The State Department is seeking feedback from industry on requirements for building a procurement forecasting application that would provide vendors with status updates on potential future requirements and acquisition activities.
According to a request for information (RFI) issued June 21, the agency’s goal is to “develop a single web-based, procurement forecasting application to provide visibility and transparency into contracting activities and connecting with existing and potential vendors to reduce barriers to entry, increase competition and ensure lasting value to the department.”
The State Department believes that a web-based app is one of the best ways to provide visibility into procurements and increase competition among vendors; a holistic acquisition experience for contracting officers, customers, and industry is another.
The agency said that a vendor selected to develop this application would be responsible for designing, developing, implementing, and maintaining the app. The application “must be publicly accessible, ingest data from external sources, publish and refresh information daily, rapidly deploy and scale, come with training, be cybersecurity compliant, and include data quality controls,” the RFI notes.
Phase 1 of the project is developing a minimum viable product (MVP), with a $350,000 ceiling, after which the chosen contractor would lay out subsequent phases – including their duration and estimated cost.
Interested vendors have until July 8 to respond to the RFI. The State Department said it may hold feedback sessions in the future.
The agency is looking for feedback in the following areas:
- Provide summary background on any existing instances of application and solutions that you have deployed in government or industry that address this type of requirement outlined in the draft Statement of Objectives (SOO).
- Are there known infrastructures/interface issues that will make this effort more difficult?
- Provide recommendations regarding the primary areas of focus of this SOO and provide recommendations on process improvement.
- Provide an estimate of the duration of the lifecycle of phases for minimum viable product (MVP) development, scaling the solution, through deployment, as part of the overall response to the SOO. Particular attention should be made to Phase I.
- Provide any overarching recommended approaches for technology in this space that we may not be aware of.
- Provide any recommendations for improving the SOO, and what information may be needed to provide future responses from Industry on a possible solicitation.
- Provide a Rough Order of Magnitude (ROM) for contract costs to support this initiative with any notations for development, hosting, training, operations, and maintenance by phases, especially for Phase I.
- Provide a Return on Investment summary that the State Department could reasonably expect to attain with the adoption and implementation of the solution in this space.
