Fiscal Service Procurement on behalf of the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) intends to award to Factiva, Inc. on a Sole Source basis for Factiva/Watchlist DJX Limited Licenses.

FinCEN has a requirement to conduct public affairs related research. Factiva is highly suited to: Research media articles of interest relevant to FinCEN’s mission; determine press coverage of FInCEN’s initiatives, rules and publications; research articles related to potential areas of FinCEN’s focus and legislative activities at all levels of government; and obtain background information for speeches or presentations by the Director and other senior staff. FinCEN’s Office of Public Affairs uses Factiva daily for researching news articles relevant to FinCEN and its mission. Providing a synopsis of articles pertinent to FinCEN employees alerts them to news they may otherwise overlook that may be critical to their analytical work or in providing assistance to law enforcement investigations. FinCEN receives alerts continually whenever the bureau is mentioned in content available through Factiva. Dow Jones, a leading provider of international economic and financial news, produces Factiva. Factiva therefore includes numerous financially focused stories, including access to nearly all articles printed in The Wall Street Journal. The Factiva bundle uniquely satisfies requirements in two areas:  Politically Exposed Persons and Media Articles.Various subscription news services provide information from different sources therefore, the results of each system will be different.  While LexisNexis provides article search capabilities for example, its database is focused on legal research, as opposed to economic and financial research. In addition to its inclusion of content relevant to FinCEN, Factiva also includes reporters’ contact information, which is invaluable when compiling a list of targeted media. Factiva meets the needs, as evidenced by the number of daily email alerts we receive containing news relevant to FinCEN, as well as FinCEN’s access to articles that would otherwise only be available via separate subscription, which would significantly increase the cost to FinCEN. FinCEN’s Public Affairs department is most interested in the umbrella media groups included in Factiva. Because Factiva provides access to the Business Journals, Source Media Publications, and SNL publications, we do not have a need for separate subscriptions to each of the news outlets included under those umbrellas. Just in the past year, we have needed access to the following sources:

Business Journals

South Florida Business Journal – This year 31 percent of the Business Journal clips in our NewsClips database were from the SFBJ, covering information related to money laundering through real estate and FinCEN’s Geographic Targeting Orders.

Milwaukee Business Journal – This year 19 percent of the Business Journal clips in our NewsClips database were from the MBJ, covering hemp banking—an issue which FinCEN follows closely and recently released a statement on with other Federal regulators.

North Bay (CA) Business Journal – This year 13 percent of the Business Journal clips in our NewsClips database were from the NBBJ, covering marijuana banking—an issue on which FinCEN has issued guidance to the financial industry, and which continues to be a topic of legislative discussion.  

Colorado Springs Business Journal

Salem (MA) Business Journal

Los Angeles Business Journal

Kansas City Business Journal

Worchester (MA) Business Journal

Hartford (CT) Business Journal

Source Media Publications

American Banker

PaymentsSource

Accounting Today

Credit Union Journal

SNL

SNL Financial Extra

SNL Bank and Thrift Daily

In addition, FinCEN’s Public Affairs department highly values Factiva for its customized analysis of news trends, top sources, and top reporters covering our issues.

Fiscal Service/FinCEN will consider affirmative responses received no later than July 24, 2020 at 5:00p.m. ET. Offerers shall respond to this notice if they believe they can provide FinCEN the same services as mentioned above. Responses shall include the name and point of contact information for its company along with a description of the services.No solicitation package will be issued. This notice of intent is not a request for competitive quotations.Responses shall be submitted to [email protected] -Attention: SS-FIN-20-098 AB/HS. A determination by the Government not to compete the proposed acquisition based upon responses to this notice is solely within the discretion of the Government. Information received will normally be considered solely for the purpose of determining whether to conduct a competitive procurement.
Please note that the General Services Administration provides the notification service as a convenience and does not guarantee that notifications will be received by all persons on the mailing list. Therefore, we recommend that you monitor the beta.sam.gov website for all information relevant to desired acquisitions. Responses to this request can be emailed to [email protected] - Attention: SS-FIN-20-
098 AB/HS.