Questions from Potential Respondents, with CPB Answers
As of March 27, 2013; Updated with Additional Questions: March 29, 2013
Note: Questions that are similar to each other are only listed and answered once.
Q1. In recent years, CPB’s annual report has included sections called “Year in Review” and “Awards “, but the RFP for the FY2012 report does not include those elements as required content. We seek confirmation that they will not be a part of the FY2012 report.
A1. That is correct. Neither “Year in Review” nor “Awards” will be part of the FY2012 annual report.
Q2. Is there a budget that CPB is trying to stick to? Can you at least give a general range?
A2. No, CPB does not have any particular budget that it is trying to stick to. Offerors should keep in mind, though, that CPB’s resources are a function of annual appropriations by the federal government, which have been subject to sequestration and rescission during the last few years.
Q3. How soon following the awarding of the contract will the CPB team be available to kick off the project?
A3. While it is difficult to project precisely, CPB anticipates kicking off the project within 30-35 business days of the deadline for submitting proposals. Within this time period, CPB must review and score the proposals, if necessary meet with the top scoring vendors, and draft and negotiate the specific contract terms. Only when the agreement is fully executed by both the vendor and CPB can work begin.
Q4. When is the source information (including raw data sets, reports, press releases etc.) going to be available to the selected contractor?
A4. CPB expects to have nearly all source information available to the selected contractor by May 30, and all remaining source information by June 10.
Q5. The RFP says that the contractor will be responsible for “collect[ing], confirm[ing], or clarify[ing] information as needed from CPB staff and from the staff of other public media organizations.” Based upon your experience from past years, how much of the content necessary to write the various components of the report (such as the state pages) will be provided to the contractor via CPB’s source, and how much will need to be independently researched and/or fact checked? Will CPB provide contact information for the pertinent public media organizations?
A5. Independent research and fact-checking will be required principally for the 55 State Pages. CPB will provide the contractor with organization-level (and sometimes, but not always, individual-level) contact information for the pertinent public media organizations. Most of the information used in State Pages is supplied by CPB from other texts in which the relevant information is published by CPB. For a variety of reasons, however, those other texts do not usually include material about Delaware, the District of Columbia, American Samoa, Guam, Puerto Rico, or the U.S. Virgin Islands, and the contractor will need to research and write those pages. Independent fact-checking on the material supplied to the contractor by CPB is usually not necessary, although past experience has shown that information supplied to CPB by the broadcast stations may be inaccurate or out-of-date.
Q6. In the past, have the annual report producers encountered any substantial problems with securing permissions & rights for the use of visual/audiovisual assets from grantee productions?
A6. No, CPB has never encountered substantial problems with securing permissions & rights for the use of visual/audiovisual assets. Occasional instances of long delays by grantees in replying to annual report–related queries have usually been resolved by substituting visual/audiovisual assets associated with a different program or project.
Q7. The RFP does not mention specific accessibility requirements, i.e. 508 compliance. Is this a concern for CPB?
A7. As the RFP noted, CPB is not a federal government agency and consequently is not legally required to comply with Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 or its associated technical standards. As a voluntary matter, however, CPB tries to adhere to the goal of providing information that is accessible by persons with aural or visual handicaps. In the use of visual material, for example, CPB will expect text descriptions as either visible captions or cutlines or as ALT tags on the image file. Text captioning of audiovisual material should be included if it is already available, but need not be created and inserted into materials. Few if any of the short clips that CPB would expect to use in the 2012 annual report are likely to have such captions already available. A contractor assisting CPB with the 2012 annual report should focus more attention on the accessibility of navigational controls and of alphanumeric data presented in tabular formats within the website version.
Q8. Have firms who are now working for CPB been invited to bid on this? Have firms who have previously worked on CPB annual reports been invited to bid?
A8. The RFP was published on CPB’s website, and all are free to follow @CPBgrants on Twitter or subscribe to an RSS feed of CPB’s grant availability notices, RFPs, etc. CPB sent e-mail notifications of the RFP posting to about a dozen firms with which CPB has worked in the past or from which CPB has received responses to previous RFPs.
Q9. Based on how CPB likes to approach such a project, do you envision developing the print report first, and then the website, or the other way around?
A9. CPB has no preference about the order in which the two versions are created, nor any aversion to the two versions being created in parallel.
Q10. On a scale 1-10, with 10=outstanding, how pleased were you with the websites for the 2011 annual report? the 2010 annual report?
A10. The 2010 and 2011 annual reports have met with CPB’s approval.
Q11. How creative and innovative do you want the new website to be? Give us a number on a 1-10 scale, with 1="similar to 2011 report website" and 10="something innovative and very new!". What number do you want to try to "hit" for 2012?
A11. CPB endeavors to produce a more interesting and innovative product as each year passes. Please keep in mind that CPB has set forth the specific criteria that will be used when evaluating the proposals.
Q12. Are you open to receiving time-and-materials bids, i.e. estimated total cost but with billing to be based on actual hours worked?
A12. No.
Q13. Do you want a bid to do the report in FY2013 and FY2014 that the offeror will guarantee? Or will there be an opportunity to revise those bids in consideration of the completed FY2012 report work?
A13. CPB is asking for price proposals for the FY2013 and FY2014 reports that the offeror will guarantee.
Q14. I cannot find on your website the pdf of the printable 2011 annual report. Can you please let me know where I can find the pdf of last year's report?
A14. In its FY2011 annual report, CPB offered no comprehensive “printable booklet” version containing all the principal elements that are in the website version. At the right side of the screen on http://www.cpb.org/annualreports/2011/financials/overview.html, you will find links to download the three elements for which (separate) PDFs were provided.
Q15. In order to provide an accurate time estimate we would like to know the approximate length (in pages) you are anticipating for the report. This applies to both the length of the web site as well as the length of the print version.
A15. The printable booklet version will probably be 70-100 pages:
- Introduction & table of contents 1 page
- CEO's review ~3-4 pages
- Board of directors ~1-2 pages
- Corporate officers 1 page
- Financial introduction and infographics 1 page
- Audit report, audited financial statements and notes to financial statements ~18-20 pages
- Grants & allocations ~11-12 pages
- Programs & related projects ~11-12 pages
- State pages ~27-55 pages (depending on whether they are done 2-to-a-page or 1-to-a-page)
The size of the website will depend on the design proposed. The websites for the 2010 and 2011 reports included, for example, separate screens (or pages) for each of the ~250 P&P items, separate screens for each of the 55 states and territories, and separate screens for each of the G&A summaries by grant type and for summaries and detail of the G&A listings for each of the 55 states and territories. Each of those reports involved approximately 5,000 screens.