Request for Information-DHS Office of Health Security-Air Passenger Travel Data Subscription

REQUEST FOR INFORMATION NUMBER 70RDA326RFI000001

Air Passenger Travel Data Subscription

Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Office of Health Security (OHS)

NOTE:  THIS IS A REQUEST FOR INFORMATION (RFI) ONLY. This RFI is issued solely for information and market research planning purposes. This RFI shall not be construed as an obligation on the part of the Government. This is NOT a Request for Quotations or Proposals. The Government may or may not issue a formal solicitation as a result of the responses received to this RFI.

The Government will not pay any response or demonstration expenses. All costs incurred responding to this RFI will be solely at the interested party's expense. Failure to respond to this RFI will not preclude participation in any future solicitation. Any information received will become the property of the Government and will not be returned to the submitter. Interested parties are responsible for adequately marking proprietary or sensitive information.

The Government’s explicit intent, in this request for information, is to not receive from respondents any proprietary data, trade secrets, business sensitive information, or information considered CONFIDENTIAL under 18 U.S.C. §1905. The Government’s constraint does not in any way relieve contractors from their responsibility to properly mark proprietary data when it is provided, nor does it alleviate any requirement for the Government to protect marked data. The Government is not obligated to protect unmarked data.

The information provided in this RFI is subject to change and is not binding on the Government. All submissions become the property of the Federal Government and will not be returned.

I. DESCRIPTION

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) takes a comprehensive approach to national security, public safety, and border security. Individuals encountered by the DHS workforce can present an array of individual health and public health concerns. The DHS Office of Health Security (OHS), led by the DHS Chief Medical Officer, is the principal medical, workforce health and safety, and public health authority for DHS. The Office of Health Security (OHS) serves as the principal medical, workforce health and safety, and public health authority for the Department of Homeland Security.   

The National Biosurveillance Integration Center (NBIC) organizationally falls within DHS/OHS and conducts biosurveillance activities to enable early warning and situational awareness of acute biological events and supports better preparedness and response decisions through rapid identification, characterization, localization, and tracking. The objective of NBIC is to advance the safety, security, and resilience of the Nation by leading an integrated biosurveillance effort in support of Federal, State, Local, Tribal, and Territorial government stakeholders.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) National Biosurveillance Integration Center (NBIC) is conducting market research in accordance with FAR Part 10 to assess the available capabilities of air passenger volume data for use in biosurveillance. Understanding human travel patterns and global migration is critical to managing emerging infectious diseases and maintaining biosecurity. To assist with preparedness for the risk from infectious diseases worldwide, NBIC requires a method to quickly query for the volume of passengers inbound to the U.S. or other countries, originating from or having nexus to airports, countries, and regions where biological events are occurring. (Ideally, this would include passengers who have layovers elsewhere in the world.)  Access to historical air passenger volume data will also allow NBIC to identify seasonal trends. NBIC requires the data necessary to identify areas in the U.S. that may have a high risk of disease spread based on incoming travelers, identify U.S. airports with the greatest volume of arriving passengers from regions of concern, and identify other countries/locations where infected travelers have the potential to travel to and spread the disease.  OHS expects to be the responsible office for any subsequent solicitations and awards that may be a result of the market research efforts directly associated with this RFI.

II. RFI PURPOSE

The purposes of this RFI are:

1. To gain an understanding of Industry’s view of appropriate product and service offerings for providing the required support. 
2. To obtain Industry feedback on the proposed requirements to include comment on any potential missing, incomplete, or lacking in adequate clarity, product/service considerations, activities, or factors needed to promote optimization and adaptability, in support of the DHS management function and component activities.
3. To secure a better understanding of the commercial market space and capabilities to include available Government-wide solutions and provider capabilities.
4. To obtain thoughtful and detailed responses from Industry to questions posed about the DHS air passenger travel data offerings.

III. INFORMATION REQUEST

Interested parties should submit responses that address the following areas:

A. Company Information

-Company name, entity information, address, website.

-Point of contact name, title, email, phone.

-Business size and socio-economic status under proposed North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) Code 513210 – Software Publishers

For company information responses please see the Microsoft Forms Link.

B. Government RFI Questions

Product Identification

Identify the product that you are proposing to provide commercial air travel passenger and airframe data.

Historical Data

Does this system include at least three years of historical global flight data, at no less than a weekly update frequency, to include passenger volumes and global flight routes between world-wide airports?

How far back does the historical data that would be available in this system go? Are there changes in the available data resolution (either temporal or spatial) over this historical timespan?

Data Characteristics

Is data available at the individual airport-to-airport level for all flight segments (including origin, layover(s), and final destination)?

Does the system provide detailed information on all layover or connecting airports for indirect flights, including passenger volumes for each segment?

Does data on passenger numbers include only purchased tickets, or does it also include staff/crew numbers?

What data attributes are included (e.g., nationality, flight number, airline)? Please list available attributes.

Does the system include data on flight cancellations or rebookings?

Does the system include temporal data on the time between bookings and flights?

Data Timeliness

Is the data updated at least weekly? If not, what is the update frequency?

Forecasting and Predictive Data

What predictive or other future scope data is available within this system? How far into the future is this data present, and with what level of accuracy (e.g., planned flight routes, purchased bookings, other)?

Data Access and Query Methods

Describe how the data will be made available to the Government, in what formats, and with what restrictions on user or programmatic log in, query, and download capabilities.

Is data accessible via a graphical user interface (web portal)?

Is data accessible via an API?

Are there any restrictions on the volume or frequency of queries/downloads for authorized users? If yes, please briefly describe.

Data Dictionary and Metadata

Can you provide a data dictionary and sample data, including all available metadata fields?

Data Quality, Reliability, and Consistency

Are data quality, reliability, and consistency regularly assessed and documented? If yes, please briefly describe your quality assurance process.

Licensing

Will you license your data for use by the Government/government contractors for analysis and reporting as raw data within the US Government, and as a component of completed analyses to  US state, local, tribal, and territorial government authorities?

C. Past Performance

Briefly identify your history of performance in providing these products/services that relate to the draft SOW objectives. This history may include simultaneous support of multiple unassociated organizations, multiple associated organizations, and/or in specialized teaming or partnership arrangements. Past performance information provided in response to this RFI should map to capabilities information offered.

D. Innovations, Recommendations, and Pricing

Identify in general terms any value-added or innovative approaches to the attached draft SOW. (This is not intended to be a representation of your current capabilities or specific attributes.)

Identify any omissions, gaps, and/or conflicts within the attached draft SOW that you recommend DHS should further consider, develop, and/or address?

Describe how your organization typically structures pricing to include any factors that influence pricing (e.g., volume, geography, service level agreements, technology integration).

E. Any other information

Please provide any other relevant information (or questions) deemed relevant and not addressed in this RFI and/or its attachments.

IV. SUBMISSION INSTRUCTIONS

NOTE: All responses to this RFI shall be provided within the Microsoft Forms Link. In the event an industry response is not included within the attached RFI response template, DHS will not review and consider the response. The submission should include summary responses with detailed explanations, if possible.

Submissions in Microsoft Forms are due by no later than June 23, 2026, 5:00 PM ET. Responses submitted via e-mail (or by other means) will not be accepted.

Proprietary information, if any, should be minimized and MUST BE CLEARLY MARKED. To aid the Government, please segregate proprietary information. Please be advised that all submissions become Government property and will not be returned.

V. CONTACT INFORMATION AND NOTICES

All RFI responses shall be timely provided to DHS, Office of Procurement Operations (OPO),

Please do not attempt to contact DHS team members regarding this RFI. All correspondence associated with this RFI shall be initiated by the OPO Contracting Officer (CO). Efforts to engage DHS team members absent CO guidance may result in DISQUALIFICATION from any potential future solicitation.

DHS truly appreciates all feedback that industry is willing to provide associated with this RFI. DHS does not intend on communicating its evaluation of and potential responses to feedback received. Information provided shall be reviewed and considered internally by DHS as it finalizes its market research, applicable strategies, and draft documentation.  The review of feedback by DHS may include contractor support with non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) on file. 

THIS IS A REQUEST FOR INFORMATION (RFI) ONLY to identify key commercial air passenger travel data subscription market space sources and capabilities. Additionally, responses to this RFI may assist DHS in further refining draft requirements documents.

The information provided in the RFI is subject to change and is not binding on the Government. DHS has not made a commitment to procure any of the items discussed, and release of this RFI should not be construed as such a commitment nor as authorization to incur costs for which reimbursement would be required or sought. All submissions become Government property and will not be returned. The Government is not required to respond to any information provided in response to this RFI. It is the responsibility of the interested parties to monitor SAM.gov for additional information pertaining to this RFI.

VI. REQUEST FOR INFORMATION COVER ATTACHMENTS

Attachment 1 – DRAFT Statement of Work (SOW)