Collaborative Legislative Drafting Study at the United States House of Representatives (House) (OAM24062S) Amendment 1 Sources Sought: This is NOT a solicitation for a proposal, proposal abstract, or quote. The purpose of this notice is to obtain information regarding qualified business sources. The responses to the information requested will assist the House in determining the appropriate acquisition method. In addition, the House does not follow the Federal Acquisitions Regulations (FAR) or any of its supplements. Background: The offices of the Clerk and the Legislative Counsel in the United States House of Representatives (the Offices) are issuing this Request for Information (RFI) as they require expert analysis of, and recommended options for updating their existing tools and systems for creating, maintaining, and exchanging legislative documents. The Offices are seeking industry, academia and other interested parties’ input on technology, architecture and process solutions related to United States federal legislative drafting in preparation for conducting a “Collaborative Legislative Drafting Study.” More specifically the offices of the Clerk and Legislative Counsel seek— to improve the current set of legislative drafting tools to provide a better collaborative drafting experience among House Leadership, Members, Committees, and the House Office of Legislative Counsel. to improve the management of the impacted documents, including storage and exchange of the documents as they are passed from one “owner” or business unit to the next throughout the legislative lifecycle. to improve user experience for all parties involved in the legislative drafting process. to define, in context, the term “collaborative legislative drafting” so there is a common understanding and goal among users, stakeholders and the product team. to adhere to best practices when implementing recommended technologies. The House currently employs a set of solutions to draft, edit, and print legislative documents, including a highly customized COTS product to draft legislation (bills, resolutions, and amendments). This current set of solutions relies heavily on XML markup tools and practices to manage the complex structure and semantics of legislative text. It also relies on a range of publishing technologies to manage, exchange, and compose text for various print and online formats. Objective: The goal of this stage of this initiative is to identify individuals, organizations, and/or vendors who can assist the staff in the Legislative Computer Systems (LCS) division of the Clerk’s office and Office of the Legislative Counsel in establishing a roadmap that revitalizes and improves the House’s legislative drafting capabilities. This includes, but is not limited to, the tools, process and workflows related to drafting legislation and the underlying technology and architecture used to support these tools, processes, and workflows. Creating this roadmap requires establishing an understanding of the current tools, processes and workflows related to drafting and an understanding of the state of the art in both legislative branch document production and the industry state of the art in collaboration, content management, XML standards and publishing. It is important that the roadmap and any proposed solution meet the unique needs of the House and legislative processes. Creating and managing legislative documents in the U.S. Congress is part of a complex ecosystem of tools, workflows, and processes across the Legislative Branch, primarily impacting the House, the Senate, the Government Publishing Office (GPO) and the Library of Congress (LOC). A simplified overview of the legislative workflow is provided in the appendix. While this work is focused on the solutions the House will use to manage its legislative documents, the processes, standards, and requirements of our partners across the Legislative Branch must be considered. One of the key standards in this area is generation one XML schema and the generation two XML schema, commonly called the United States Legislative Markup (USLM). These schemas are owned by Congress and managed by GPO in collaboration with the Legislative Branch XML Working Group and related stakeholders. These XML schemas, particularly USLM and related specifications and tools must be addressed in any evaluation of tools and solutions since they are the agreed-upon standard for exchanging bills, resolutions, and amendments. Vendor Day Information: The offices of the Clerk and the Legislative Counsel, along with the CAO Office of Acquisition Management, will host vendor day meetings. One time information session All interested parties are highly encouraged to attend a one-time informational session in which a description of the current legislative drafting processes and its challenges will be discussed, along with the scope of the expected work with this phase of this initiative. Date: Monday July 8 – 2:00 pm to 3:30 pm EST (30 to 45 minutes of presentation; rest of the time Q&A) Location: Hybrid; In Person: Longworth B-248 To register to attend: https://ushr.webex.com/weblink/register/r1e7db492e8569c790b732309a5c3a572 Submission: Due to the nature of this Sources Sought, questions will be due (NLT) July 10, 2024, at 2 PM EST. Answers will be posted in the form of an amendment to this RFI. For questions submitted after the deadline, the USHR will try its best to answer but answers may not be guaranteed. The questions submitted have been added to the attachments. If interested, please submit a capability statement demonstrating your capacity to complete the requirements outlined above to
[email protected] and
[email protected] no later than (NLT) July 24, 2024, at 2 PM EST. The Capability Statement shall meet the following criteria: On page one (1) of the Capability Statement, begin by providing your company information as follows: Company name, address, phone number, CAGE code, DUNS number, GSA Contract Number (if applicable) and point of contact (name, phone, and e-mail). Capability Statement must be in Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, or Adobe PDF format, single spaced, 11-point font (excluding charts and graphics) and the entire document shall not exceed 5 pages in length to include all attachments, charts, etc. Capability Statements must include but are not limited to (a) technical capabilities (b) expertise in a specific area related to legislative drafting or supporting technologies (c) expertise in conducting market reviews and feasibility studies, and (d) information about legislative process or related legislative drafting processing in other legislative bodies, references, and other related information. In addition to describing your services, please provide the following information: comments on the goals and objectives of this work, including approaches you would take to conduct and perform this work additional information that you may feel is relevant to this work, including comments that encourage new, different or innovative approaches DISCLAIMER AND IMPORTANT NOTES: This Sources Sought does not obligate the House to award a contract or otherwise pay for the information provided in response. The House reserves the right to use information provided by respondents for any purpose deemed necessary and legally appropriate. Any organization responding to this notice should ensure that its response is complete and sufficiently detailed to allow the House to determine the organization’s qualifications to perform the work. Respondents are advised that the House is under no obligation to acknowledge receipt of the information received or provide feedback to respondents with respect to any information submitted. However, responses to this notice will not be considered adequate responses to a solicitation. Please note that the United States House of Representatives is not subject to Federal Acquisitions Regulations (FAR) or any of its supplements. CONFIDENTIALITY: No proprietary, classified, confidential, or sensitive information should be included in your response. The House reserves the right to use any non-proprietary technical information in any resultant solicitation(s).