Market News Information Collection and Dissemination Instrument (MNICDI)
The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) is seeking capabilities information from vendors that have a strong agile software development capability and a track record in developing flexible, open-standards-based applications. The AMS Market News (MN) service wishes to create a new data management system. The data management system will have the ability to collect, analyze, summarize, store, and disseminate market information.
The AMS MN service provides up-to-date market information for more than 500 commodities at various points across the supply chain to reflect local, regional, national, and international market information. The reports give farmers, producers, and other agricultural businesses the information they need to evaluate market conditions, identify trends, make purchasing decisions, monitor price patterns, evaluate transportation needs, and accurately assess movement. The MN service captures data for cotton, fruits, vegetables and specialty crops, livestock, meats, poultry, eggs, grain and hay, milk and dairy, and tobacco.
The MN service reports several hundred markets on a daily and weekly basis; reporting not only the price in the market, but also tracking and reporting other key factors like supplies, volume of movement, demand, and quality. MN reporters collect information on a voluntary basis from direct interviews or observations of buyers and sellers, which include producers, growers, wholesalers, retailers, distributors, packers, processors, brokers, and other participants. MN tracks and reports product prices and volumes at various "levels" in the supply chain such as at the shipping point or point of entry for imports, wholesale distribution centers and terminal markets, local cash markets, auction markets, and weekly advertised specials at retail stores. In addition to reporting these traditional transactions, MN is now tasked with expanding organic, local, farmers' market, and regional reporting for a multitude of commodities to address rapidly changing marketing channels.
Currently, the MN service captures market information into the Market News Information System (MNIS), an Oracle forms data capture and database system, and distributes reports to third-party news services and educational institutions via the Market News Communication System (MNCS), a custom file naming and transmission program and to the public via the Market News Portal (MNP), an Internet web site. The MNIS datasets and data capture screens were developed over a period of years by individual program areas, with the result that data is segregated by commodity type and data tables and elements often are inconsistent in format, valid values, and element names from one commodity area to another. These inconsistences and the use of non-standard data models have increased the cost of data management and require additional data transformation and mapping to provide common views of data across commodity areas. To fully leverage the value of the market information it captures, the MN service needs to create a unified, standard, commodity-independent data model and storage process so that analytical tools and reports can be applied seamlessly to all commodity data across all levels of the supply chain.
The existing MNIS consists of five separate Oracle 11g database instances totaling over 200 gigabytes of data. MN wishes to create a new, unified data management system based on open-source standards to replace their existing MNIS and MNCS. The data management system will have the ability to collect, store, analyze, summarize, create, and distribute electronic data sets and market information reports. The new data management system will use open-source software to support:
• A unified, data-centric platform
o Use a standard database architecture for storing information about all commodities and supply chain transactions
• A flexible data capture capability
o Use web-based and mobile-phone data capture screens driven by user roles that will recognize at a minimum MN employees and external supply chain participants
o Use existing USDA user authentication services to determine user role and provide the appropriate data screen access
• Aggregated data summaries and reports
o Generate summarized datasets that aggregate proprietary price and volume information
o Generate basic statistics for time series comparison (weighted averages, current to previous price ratios, etc.)
o Generate complex data sets using statistical calculations (standard deviation, skewness, etc.)
o Support the use of data visualization tools for internal data quality review of proprietary and aggregated data sets
• Dissemination of data sets and aggregated reports
o Distribute aggregated data sets and summary reports to trusted third parties and the MNP simultaneously
• Data confidentiality
o Use best-practice techniques to protect confidentiality of sensitive proprietary market information
o Provide auditing for all database transactions to ensure data quality
Additionally, all products developed must comply with Section 508 of the Disability Act of 1978.
Responses to this publication will not result in a contract and will only be used for market research data. This is not a Request for Proposal (RFP) for competitive proposals. The Government will NOT award a contract based on the information received, nor reimburse participants for information they provide.
Interested sources who have strong agile software development capabilities and a proven track record in developing flexible, open-standards-based applications may notify AMS of their interest in performing this type of work. Responses must include:1) Name of Company; 2) Contact Information to include telephone and e-mail; 3) Business Size (Large Business, Small Business, HubZone Small Business, Service Disabled Veteran Owned Small Business (SDVOSB), 8(a), Women-Owned, Small Disadvantaged); 4) Duns Number; 5) Three past performance and references relevant to the company's ability to perform this type of work and/or literature that supports the company's capability to perform this work; and 6) List of contract vehicles your company may have such as a GSA Federal Supply Schedule, 8(a) Certification, etc., OR if only able to compete under Open Market.
Interested sources that submit a response are responsible for appropriately marking information that is proprietary in nature. Information requested is strictly voluntary. Responses must be e-mailed to: beverlyS.brown@ams.usda.gov and JohnT.Gallagher@ams.usda.gov. No telephone communication will be honored and sources that submit a response will not be entitled to the results of this notice. Responses received after the closing date of this notice, may not be reviewed.
Beverly S. Brown, Phone 901-384-3099, ext. 3103, Fax 901-384-3021, Email BeverlyS.Brown@ams.usda.gov
