Utility Relocation Reimbursement Grant Program AI Powered Portal Services

The vendor is required to provide to develop an AI-powered solution that provides a portal for application intake, review, and processing to support the utility relocation reimbursement grant program.
- Responsible for delivering an AI-enabled or automated solution that streamlines application management, supports documentation review, enables compliance tracking, and provides real-time reporting tools.
- The solution must be accessible to external applicants and internal reviewers and meet all state cybersecurity and accessibility standards. 
- Ongoing support, maintenance, and enhancements throughout the five-year contract term are also required.
- Support the development and management of a secure, scalable, and compliant solution that enables the efficient intake, review, and reimbursement of eligible claims.
- The solution should address the specific requirements of the utility reimbursement relocation grant program but should be able to be expanded in the future should the need arise.
- Data protection
•    Deploy and manage information protection and encryption using key management.
•    Manage encryption services policies and rules and remediation’s, as requested.
•    Support new integration of managed applications and servers with key management server.
•    Report on the status of encryption services.
•    Set policies for certificate lifecycle for applications and servers.
•    Monitor and manage policies for information protection.
- Network and App Protection
•    Manage firewall and web application firewall (WAF) policies and rulesets.
•    Provide design and configuration of government network security components to include firewalls (4 high-availability pairs), WAF, intrusion detection prevention system (IDPS-FW), and network security groups.
•    Ensure the solution employs the application gateway (WAF and IDPS-FW) to provide protection between commerce and the solution environments.
•    Ensure the solution provides secure remote access via VPN tunnels between commerce and the solution environments with AWS direct connect or remote user connectivity with VPN tunnels.
•    Manage policies for in-bound and out-bound rule change ticket management.
•    Update and configure intelligent threat mitigation and advanced specialized protection of WAF rule applications.
•    Monitor WAF events forwarding to enterprise security information and event management (SIEM) platform.
•    Configure and deploy sentinel for log collection. 
•    Contractor will integrate security alert telemetry into sentinel and auto-redirect alerts from sentinel to commerce-managed SIEM and infra/application support teams.
•    Report monthly on security and compliance metrics.
- Cloud End-Point Protection.
o    Provide endpoint security service, including defender for endpoint on Linux and defender for endpoint on windows. 
o    Defender policy will be configured using standard out-of-the-box configuration.
o    Deploy and configure defender suite (cloud security posture management (CSPM) + cloud access security broker (CASB) and endpoints) for institute 800-53 rev 5 moderate controls compliance.
o    Monitor device health incidents and device health resolution support.
o    Support the resolution of security incidents, agent patching, and security policy management.
- Scalability. 
•    The solution must provide the ability for the environment to scale for growth as required by user volume. 
•    The solution must be scalable to meet variable demands including but not limited to the following:
•    Administrative scalability – the ability for an increasing number of organizations or users to access the solution.
•    Functional scalability- the ability to enhance the solution by adding new functionality without disrupting existing activities. 
•    This includes adding new programs at the request of commerce.
•    Program scalability – the ability to maintain effectiveness during the addition of new or changes to existing program requirements.
•    Load scalability – the ability for a distributed solution to expand and contract to accommodate heavier or lighter loads, including, the ease with which a solution or component can be modified, added, or removed, to accommodate changing loads.
- Provide robust self-service functionality for participants to create, customize, and manage (e.g., edit, format, inactivate, save drafts, etc.) Their applications;
- Capture and track application activity;
- Be able to capture, display, and report on real-time analytics on application status and program activities to inform users and participants;
- Provide the ability for participants to communicate to users;
- Provide the ability for users to communicate to participants;
- Integrate artificial intelligence (AI) functionality;
- Implement an interactive Chatbot capable of answering participant questions and navigating participants through the application; and
- Provide the capabilities for data mining and data analysis including predictive analysis capabilities, that operate without adversely affecting the production environment while regular monitoring is completed and continuous improvement maintained;
- Provide the ability to track performance measures at the individual participant level and aggregate and track services to participants including the ability to pull individual case management reports;
- Produce both on-demand and regularly scheduled reports;
- Be able to save previous queries and reports.

- Contract Period/Term: 3 years
- Questions/Inquires Deadline: August 25, 2025