMS will be used primarily, and initially, by staff of the Office of the Secretary managing the central Web site, however vendors shall provide an assessment of how the functionality of their proposed system, or a limited version of the functionality, could be used by additional groups of Senate staff in other offices. This project will be managed by the Office of the Secretary of the Senate, under policy oversight provided by the Senate Committee on Rules and Administration, and in close collaboration with the Senate Office of the Sergeant at Arms. Description of the Interconnectivity and Required Integration of the Project Components. The integration of the above components is required and vendors must ensure that their individual component works when integrated. The CMS development and implementation includes: all back-end database related activities; all content input and editing mechanisms (including solutions for populating the CMS with existing content); all CMS administrative functions; all mechanisms for web-page building (combining content with Senate-built and approved page-layout templates and graphical elements); and providing for the receipt of content via batched processing. The XML Mandatory Option includes content and document analysis; development of DTD(s); and solutions for tagging content, integrating tagged content into the CMS, and translating the XML-tagged data to HTML. The front-end design of the site will be done in-house, including all graphical elements and page-layouts. In addition, the mechanism required to initiate batch processing to ship data from existing databases to the CMS will be handled in-house. Current Configuration: The central portion of Senate.gov currently has approximately 5,750 Web pages. About 23% are static html pages which must be manually created and edited by 3 staff in the Office of the Secretary of the Senate. The content creation and posting process typically involves only one level of approval. The other 77% of total pages are automatically generated. The vast majority of the generated pages are scripted reports from the Legislative Information System (LIS). An Oracle database contains descriptive information about Senators and Committees. Edits to this data are currently keyed into the database but plans are to batch process updates from an internal legislative system.. Cold Fusion scripting is used to access this Oracle-based data and present it on a Web page. The Legislative Reports from LIS are generated and transferred to the Web site each evening. REQUEST THE EXPANDED STATEMENT OF WORK Information necessary for responding to this solicitation is available in the Statement of Work which includes: detailed technical requirements; a description of project deliverables; instructions for the format of proposals, including several questions to be addressed; and the evaluation criteria used to award the contract.

Web Link

The CMS will be the back end to this site. (http://www.senate.gov)

Record

Loren Data Corp. 20011212/DSOL008.HTM (W-344 SN5147U8)