Litigation Support Solution

Trade Agreement: NONE
Tendering Procedures: Suppliers on permanent list or able to meet qualification requirements
Competitive Procurement Strategy: Subsequent/Follow-on Contracts
Comprehensive Land Claim Agreement: No
Nature of Requirements: 

This amendment 003 is raised to revise the response to question 2.

Delete previous response to question 2 and replace with following:

R2. All responses to the NPP and RFP are treated as commercial confidential. See section 4.4 (e) of the RFP.  

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This amendment 002 is raised to answer the following questions.

Q2. Are the responses to the Notice of Proposed Procurement confidential? Or will other respondents have access to our Annex D responses and any eventual questions or comments on other parts of the RFP document? 

R2. All bids are treated as confidential. See section 4.4 (e) of the RFP. 

Q3. The PDF document posted on Merx on 1/22 is the RFP document and lists March 5th as the solicitation closing date on the first page. Is March 5th the actual date when the final RFP will close or is that still to be determined?

R3. Suppliers are requested to respond to the questions and provide feedback on the draft solicitation documents no later than February 5, 2020. The RFP will close no sooner than 40 days after it is published. Key estimated RFP timelines are estimates. 

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This amendment 001 is raised to answer the following question.

Q1. To confirm, when we submit the requested feedback and our possible questions, should we send it to your email address, or should we submit it otherwise?

R1. Suppliers are requested to send their feedback and questions to peter.lessard@tpsgc-pwgsc.gc.ca

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Public Works and Government Services Canada (PWGSC), also known as, Public Services and Procurement Canada (PSPC), is issuing a Notice of Proposed Procurement on behalf of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) for an upcoming Request for Proposal (RFP) for an Artificial Intelligence (AI) requirement using the newly established AI Source list under EN578-180001/B.

The following NPP is directed only to the qualified suppliers of the AI source list.

Suppliers under Bands 2 and 3 are invited to provide feedback on this NPP.

OBJECTIVE

Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) and the Department of Justice (DOJ), have a requirement for an interactive solution that uses the corpus of federal courts humanitarian and compassionate (H&C) and pre-removal risk assessment (PPRA) case law to leverage artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) technologies. This Litigation Support Solution (LS Solution) will be used to support legal research, analyze and predict potential outcomes in litigation, and conduct trend analysis to support litigation strategies. This LS Solution, once designed, tested, and delivered, will be accessible for up to 75 users in various federal departments and agencies. The LS Solution will be an assist tool and is not intended to be used by front-end decision-makers making decisions on immigration applications or for automated decision-making in any form. Should the LS Solution prove to be useful and reliable for immigration law questions, it is hoped that either the Government of Canada (GOC) or industry will leverage the technology for the benefit of users outside of the GOC. This could serve to support equal access to AI resources and resources supporting the administration of justice for all parties. 

In continuing to better understand the AI marketplace, PSPC, IRCC, and DOJ are seeking feedback on draft documents associated with the solicitation and to better refine the requirements. The industry perspective on the approach, business, cost of development, and draft solicitation documents are of particular interest. A list of questions is in Annex D for the industries feedback on the following topics:

1. Draft Relevant Terms and Acronyms (Annex A to NPP);
2. Draft Statement of Work (Annex B to NPP); 
a. Draft Categories of Work and Descriptions (Appendix 1 to Annex B);
3. Draft Evaluation Criteria (Annex C to NPP);
a. Draft Use Case (Appendix 1 to Annex C);
b. Privacy and Security Requirements (Appendix 2 to Annex C);
4. Draft RFP; and
5. Questions to solicit feedback from industry (Annex D to NPP).

We are requesting suppliers to provide feedback to PSPC no later than end of day February 5, 2020.

REQUIREMENTS

The Contractor must, using the publically available corpus of case law on H&C and PRRA, deliver a LS Solution that provides an interactive and user-friendly interface to search, find, analyze, organize, and visualize legal information, as well as generate reports on litigation trends, patterns, and relationships. 

More specifically, the Contractor must provide an LS Solution that has the functionality:

a) To analyze and predict potential outcomes for litigation cases using publicly available case law data;
b) To annotate, tag, or otherwise process case law data for research and analysis;
c) To recognize changes in outcomes based on newly available case law data; and
d) To identify trends relating to specific facts or sets of facts.

KEY ESTIMATED RFP TIMELINES

Publication of the NPP:            January 22, 2020
NPP Feedback submission deadline:  February 5, 2020
Publication of RFP Solicitation:   February 2020
Bidders’ Webinar:                  February 2020 
Bidder self-Identification deadline:  February 2020
Bid Closure:                       March 2020    

BIDDERS’ WEBINAR

More information will be made available based on the feedback received from the suppliers and the release of the Final Solicitation document for the IRCC requirement.  

The bidders’ webinar will be held - TBD

The scope of the requirement outlined in the RFP solicitation will be reviewed during the webinar and questions will be answered. It is recommended that Bidders who intend to participate in this process attend the Webinar. 

IRCC AGILE RFP EVALUATION APPROACH

The solicitation involves a three-stage process. 

Stage 1:  Bidders Submission, Evaluation of Bidders Proposals and Contractor Selection for Stage II (using AI source list process)
Stage 2:  Evaluation and Contracting Process for Stage 2 Deliverables 
Stage 3:  Acceptance and Contracting Process for Stages III A and B 

Stage 1:
 
The objective of Stage 1 is to: 

1. Solicit, evaluate, and rank the responsive proposals based on their technical and business score 
2. Recommend issuance of a contract to up to two of the top-ranked responsive proposals 

Stage 2: 

The objective of Stage 2 is to: 

1. Complete the Stage 2 work in 40 business days and deliver and provide access to the prototype solution for assessment
2. Conduct acceptance test and usability assessment of prototype solution and rank based on their technical and business score
3. Recommend issuance of a contract amendment for Stage 3 work

Stage 3: 

The objective of Stage 3 is to: 

1. Finalize and deliver the production ready solution in 90 business days for acceptance
2. Conduct acceptance test and usability assessment 
3. Recommend issuance of contract amendment for hosted and managed production ready solution, including maintenance and support services 

The selection of proposal(s) for contracting does not constitute a guarantee on the part of Canada that a contract will be awarded.


ENQUIRIES

All enquiries must be submitted in writing to the Contracting Authority no later than February 5, 2020.

Contracting Authority

Peter Lessard
AI Supply Team Leader
peter.lessard@tpsgc-pwgsc.gc.ca
613-850-7602
Delivery Date: Above-mentioned

The Crown retains the right to negotiate with suppliers on any procurement.

Documents may be submitted in either official language of Canada.