Questions from Potential Respondents, with CPB Answers
As of February 7, 2013
Note: Questions that are similar to each other are only listed and answered once.
Q1 — Will we be receiving any feedback on our Statement of Interest, or should we just continue creating our Grant proposal?
A1 — CPB will not be providing any feedback on the Statements of Interest.
Q2 — How would Grant payments be distributed during the 24-month term? Is payment tied to performance?
A2 — Payments during the 24-month term would be tied to project milestones. These milestones would be determined during negotiations with the selected applicant.
Q3 — The Grant Guidelines state, “The existing contractual relationships with AVPS and Crawford will be transferred to the selected applicant. The selected applicant must assume contract administration and oversight, including making contractually required payments. CPB will agree to pay, as reimbursable expenses, an amount up to the balance of these two existing contracts.” Is the money for these contracts in addition to the one-time grant? How are “reimbursable expenses” determined?
A3 — The selected applicant would be assuming responsibility for the unpaid balance of the contracts with Crawford and AVPS. CPB would agree to pay the selected applicant, in the form of reimbursable expenses, those unpaid balances. These payments are in addition to the $1,000,000 grant.
Q4 — There are several “Plans” mentioned in Grant Guidelines, to be developed during the 24-month term of the Grant. So these plans do not have to be fully developed and included with the proposal?
A4 — CPB is looking for your preliminary thinking about these plans and evidence of an appropriate planning process. The plans themselves would be required grant deliverables.
Q5 — Can applicants talk to contractors Crawford and AVPS while drafting the proposal?
A5 — Applicants should not contact Crawford or AVPS. If an applicant needs information concerning the contracts with those vendors in order to complete their proposal they should contact Mark Irwin, Senior Director, American Archive mirwin@cpb.org.
Q6 — Have Crawford and AVPS started work and is someone managing these projects now?
A6— Work is underway on both contracts and a CPB Project Officer is currently managing both vendors.
Q7 — How did Crawford estimate one petabyte (of digital storage)? Specifically, what assumptions were made concerning file quantities, types, and anything else that is relevant to that estimate? Can we get a revised estimate now that all content has been nominated? Also, the Digitization Project Contract indicates that site visits to Crawford Media Services may “serve an informational purpose for prospective candidates under consideration to be the Permanent Entity.” Can CPB arrange these visits?
A7 — CPB is working with Crawford Media Services to set up a communications protocol for answering interested parties' questions regarding the technical aspects of Crawford's work for the American Archive.
Q8 — The Digitization Project Contract indicates that Crawford “will comply … to an 18 month window after the completion of the project to consult on technical problems or resolve any missing content in the contracted materials delivered to CPB or the Permanent Entity.” Is the cost of these consultation and resolution efforts during the 18 month window covered under the existing Digitization Project contract?
A8 — Crawford's obligation to consult and resolve these problems within the 18-month window is not tied to any additional payment obligation and is therefore included within the existing fee agreement between CPB and Crawford. It should also be noted that such consultations are strictly related to missing files, or files that will not play back. They do not pertain to issues with files delivered to stations, or to transfer/image quality.
Q9 — For budgeting purposes, do you know what the remaining dollar balances will be on the two contracts (Crawford and AVPS) at the time of assignment?
A9 — CPB cannot forecast precisely what the balance of payments would be with either Crawford Media or Audio Visual Preservation Services (AVPS) at the time of assignment (i.e., when an agreement with an applicant has been mutually executed). Contact Mark Irwin, Sr. Director American Archive, to discuss budgeting issues, at mirwin@cpb.org. Note that CPB does not typically accept indirect costs rates that are higher than an organization's Federally-negotiated rate, and in fact, often pays much less.
Q10 — Can we see a list of programs that have been nominated by stations for digitization?
A10 — The list can be found in the Prospectus, Section C. 4. Nominated Content, “Attachment: Selected Content for Preservation.” It has been updated since the grant guidelines were released.
Q11 — For the term of the grant, will there be a Project Officer from CPB assigned?
A11 — Yes, a Project Officer will be assigned to manage the grant. However, note that CPB Project Officers often manage dozens of grants at one time, depending on their complexity.
Q12 — Is it possible to amend the grant during the term, changing, for instance, the description of the deliverables, the budget allocations, and the timeline?
A12 — CPB works closely with the selected grant applicants to negotiate and execute an agreement that meets all of the project's objectives and the capacities of the selected applicant. Occasionally the details of a project plan need to be adjusted and CPB has been willing to negotiate reasonable changes.
Q13 — Can CPB share who has submitted SOIs?
A13 — CPB cannot share that information.
Q14 — The Grant Guidelines call for every item over $10,000 to be listed. Is this just for 24 month grant period or the entire five year budget?
A14 — CPB wants to see all budget items, expenses and revenues, over $10,000 identified for the portion of the budget covering the 24-month term of the grant. We want to see as much detail as possible for the remaining 36 months of the five year budget and would like to see all revenue and expense items over $50,000 to be identified.
Q15 — Has the American Archive's National Advisory Panel provided new insights or perspectives on the project? Are the minutes or notes from the NAP meeting publically available?
A15 — The National Advisory Panel's questions, observations and recommendations directly informed the development of the Grant Guidelines. The notes from the NAP meeting are not publically available.
Q16 — Regarding governance models, it seems that various opportunities for partnerships and collaborations may arise during the term of the grant; what degree of specificity is CBP interested in seeing?
A16 — CPB wants to see a plan for a robust governance model that will ensure that all of the objectives of the project are met and that the model, like the Archive itself, will endure.
Q17 — Would the selected applicant be required to use PBCore and the Archive Management System for the management of the Archive?
A17 — CPB believes that PBCore and the Archival Management System are assets with significant value for the Archive, particularly as regards Curation and Growth of the collection. We will set up a demonstration webinar in early February so that applicants can see the functionality of the AMS (which is still in development). As a reminder, participating public media stations were required to use PBCore to submit their records and the Archive Management System has been specifically designed for public media stations, including the ability to ingest new records through the Metadata Toolkit. Therefore, it may not be the most efficient use of the Archive's funds to move the data out of that system and/or out of the PBCore schema. That said, the selected applicant would have flexibility in utilizing these two assets in meeting the terms of the grant.
Q18 — Can we see a list of nominated content for what you have deemed in the Prospectus, “select national” and “born digital”?
A18 — We do not currently have that information and have not confirmed a date when that information will be available.
Q19 — Will all PBCore records be consistent across nominated content at the time of assignment to a selected applicant?
A19 — The completeness of the records will vary. Not all fields will be complete in all records.
Q20 — Will CPB offer a demonstration of the Archival Management System before the proposals are due?
A20 — We are hoping to offer an online, live demonstration before February 26, 2013 and will notify everyone who has submitted a Statement of Interest of the time and date.
Q21 — Has CPB secured any domain names related to the American Archive?
A21 — Yes, CPB has secured two domain names, americanarchive.us and americanarchive.org through early 2014.