Consular Affairs Public Facing Contact Center

1.0 Description The U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Consular Affairs (DOS/CA) is seeking information by qualified firms to administer a Public Facing Contact Center. Primary responsibilities would be to aid domestic and overseas public customers on a range of online modernized Consular services. 1.1 Request Notice This notice is issued solely for information and planning purposes – it does not constitute a Request for Proposal (RFP) or a promise to issue an RFP in the future.

This request for information does not commit the Government to contract for any supply or service whatsoever. Further, the Government is not at this time seeking proposals and will not accept unsolicited proposals. The respondees are advised that the Government will not pay for any information or administrative costs incurred in response to this notice ; all costs associated with responding to this notice will be solely at the interested party’s expense.

Not responding to this notice does not preclude participation in any future RFP, if issued. 2.0 Background The Department of State (DoS), Bureau of Consular Affairs (CA) is exploring potential solutions for a potential Contact Center to support its public facing modernized consular services. CA is responsible for issuing passports, visas, and other documents to citizens and foreign nationals to facilitate travel to and from the United States. To achieve its mission, CA needs modern, reliable, and secure IT systems.

Towards this effort, CA initiated the Consular Systems Modernization (CSM) program to modernize and consolidate approximately 90 discrete consular legacy Information Technology (IT) systems into a common technology framework. In December 2021, President Biden signed Executive Order 14058 on Transforming Federal Customer Experience and Service Delivery to Rebuild Trust in Government.

CA constantly strives to significantly improve how consular services will be delivered globally by: Promoting a self-service approach for CA's customers through a user-friendly website Facilitating a paperless workflow through an online application process Creating a user-friendly interface with a common look and feel to all functions for CA’s customers and users Integrating information needed for users to make confident, well-informed decisions In Fiscal year 2022, approximately 0.5 million immigrant visas and 6.8 million non-immigrant visas were issued.

In Fiscal Year 2023, approximately 24 million U.S. Passports were issued. This includes approximately 3.5 million passport cards (https://travel.state.gov/). The estimated volume of inquiries from public customers could range from a low of thousands of inquiries/year to a high of tens of thousands inquiries/year as CA deploys additional modernized Consular services on a rolling basis. The calls could significantly increase during crises (ex: hundreds of thousands/year). PLEASE REFER TO THE ATTACHED DOCUMENT FOR BACKGROUND, SCOPE, AND RESPONSE INSTRUCTIONS.