The vendor is required to provide that software and implementation for an information technology service management (ITSM) solution.
- Core service desk functions:
• Service desk: A user-friendly and efficient service desk to handle incidents, service requests, and problem management. consider multi-channel access and integration with citizen relationship management (CRM) systems.
• Self-service portal: Offer a user-friendly self-service portal for common tasks like password resets, access requests, and service requests; this reduces it workload and empowers users to resolve issues independently.
• Configuration management system (CMS): Maintain a single source of truth for IT infrastructure and configuration data; for faster troubleshooting, better incident resolution, and improved asset utilization.
• Service catalog: Centralized list of it services and applications along with steps to deliver those services
• Knowledge base: Develop and maintain a comprehensive knowledge base for self-service troubleshooting and problem resolution; encourage user contributions and integrate with service desk ticketing systems.
• Onboarding and offboarding management: Ability to manage multiple tasks involving new staff joining and leaving the organization.
• Incident and outage management – Ability to track and monitor incidents and outages, facilitate team collaboration for resolution, capture root cause analysis, generate and capture an after-action report, and facilitate communication with affected stakeholders; solution should have a framework that allows automation of this process where practical.
- Change management functions:
• Change management: Implement a controlled and auditable change management process to minimize disruption and ensure service continuity; includes risk assessment, approvals, rollback procedures, and communication plans
- Asset management functions:
• Asset management: Track and manage it assets effectively, including hardware, software, licenses, and contracts; integration with financial systems is crucial for budgeting and cost tracking.
• Cost allocation: Ability to determine the cost of support across multiple departments within the organization.
- IT resource procurement portal
a. Electronic procurement workflow:
• Allow employees to browse and request available hardware and software through an intuitive catalog interface
• Support multi-level approval workflows based on department hierarchies
• Enable automatic routing to appropriate budget authorities
• Integration with organizational accounting codes and budget systems
• Capability to set spending limits and restrictions by department or role
b. Resource management and visibility:
• Provide managers with real-time visibility into their department's current hardware and software inventory
• Display available software licenses and hardware allocations by department
• Track subscription-based software usage and renewal dates
• Alert managers when approaching license limits or when resources are underutilized
c. Budget and compliance controls:
• Automatic validation of department budgets before purchase approval
• Enforcement of standardized hardware and software configurations
• Historical reporting of department spending patterns and resource utilization
d. Request status and fulfillment:
• Real-time status tracking of procurement requests
• Automated notifications at each approval stage
• Integration with asset management for automatic inventory updates
• Delivery status tracking and confirmation - Reporting and analytics functions
• Reporting and analytics: generate insightful reports and dashboards to track service performance, identify trends, and make informed decisions; integration plus integrate with the city’s data analytics platforms to provide deeper insights.
- Project management features:
• Project planning: facilitate the creation of detailed project plans with define
scope, budget, timeline, resources, and milestones.
• Resource management: allocate and track it resources (people, time, skills) effectively across multiple projects.
• Task management: break down projects into manageable tasks, assign them to team members, and track progress.
• Collaboration tools: Provide communication and collaboration tools for teams to work together efficiently on projects; include document sharing, instant messaging, and video conferencing.
• Risk management: Identify potential project risks, assess their impact, and develop mitigation strategies.
• Issue tracking: Track and manage project issues and defects, with workflows for resolution and reporting.
• Reporting and visibility: Generate reports and dashboards to track project progress, identify trends, and make informed decisions. - Additional work and app tracking features:
• Small work effort tracking – Ability to track smaller work efforts that may require more than 8 hours and less than 160 hours tracked over several weeks or months.
• These efforts do not require the same formality projects require but will follow core project precepts.
• The system should be able to capture/store related small work effort artifacts.
- Application life-cycle management functions
• Application roadmap tracking – Ability to track and prioritize requests that will be worked at some point in the future based on resource availability, timing with other software proposer product updates, etc.
- Security and compliance
• Data security: Ensure the platform meets all relevant government data security and privacy regulations; includes encryption, access controls, and audit trails.
• Disaster recovery: Implement a robust disaster recovery plan to ensure service continuity in case of emergencies. regular backups and testing are essential.
• Compliance management: Support compliance with relevant government regulations like HIPAA, PCI DSS, CJIS, and FISMA.
a) ITIL (information technology infrastructure library): ITIL provides best practices for it service management, which can be helpful in defining your ITSM requirements.
b) ISO 20000-1: this international standard outlines requirements for an ITSM service management system.
c) PCI DSS (payment card industry data security standard): if your organization processes credit card data, your ERP and ITSM systems must comply with PCI DSS.
d) organizations handling CJIS data must implement various security controls to protect its confidentiality, integrity, and availability.
e) ADA WCAG 2.1+ compliant
- Additional considerations/non-functional
• Scalability: Choose a platform that can scale to accommodate the city's future growth and changing needs.
• Environment management: Reasonable support and platform maturity for test environment(s) and associated platform configuration management for ongoing system maintenance, support for upgrades, etc.
• Integration: The platform integrates seamlessly with existing systems like CRM, HR, enterprise metrics, financial software, and API support.
• User experience: Prioritize a user-friendly interface for both IT staff and other departments using the self-service portal.
• Cost: Consider the total cost of ownership, including software licenses, implementation costs, training, and ongoing maintenance.
• Improved asset tracking and visibility: Accurately track it assets (hardware, software, peripherals) across departments, locations, and lifecycle stages; enables better allocation, utilization, and maintenance.
• Reduced costs: Minimize overstocking and understocking through optimized inventory levels, preventing unnecessary purchases, and maximizing existing resources.
• Enhanced efficiency: Streamline warehouse operations with automated workflows for receiving, storing, picking, and issuing equipment; reduces manual work and error, improving overall efficiency.
• Faster response times: Ensure quick availability of equipment for IT personnel and project needs, facilitating rapid troubleshooting and service delivery.
- Implementation and support services
• Proposal must include information and pricing associated with all aspects of ongoing support and maintenance activities.
• On-going support and maintenance must include standard software maintenance, product help desk
product fixes, product enhancements, and regular product releases based on a defined ongoing maintenance fee.
• The proposal must also include provision of release notes that describe fixes, enhancements, and deprecated features.
• If there are alternatives to this level of support, provide this detail and the corresponding pricing.
• The proposer should provide its upgrade policies and upgrade history of the proposed solution.
• The successful proposer must have the ability to remotely access the customer’s system to diagnose and correct problems in real-time.
• The proposer should describe the process for the city to request future product enhancements.
- Requirements of preferred services: project management
• Prepare a project work plan to detail the tasks that shall be completed to successfully implement the system.
• Prepare a project schedule to reflect system delivery, timeframes, and responsibilities for project completion.
• Successful proposer will provide regular progress reports on project status, budget tracking, provide issue escalation as necessary, identify and track issues/risks, and track status of bugs.
• Successful proposer will provide details on how process workflows will work in the system, providing documentation and process maps for new program workflows
• Successful proposer will prepare any change orders as necessary.
• Successful proposer will be responsible for providing implementation services.
- Change management support
• Successful proposer will assist the city with change management efforts, providing software training for staff (covered below).
• Provide guidance on best practices and business process design.
• Successful proposer will work with staff during implementation to convert the current transaction processes and workflows into the new system, and support staff in understanding what the transition will look like.
• Successful proposer will work with the city project team to provide the tools necessary to meet industry best practices in transaction management and tracking.
• Provide manuals, recordings, online help and tailored job aids
- Fully functioning production, testing, and training environments useable by city employees
• All environments shall be fully operable with active data successfully loaded into the new system from legacy systems.
• All environments shall have the minimum specifications necessary for optimum application software performance.
• These specifications should include maximum age of hardware and software versions.
• The city expects a minimum of three (3) environments: production, backup, and training/testing.
• All mandatory requirements outlined in the requirements section are met, as well as security and privacy standards provided by city.
• Successful proposer shall also be required to regularly improve the system with new/enhanced features requested from their customer base.
• Successful proposer shall have an escalation process established for the city to request new features and enhancements.
• New system provides efficient access to contract information and reporting across all departments.
• The production environment shall have redundancy to ensure availability and retention of data.
• New system must also have the capability to withstand disruptions with power, network, internet service, server, data storage, and connectivity to hosts.
• The successful proposer shall provide their own backup and recovery strategy or provide method for the city to cover this requirement.
• The success proposer shall provide a strategy to query and export data for reporting purposes.
- Continuous improvement
• PROVIDE a process whereby the city can propose new features and receive feedback on proposals.
• Provide a channel by which to escalate issue or problems.
- Software: global requirements
a. Successful proposer will provide availability and support for weekday and weekend agreed service times (AST), specifically at 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year with a minimum of 99% up time.
• The availability shall be measured by calendar month.
• Provide single sign on capability for the city.
• The city uses okta for multifactor authentication.
• The proposed solution shall provide single sign on capability with okta.
• Provide all implementation and support services with limited assistance from the city.
- General system software requirements
• All software required to be installed upon end-user equipment shall be installed by the successful proposer.
• Software shall be installed and configured for the turnkey solution on required servers as proposed.
• Software shall be compatible with the microsoft office 365 suite of products
• Functionality to send emails directly from the system must integrate with the city’s email system.
• Software shall provide an online help menu which covers all functions of the software.
• Software shall provide calendar view adjustments, where individual users may adjust their calendar display.
• Software shall provide single click shortcuts to frequently used areas.
• Software shall provide the ability to export to .csv, .pdf, .html and .xlsx formats for custom ad hoc reporting at the user level, or the ability to print the custom report directly from the application.
• Software shall be available in modules that can be purchased separately, over time, with the ability to add concurrent users on an as-needed basis.
• Licensing shall be made available based on the model chosen.
- Contract Period/Term: 6 Month
- Pre-Proposal Conference (Non-Mandatory) Date: March 11, 2025
- Questions/Inquires Deadline: March 17, 2025