Do you ever wonder how all of those census forms get printed and mailed every ten years to every household in the U.S.? Maybe not... but an examination of the RFP process for the 2010 Census provides an interesting inside look at this massive printing project and the specifications the government has in place to achieve as near a flawless implementation as possible.

The GPO issued a 148-page RFP on October 6, 2006, entitled Print 2010 Acquisition, to find vendor(s) who can print the 2010 Census questionnaires and move them into the mailstream.  The GPO and the Census Bureau are getting an early start in putting this project together in an effort to reflect a systems approach to the 2010 Census and to allow for earlier planning. At the same time, this early start will enable the development of the technical requirements for printing the census forms and to ensure the security of both the data used to address the forms to recipients as well as the security of the printed pieces themselves. In conducting a vendor conference of potential vendors on June 6, 2006, the Government made it very clear that the intent is to obtain the best value for the government; i.e. that the government will not take an inferior solution in exchange for a lower price. A list of attendees at the vendors’ conference can be found on the Print 2010 site.

This contract is structured as a Fixed Price Incentive Fee—Firm Target contract, which is government-speak for vendors proposing a fixed price amount, a target cost, and a target profit (fixed price amount = target cost + target profit). The goal of this type of contract arrangement, according to the RFP, is to incentivize contractors to maximize efficiency, increase automation, and reduce waste. This allows contractors to maximize profits while reducing overall cost to the Government. If there are overruns, those overruns are absorbed by the contractor within a certain set of constraints. The government has also left itself the option to award the contract to a single bidder or to split it among multiple vendors.