The vendor is required to provide management and development services for its online open-source education (MOOSE) platform.
- Foundational activities
• Provide hosting for the moose platform in accordance with all applicable policies (see appendix d, technical assessment for details).
• Conduct a design audit of the current moose platform to establish a baseline understanding of the platform’s branding and visual elements, content, and navigation and identify any areas for improvements to meet user needs and align with industry best practices.
• Conduct a technical audit of the current moose platform to establish a baseline understanding of platform functionality, accessibility, and security and identify any areas for improvements to increase performance.
• Provide ongoing maintenance and technical support services including but not limited to:
a. Corrective maintenance to conduct root-cause analysis and bug-fix isolation and resolution of any platform problems.
b. Website and platform monitoring to assess platform availability, performance, and other meaningful performance metrics.
c. Preventative maintenance including analyzing and taking steps to prevent potential problems including applying security patches and renewing security certificates.
d. Performance management and maintenance to maintain current system level performance and resolve any system performance deterioration.
e. Knowledge management by recording, storing, and retrieving information to assist in the resolution of problems.
f. Website support that ensures the department can use, maintain and administer the platform, including monitoring, development, and analytics tools
• Provide department access to an issue-tracking system to allow monitoring of the status of all problem reports, inquiries, and other types of support requests.
• Provide monthly reports on relevant metrics including:
a. Issue response times
b. Issue resolution times
c. Website and platform availability (uptime)
d. Other relevant metrics as agreed upon
• Maintain sufficient on-staff expertise to address platform evolution/enhancement requests.
- Technical requirements of the moose platform
1. Technical assessment
• The state requires bidders to demonstrate they have the appropriate security controls in place to protect the state’s sensitive and/or confidential information.
• Deployment certification: the awarded bidder must provide testing results prior to the state making a go-no-go decision to introduce system changes into its software production environment.
• Data centers and access: the awarded bidder must store all data within the continental country in addition, all data access must be performed from within the continental united states
• Backup and recovery: the awarded bidder is responsible for system backups. if the system has to be restored, it must be recovered in less than eight (8) hours or recovery time objective (RTO) with no more than twenty-four (24) hours of data loss or recovery point objective (RPO).
i. Maintains an availability metric of ninety-nine and a half percent (99.5 percent) of uptime in a calendar month, as measured by the number of actual hours available as a percentage of total hours. expectation of 24/7 availability.
ii. Provide a hosting environment with adequate capacity to always ensure prompt response.
iii. Application performance metrics must meet a maximum 5-second response time under ethernet connectivity to the client device, lookup queries must return in less than three (3) seconds, and data-modification transactions must return in five (5) seconds
• Business continuity: the awarded bidder is responsible for the disaster recovery and business continuity plan and will be required to perform a full disaster recovery test at least annually. the plan should include but not be limited to the following:
i. The awarded bidder will describe the process if an interruption in service impacting platform availability is experienced.
(1) Parameters regarding system “downtime”,
(2) Identified system elements or components impacted and the overall impact to the system functionality,
(3) Processes for data recovery if necessary, and
- Project management and work plan
a. Project methodology
• The awarded bidder must structure and follow a project management approach for planning, organizing, and managing the staff and activities throughout the life of the project.
• The awarded bidder's project management approach must facilitate open and timely communication with the department and a strong working relationship to achieve the overall goal of completed system design performance that meets or exceeds user needs on time and within budget.
b. Project manager:
• The awarded bidder will be required to assign an experienced project manager to the project.
• It is required that the awarded bidder’s project manager be knowledgeable with the awarded bidder’s proposed solution.
• It is preferred that the awarded bidder’s project manager be project management professional (pmp) certified.
• The awarded bidder’s project manager will be responsible for the successful completion of all work tasks as defined within the project work plan and will work under the direction of the department’s project manager.
• The department reserves the right to require the awarded bidder to replace their project manager at any time during the course of the project
c. Change management:
• The awarded bidder’s project manager will be required to formally document and track all changes to the functional design, technical design, and to approved deliverables.
• For each potential change, the awarded bidder’s project manager will work closely with the department’s project manager to define and document the change, its benefits, and if necessary, its impact to the project schedule and budget.
• No work associated with a documented change will begin without first receiving written authorization from the department’s project manager.
d. Workplan:
• The awarded bidder’s project manager will be required to maintain a detailed project work plan, with content to be approved by the department project manager, through the full term of the contract.
• The awarded bidder’s project manager will be required to submit an updated work plan to the department’s project manager on a date and time that will be determined during contract negotiations.
• The work plan will be incorporated into the contract between the department and the awarded bidder and will be made a part thereof.
- Quality assurance and acceptance
a. Testing:
• Prior to moving the proposed system to the production environment, the awarded bidder will test all aspects of the solution in accordance with the department’s deployment certification policy for major application projects.
b. Test plan:
• The awarded bidder, in cooperation with the department, will create a test plan including all tests required in accordance with providing and operating a fully certified system.
• The awarded bidder will describe its strategy for ensuring that new systems and all interfaces function properly when releasing new versions of any software application.
• The awarded bidder will indicate at what point in a new release the department will receive access to new versions of software or applications.
• All components of the application must be tested in a non-production environment to ensure that the application test responses represent the exact behavior that will be expected of the application in the production environment.
c. Test execution:
• The awarded bidder will be responsible for scheduling and coordinating all testing activities to ensure that each of the tests are prepared for and performed in accordance with the test plan.
• The awarded bidder will train department personnel as appropriate to participate in the testing effort.
• Unless specified otherwise within the test plan, the awarded bidder will be required to provide all tools, testing materials, and resources necessary to effectively perform the required tests.  
• The awarded bidder is responsible for and must certify their system to be fully secure for all work provided under this procurement
- Implementation
• The awarded bidder will be responsible for implementing the solution within the production environment.
• The final acceptance of the solution will be based on overall end-to-end testing of the entire system.
- Contract Period/Term: 2 years
- Questions/Inquires Deadline: March 21, 2025