The U.S. Department of Labor is seeking qualified contractors that can provide analytical support for regulation development activities undertaken by the Employment and Training Administration’s (ETA) Office of Policy Development and Research (OPDR), Division of Policy, Legislation and Regulation (DPLR). We are looking for firms that qualify under the Small Business Programs mentioned in Federal Acquisition Regulation Part 19. When submitting your response, please indicate under which programs you meet the criteria. The NAICS Code is 541810, and the Small Business Standard is $6.5 million. OPDR assists ETA in supporting its goal to develop workforce policies and investments and support the continuous improvement of the public workforce investment system by analyzing, formulating, and recommending legislative changes and options for policy initiatives. OPDR provides ETA with strategic approaches to improve performance and outcomes through research, demonstrations and the evaluation of major ETA programs. OPDR then coordinates the development of ETA rulemaking documents implementing Federal statutes or amending outdated information into a regulation. The OPDR Analytical Support for Regulation Development Contract supports OPDR in the collection, analysis, and development of summary statements of public comments received during the public comment phase of various regulatory initiatives. The contactor will be responsible for assisting OPDR with the management of public comments under the guidance of OPDR in support of a number of workforce investment system regulatory initiatives. Activities undertaken as part of this support include but are not limited to collection of public comments, analysis of public comments, developing summary reports on comments, and assistance with cost-benefit analysis of rulemaking. This work requires the development of a database and deploying Web-based tools in order to: share access to the comments; analyze and sort the content of the comments; prepare comment summaries, and track progress and dispensation of each public comment received. The contractor must be able to implement a process for managing public comments based upon a secure Web-based software product, and provide Federal staff with real-time access over the Web to results of the contractor’s comment sorting and analysis. All contractors responding to this announcement must demonstrate their experience in the aforementioned work. Pertinent factors for consideration of qualifications are: (1) ability to provide Federal staff with training on and access to a secure Web-accessible public comment analysis database, (2) experience in receiving, processing, and loading comments into the Federal Docket Management System, (3) experience in classifying comments, sorting into issue categories, and analyzing the pubic comments, (4) experience preparing summaries of the public comments based on the issue categories, and (5) experience is preparing cost-benefit analyses on the impact of the rulemaking. All interested parties are invited to submit a capabilities statement, to Ms. Jillian Matz, Contracting Officer, Division of Contract Services, 200 Constitution Avenue, NW, Room N4655, Washington, DC 20210. Responses are due June 2, 2009 by 4 p.m. EST. Electronic copies of capability statements are preferred and may be emailed to
[email protected]. The response must be specific to each of the qualifications listed above to show that the respondent has the skills and experience. The submittals shall not exceed 10 pages, TOTAL. A determination by the Government to proceed with the acquisition as a set-aside is within the discretion of the Government. Please be advised that telephone inquiries will not be accepted. PLEASE NOTE THAT THIS NOT A REQUEST FOR PROPOSAL.