Financial Times Subscription

NOTICE OF INTENT TO AWARD SOLE SOURCE PURCHASE ORDER

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) hereby gives notice of its intent to award a purchase order to The Financial Times LTD for the purchase of 200 Licensed Readers with up to 116 of these readers being considered Core Readers for the contract year. This will be purchased on a sole source basis utilizing FAR 13, Simplified Acquisition, procedures in accordance with 41 USC 253(c)(1) as implemented by FAR 6.302-1, only one responsible source and no other supplies or services will satisfy agency requirements.

The OCC requires an online newspaper publication that covers the latest international business, financial, economic, and political news with analysis of international markets, industry, banking, and finance that provides an international perspective on the global economy to support OCC bank examiners, international bank supervision policy analysts, and economists. This includes:

1. Access to the subscription online administrative tool to provide real time information on the status of its account. The license administrators must have the ability to remove or add readers, sent password resets, customize topic alerts on behalf of users, and to view and export data usage in real time.  
2. The ability for users to access the newspaper content via mobile devices, select news topics and companies to follow so that articles can be delivered via email, search archival article dating back to at least 14 years, a digital replica of the newspaper with turning pages to be available on any device, dedicated technical support and training options as they relate to OCC’s needs.   

The Financial Times LTD is the only vendor that meets the above requirements and is a sole creator, owner, and distributor of its published content. There are no other vendors that can satisfy this requirement.

This is not a request for competition; however, all responsible sources may submit a bid, proposal, or quotation within 7 days after date of publication of this notice which shall be considered by the agency.  Responses must be supported with clear and convincing evidence to clearly be able to provide the services outlined in this notice. A determination by the Government not to compete this requirement based upon any responses to this notice is solely the discretion of the Government.