Inactive Total Small Business Set-Aside (FAR 19.5)

NOTE: This Sources Sought Notice was updated on December 20, 2023. The update included the uploading of an Updated Attachment 2, which shows the Government's Q&A for vendor inquiries. The purpose of t... NOTE: This Sources Sought Notice was updated on December 20, 2023. The update included the uploading of an Updated Attachment 2, which shows the Government's Q&A for vendor inquiries. The purpose of this Sources Sought Notice is to provide information to the United States Census Bureau (USCB) to help determine an acquisition strategy and capable vendors for to identify potential sources for Enterprise Reporting System Support (ERSS). The USCB believes industry holds the most current and best practices in related areas and seeks recommendations from vendors on how to best acquire the needed industry knowledge and expertise and achieve benefits in accordance with federal requirements. Pursuant to FAR Part 10 Market Research, it is also the intention of the USCB to locate and identify the capabilities and core competencies of small businesses. This will help determine if any potential procurement to meet the agency requirements can be awarded or set-aside utilizing any of the small business programs under FAR part 19 before considering full and open competition that includes large businesses. THIS IS A SOURCES SOUGHT NOTICE ONLY. This notice is issued solely for information and planning purposes – it does not constitute a Request for Proposal (RFP) or a promise to issue an RFP in the future. This Sources Sought Notice does not commit the Government to contract for any supply or service whatsoever. Further, the USCB is not at this time seeking proposals and will not accept unsolicited proposals. Interested parties are advised that the U.S. Government will not pay for any information or administrative costs incurred in response to this Sources Sought Notice; all costs associated with responding to this Sources Sought Notice will be solely at the interested party’s expense. Not responding to this notice does not preclude participation in any future procurement or solicitation, if any is issued. The information provided in the Sources Sought Notice is subject to change and is not binding on the Government. The Applications Development and Services Division (ADSD) of the USCB has primary responsibility for establishing and maintaining the USCB’s capability to conduct field survey and data collection operations for multiple programs, including the decennial census, economic surveys, American Community Survey (ACS), and current surveys programs. ADSD specializes in the design, development, implementation, and support of a data lake in the cloud used to collect, store, regulate, process, report on, and grant access to Census data. The Unified Tracking System Development Branch (UTSDB) is responsible for the business analysis, IT systems design, development, and support for the Enterprise Data Lake (EDL) and other Enterprise Reporting Systems related to Census data. The EDL will ingest data from all over the Census, it will allow users to request data and cloud resources, this will enable the users to set up their own environments to do research, processing, or data product creation. The EDL will fully utilize cloud native services to bring the best technology to bear on the Census’s computing needs. Additional Enterprise Reporting Systems include, for example, a data warehouse that provides a view of survey data over time, across surveys, and from different data capture and cost sources at one time. In such systems, all the data is in one place to view, analyze, and make more efficient and effective decisions. Another data warehouse tracks all funding requests, approval statuses, and what has been paid. Each uses various types of visualization tools and different types of databases behind the scenes. The USCB is seeking information on the capabilities of vendors in providing such professional support services, including IT system analysis, requirements analysis, architecture design, enabling of cloud and data services, setting up cloud infrastructure, systems/software design, development, unit testing, integration support, architecture, data engineering, analytics/reporting services, innovation, and maintenance for the EDL and Enterprise Reporting systems.