USAID/Vietnam Learns Program   3

The United States Agency for International Development in Vietnam (USAID/Vietnam) intends to issue a Request for Proposals (RFP) for a five-year contract for USAID/Vietnam Learns program.

The contract objectives are as follows:
Strengthen USAID/Vietnam, implementing partners, and local entities'(GVN, local organizations) institutional capacity, particularly in monitoring, evaluation, learning, collaboration and adaptive management, to achieve expected results;
Deepen use of monitoring, evaluation and other types of data to support learning and improve performance at all levels; and
Improve coordination, collaboration and learning between USAID/Vietnam staff, Government of Vietnam (GVN), our IPs, and key stakeholders.

The contract will be structured with a set of deliverables identified as core work and specific assignments assigned through a job order system.

The requirements of this contract envision that the contractor becomes an integral part of the Mission's program office, including participating heavily in designs, assessments, and evaluations, as well as providing general and targeted support to technical offices. Given the requirements, there is a significant potential for organizational conflicts of interest (OCI) to arise. USAID has analyzed the potential OCIs and is resolving them by taking the following actions:
(i) Standard contract clauses that are in the ADS will be included in the contract award.
(ii) Offerors in the competitive range, or the apparently successful offeror should there be no competitive range, will be required to submit an OCI mitigation plan addressing access to nonpublic information and, if needed, impaired objectivity OCIs. Only offerors who are in a potential position of evaluating themselves will be required to address impaired objectivity OCIs. Initial mitigation plans must contain general measures and information to address unequal access to nonpublic information at the subcontractor level and may be amended as necessary for particular situations.
(iii) Specific language will be added to the solicitation and resultant contract clarifying that due to the nature of the work, the contractor is precluded from all future activities from the Mission during the life of the contract with the exception of the follow-on contract. This does not automatically flow down to subcontractors and the specific work subcontractors perform will be analyzed for OCIs at that time.

These requirements will not change in the RFP.

The RFP will be released electronically in approximately two weeks on www.fbo.gov. The solicitation will utilize a Statement of Objectives, with offerors provided the Performance Work Statement and Quality Assurance Surveillance Plans as part of the proposal. USAID/Vietnam will host a pre-proposal conference for the solicitation on/about March 8, 2019 in Hanoi. Further details of the pre-proposal conference will be included in the RFP.

Prospective Offerors are advised that this procurement is subject to internal USAID approvals and the availability of funds. This is NOT a Request for Proposal (RFP) and in no way obligates the US Government to issue an RFP and/or award a contract. This notice satisfies the synopsis requirement in FAR 5.2. If a solicitation is issued, all necessary information will be supplied at the time it is posted at www.fbo.gov, and information may be different than what is noted above. Questions/requests for information will not be responded to until RFP issuance. Interested parties are advised to periodically monitor the above website and solicitation number for updates concerning this procurement.

Sincerely,

/s/

Michael Capobianco
Contracting Officer