Emergency Notification System

The Vendor is required to provide for an emergency notification system (ENS) to provide a comprehensive, reliable, and scalable system capable of delivering timely alerts and critical information to residents, employees, and stakeholders during emergencies and non-emergency events.
- Provide an ENS that enhances public safety through rapid communication, supports multi-channel alerting capabilities, and is user-friendly, secure, and highly reliable.
- provide a system that includes a multi-channel delivery that consists of SMS (text messaging), voice calls (landline and mobile), email notifications, mobile app push notifications, geo-targeted messaging (GIS-based polygon and radius alerts), IPAWS integration (WEA/EAS capability), Two-way communication (polling, responses, check-ins)
- Data Management
•    Solution must not require vendor intervention or support to manage message recipient or group information.
•    Solution must allow administrators to manually add, edit, and delete message recipients within the system.
•    Solution must allow administrators to manually upload data files at any frequency through a web-based interface that is capable of securely adding, updating, replacing, and deleting contracts from the system.
•    Solution must allow automated data file uploads at any frequency (schedule) using a secure methodology such as SFTP.
•    Solution must allow for programmatically updating data securely at any frequency (schedule) using a RESTful API structure.
•    Solution must support the ability to export all, or a subset of, contact data and group assignments into a re-usable industry standard format such as CSV.
•    Solution must be able to parse uploads on a record by record basis so any data errors will only impact a single record and not adversely affect the entire upload.
•    Solution must provide robust error handling so that any data errors are logged and tracked for administrators.
•    Solution must notify the administrators when a data upload has been started and completed and display the number of records uploaded, number of those uploaded with errors, and number of records not loaded due to a critical data element error a required field not populated.
•    Solution must provide a mobile optimized web page where persons may opt-in/out for notifications and manage or augment personal contact data (i.e., self-service portal).
•    Solution must allow for opt-in data to be updated in real time for broadcasting purposes.
•    Solution must support the ability for administrators to customize the information presented to the end user through the portal, including but not limited to contact fields, custom fields, subscritions, and delivery moethods (contact information).
•    Solution must allow administrators to set any of the data elements in the portal to required or editable.
•    Solution must allow administrators to customize the page content (i.e., Homepage, FAQ, Overview, etc.) using rich HTML functionalities and banner for custom branding.  Administrators should be able to modify this information at any time without vendor's intervention.
•    Solution must allow administrators to manually add, edit, and delete groups as well as adding and removing contacts from the groups.
•    Solution must allow for creating groups based on contact attributes.
•    Solution must bhave the ability to upload group or other information along with contact information.
•    The solution must allow for data management options in relation to administrator preiviledges and access controls.
•    Solution must have the ability to identify one or more persons as have ownership of a group.
•    Solution must have the ability to restrict visibility of group owners to their groups' member and notification information.
•    Solution must have the ability to allow group owners full control to add or change recipient informaton and to send notifications to those recipients.
•    Solution must have the ability to assign multiple administrators complete access to all functions and user data.
•    Client shall retain all ownership and access to any and all data collected/submitted.
- System Access
•    Solution must be internet accessible through latest versions of standard web browsers.  Provide a list of supported web browsers.
•    All interactions with the solution must be secured using a valid 256-bit SSL (v3 or higher)/TLS (v1.2 or higher) security certificate which uses at least a 2048-bit key exchange obtained from an industry leading commercial certificate provider.  Please explain your support.
•    Solution must support an unlimited number of message senders and administrators who can simultaneously access the system at no additional cost.
•    Client administrators must have the ability to manage their own administrators without vendor intervention.
•    Users must be able to create their own user ids and stronger passwords.
•    Vendor must provide 24x7x365 message initiation assistance with dedicated live operators via a toll-free number.
•    Solution must support the ability to launch new and template notifications to both individuals and groups, and manage messages from smartphones and tablets via native iOS and Android applications.
•    The applications must be accessible under poor network/low bandwidth circumstances.  Explain how this is achieved.
•    The application must support the recording of voice for message content.
•    The application must display character count during message composition.
•    The application must support a geographic-based notifications.
- Message Creation
•    Solution must support the creation of a new notification or template from a single web page to include message creation, devices utilized (to include device sequence), applicable groups, and notification duration.
•    Solution must support the creation of a single message to be delivered to all devices as well as separate content for each device.
•    Solution must be able to support voice recordings via web application, telephone, and file upload.
•    Solution must have the ability to send both a recorded message and a text message in a single notification to all recipients for delivery to appropriate devices.
•    Solution must have the ability to select a file containing a recorded message for inclusion in the notification.
•    The solution must have the ability to enter a message in text and have it converted to speech for delivery to appropriate devices.
•    Solution must have the ability to convert text to speech with, at minimum, English (US) and Spanish (Latin American) pronunciations.
•    Solution must have the ability to develop pre-scripted messages.
•    Solution must have the ability to store notification templates, to include pre-scripted messages, applicable groups, device history, device delivery, sequence of devices, and duration of notification.
•    Solution must have the ability to modify or edit the notification template prior to broadcast.
- Message Targeting
•    Solution must have the ability to assign a group or multiple groups to a notification.
•    Solution must have the ability to assign individual recipients to a notification.
•    Solution must have the ability to assign individual recipients to a notification based on conditional criteria using one or more data fields.