Description
Within the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT), the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) plays a critical role in the safe operation of railroads in the United States of America. FRA is responsible for: (1) Promulgating and enforcing rail safety regulations, (2) Administering railroad assistance programs, (3)Conducting research and development in support of improved railroad safety and national rail transportation policy, (4)Playing an active role in rehabilitation of Northeast Corridor rail passenger service, and (5)Consolidating government support of rail transportation activities. FRA's Office of Safety promotes and regulates safety throughout the nation's railroad industry. The Office employs more than 415 Federal safety inspectors, who operate out of eight (8) regional offices nationally. The inspectors specialize in five safety disciplines and numerous grade crossing and trespass-prevention initiatives. Additionally, the Office works with, trains and certifies State safety inspectors to enforce Federal rail safety regulations. Today, the State Rail Safety Participation Program consists of 30 States employing 160 safety inspectors in the five rail safety disciplines. The Office of Information Technology and Support Systems (OIT&SS) staff located in Washington, DC has overall responsibilities for IT planning, policy, and operations. Specifically, the OIT&SS designs, implements, manages, and maintains the information systems that support the mission of the FRA. From an operational standpoint, OIT&SS supports the FRA headquarters staff located in Washington D.C. The OIT&SS has a contract in place to provide Local Area Network administration and Help Desk support services to all headquarters customers (approximately 300) and each Region’s Computer Specialist (8). It also provides remote back-up support for all other regional personnel. Currently on-site information technology (IT) support is provided to each of the 8 regions by 8 Regional Computer Specialists (RCS). The RCSs are full-time government employees. One RCS is located in each of the Regional offices located in: (1) Cambridge, MA; (2) Lester, PA; (3) Atlanta, GA; (4) Chicago, IL; (5) Hurst, TX; (6) Kansas City, MO; (7) Sacramento, CA; and, (8) Vancouver, WA. IT support for each of the regions is provided by the Regional Computer Specialists (RCS) who report to Deputy Regional Administrators within the Office of Safety. The RCSs provide a wide variety of IT support tasks. Each RCS supports end users at the Regional Office and other cities in their region. Many of these users are safety inspectors who telecommute, working primarily from remote sites using laptop computers. The RCSs also support Federal and State inspector’s significant distances away from the regional/field offices. Currently, each RCS supports an average of 86 end users, with a minimum number of 65 users supported in Region 8 (Vancouver) and a maximum number of 122 users supported in Region 2 (Lester). The number of physical sites they support (excluding the hotels that inspectors often use as an “office”) ranges from 3 to 15, with an average of 9 per region. The RCSs routinely travel to field locations to provide training, hardware or software installation, and problem solving. They average 10 – 15 trips per year; with a minimum of 3 and a maximum of 25 per year. Most of the field locations are in different cities, and many of the cities are in neighboring states. The FRA network is connected to the DOT network and utilizes its resources. Client access to several Department-wide applications is also provided through desktop services. The client workstations and/or laptop computers support Microsoft software for remote dial-up Outlook access. Because of the inter-connectivity among DOT, FRA, and the FRA regions, frequent coordination between FRA technical staff, FRA service provider staff, and DOT technical staff is necessary to ensure technical changes and updates are transparent to the FRA user community. In the Regions, the RCSs’ primary activities, in terms of priorities and time spent, are end user support, hardware and software installation and upgrades, training and network operations and maintenance. Although the RCSs’ work a normal 8-hour day, they are on call 24 hours a day, 7 days a week to respond to problems that arise outside of normal work hours. The RCS must provide support for a wide range of hardware, operating systems, off-the-shelf software, FRA specific applications, and hardware. In addition to hardware and software common to all Regions, nearly all of the Regions have some hardware or software that is unique to that region. Regions 1 (Cambridge) and 8 (Vancouver) serve as backup sites for some Headquarters network and Internet service provider functions. Because of the unique needs and RCS capabilities, some RCSs perform duties that are not done in the other regions. Pursuant to OMB Circular A-76, FRA is conducting a competitive sourcing study to identify alternative sources for the services currently provided by the 8 RCSs in order to determine the best value service provider. FRA is soliciting competitive proposals from alternative sources interested in providing the required on-site IT support functions for each of the agency’s 8 Regional offices currently being provided by government employees. A firm-fixed-price type contract, with a base year and four (4) one-year options, is contemplated. The solicitation is expected to be issued and posted within the next 30 days only on the FEDBIZOPPS system. No paper copies of the solicitation will be available. Telephone and written requests for the solicitation will NOT be accepted. Central Contractor Registration (CCR) is required for resulting award.