Inactive

This Notice is for planning purposes only and is not a Request for Proposal, Request for Quotation, or an obligation on the part of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) for conduc... This Notice is for planning purposes only and is not a Request for Proposal, Request for Quotation, or an obligation on the part of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) for conducting a follow-on acquisition. NIST does not intend to award a contract on the basis of this Notice, or otherwise pay for the information requested. No entitlement or payment of direct or indirect costs or charges by NIST will arise as a result of submission of responses to this Notice and NIST use of such information. NIST is seeking to identify small business concern sources capable of providing Information Access Division (IAD) Technology Evaluations Support Services as described in the attached Draft Statement of Work for an anticipated Indefinite Delivery / Indefinite Quantity (IDIQ) type contract. The small business size standard associated with the NAICS code for this effort, 541990 – All Other Professional, Scientific and Technical Services, is $19.5 Million. Interested parties shall include their business size classification and socio-economic status in response to this notice. BACKGROUND The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), a non-regulatory agency within the U.S. Department of Commerce, is dedicated to advancing measurement science, standards, and technology to enhance economic security and improve the quality of life. The Information Technology Laboratory (ITL) is one of NIST’s six research laboratories. ITL focuses on IT measurements, testing, and standards, and is a globally recognized and trusted source of high-quality, independent, and unbiased research and data. The Information Access Division (IAD) is a division within NIST’s ITL. IAD is known for world-class evaluation-driven research programs that accelerate the readiness of emerging technologies for widespread deployment. For decades, IAD has fostered community evaluations for foundational Artificial Intelligence in research areas such as human language technologies, biometrics, search, information retrieval and natural language processing. IAD advances the measurement science, develops novel evaluation paradigms, and performs research to ensure technology is developed and used correctly and efficiently. The contractor will be tasked with creating and refining topic statements, queries, and descriptions, as well as making judgments and annotations on various content types (text, video, audio, images, etc.). The tasks also include assessing the quality and accuracy of content, determining whether content is from the same source or has been tampered with, evaluating the quality of human-produced and technology-generated content, and recruiting humans with specific expertise to complete human-technology interaction tasks. Various combinations of the tasks described in the subsequent Tasks section are envisioned to support cross-division technology evaluations, measurements, and research for IAD, ultimately serving to improve technology measurement science. NIST is seeking information from sources that may be capable of providing a solution that will achieve the objectives described above and as listed in the attached Statement of Work. HOW TO RESPOND TO THIS NOTICE In responding to this notice, please DO NOT PROVIDE PROPRIETARY INFORMATION. Please include only the following information, readable in either Microsoft Word 365, Microsoft Excel 365, or .pdf format, in the response: Submit the response by email to the Primary Point of Contact and, if specified, to the Secondary Point of Contact listed in this notice as soon as possible, and preferably before the closing date and time of this notice. Please note that to be considered for award under any official solicitation, the entity must be registered and “active” in SAM at the time of solicitation response. Provide the complete name of your company, address, name of contact for follow-up questions, their email, their phone number and, if your company has an active registration in https://sam.gov, your company’s Unique Entity ID (UEI). Describe performance capabilities of your company to meet each of the Government’s requirements, specifically under Section 3.1 through 3.3 in the Statement of Work. If your company cannot meet all of the Government’s requirement, please identify the requirements/sections your company is able to meet. Additionally, if there are other capabilities that you believe would assist NIST in meeting its objectives described above, please discuss in your response. Identify any aspects of the NIST market research notice, including instructions, and draft minimum specifications in the BACKGROUND section you cannot meet and state why. Please offer suggestions for how the market research notice and draft minimum specifications could be made more competitive. For the NAICS code listed in this notice: Indicate whether your company is (a) a small business or (b) other than small business. See the Table of Small Business Size Standards and the associated .pdf download file for small business size standards and additional information. If you believe the NAICS code listed in this notice is not the best NAICS code for the type of product addressed in this notice, identify an alternative NAICS code that you believe would be more appropriate for the planned procurement. If the recommended equipment and related services are available for purchase on any existing Federal Supply Schedule contract(s) or other contracts against which NIST may be able to place orders, identify the contract number(s) and other relevant information. Provide any other information that you believe would be valuable for NIST to know as part of its market research for this requirement. State if you require NIST to provide additional information to improve your understanding of the government’s requirement and/or would like to meet with NIST representatives to discuss the requirement and the capabilities of the identified equipment. QUESTIONS REGARDING THIS NOTICE Questions regarding this notice may be submitted via email to the Primary Point of Contact and the Secondary Point of Contact listed in this notice. Questions should be submitted so that they are received by May 29, 2025, 11:00 am EST. If the Contracting Officer determines that providing a written amendment to this notice to document question(s) received would benefit other potential respondents, the questions would be anonymized, and a written response to such question(s) would be provided via an amendment to this notice. Submission Instructions All information considered pertinent to the covered requirement must be sent electronically to Hing Pan Wong at hnw6@nist.gov. Information submitted must be specific and address the aforementioned requirement. Submissions must be received not later than 11:00 a.m. Eastern Time on June 12, 2025. Only e-mail submissions are acceptable. The responses shall not exceed 15 pages including all attachments, charts, etc. IMPORTANT NOTES This notice is for market research purposes and should not be construed as a commitment by NIST to issue a solicitation or ultimately award a contract. There is no solicitation available at this time. This notice does not obligate the Government to award a contract or otherwise pay for the information provided in response. NIST 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 Government to determine the organization’s capability. Respondents are advised that the Government is under no obligation to acknowledge receipt of the information received or provide feedback to respondents with respect to any information submitted. After a review of the responses received, a synopsis and solicitation may be published on GSA’s eBuy or SAM.gov. However, responses to this notice will not be considered an adequate response to any such solicitation(s). After the results of this market research are obtained and analyzed, NIST may conduct a competitive procurement and subsequently award a contract. If at least two small businesses are identified during this market research, then a competitive procurement that results may be conducted as a small business set-aside. Thank you for taking the time to submit a response to this request!