Recovery RFQ Only for Alliant Vendors

As my colleague Robert Brodsky reported last week, the Recovery Board issued an RFQ this morning for the redesign of the Recovery.gov Web site. Notably, only vendors currently on GSA's Alliant contract are eligible to submit quotes. GSA expects to issue a solicitation on Monday and plans for proposals to be due around June 26.

From the RFQ:

RATB is seeking an innovative, award winning, web-design and implementation firm with expertise on user-focused, data-driven web designs to perform complete redesign, implementation, and operation of the Recovery.gov version 2.0 website. Design services will include visual design, user interface design, information architecture, design engineering, project management, and all expertise required to deliver a website with interactive data-visualization, and web-application level functionality.

I reported last week that the Recovery Board, headed by former Interior Inspector General Earl Devaney, has hired the nonprofit MITRE Corp. to help develop requirements for the site and assess what functionalities it should include. The board hasn't released MITRE's findings, but it's probably safe to assume they were used when crafting the requirements in the RFQ, which emphasize the need to handle large amounts of data smoothly and the tight timeline.

Recovery Act funding recipients are required to file their first full spending reports on Oct. 10, meaning the site must be ready before then. Last week a recovery board spokesman said he's optimistic about meeting that goal.

By choosing to restrict the award to Alliant vendors, the Recovery Board is confirming what sources have said with regards to its preference for a large contractor such as Lockheed over smaller firms that specialize in Web design. There's been no official word on the potential cost of the redesign, but I've heard numbers tossed around that would be many times the amount it took to develop USASpending.gov, which is currently the only place to get much of the information available on Recovery Act spending.

Those interested in more information about the solicitation can email either Valerie Bindel or Todd Richards at GSA. We'll be following this topic closely on Nextgov. Keep an eye out for a more complete take on the subject tomorrow.