FBODaily.com | FedBizOpps: SRCSGT | R | Appointment Scheduling and Management Enterprise Solution

FBO DAILY - FEDBIZOPPS ISSUE OF AUGUST 09, 2015 FBO #5007
SOURCES SOUGHT

R -- Appointment Scheduling and Management Enterprise Solution

Notice Date: 8/7/2015
Notice Type: Sources Sought
NAICS: 511210 — Software Publishers
Contracting Office: Department of State, Office of Acquisitions, Bureau of Consular Affairs - General Services Division, 600 19th Street NW, Washington, District of Columbia, 20431, United States
ZIP Code: 20431
Solicitation Number: SAQMMA-15-CA-0003
Archive Date: 9/2/2015
Point of Contact: Nicole L. Mazkour, Phone: 202-485-7394
E-Mail Address: MazkourNL@state.gov
(MazkourNL@state.gov)
Small Business Set-Aside: N/A
Description: Sources Sought Notices (herein referred to as a Request for Information) are issued by the Department of State when performing market research to determine industry interest and capabilities. The Department of State is interested in the capabilities of both small and other than small businesses to perform the services, and is particularly interested in the capabilities of small business and strongly encourages responses from those businesses. This is not a solicitation or request for proposal and in no way commits the Government to award a contract. The Government does not intend to award a contract(s) based solely on the submission of this Request for Information nor does it intend to pay for any costs incurred in response to this announcement. The Department of State reserves the right to terminate this request and change its requirements if needed. Responding to this Request for Information does not guarantee participation in future Department activities. 4. Background: The DoS Bureau of Consular Affairs (CA) is responsible for the issuance of Passports to U.S. citizens, the issuance of visas to non-citizens, and the welfare and protection of U.S. citizens abroad. CA plays a vital role in U.S. Border Security through the issuance (or denial) of travel documents. CA deals with events and issues that have a personal impact, including birth, death, adoption, child custody, citizenship, and relocation to another country. CA also assists citizens who fall victim to crime, accident or illness in other countries. As the public face of the Department of State for millions of US citizens and foreign nationals around the world, CA plays a vital role in the Department's mission. The Office of Consular Systems and Technology (CA/CST) supports over 11,000 users distributed across more than 300 locations around the world, including CA Headquarters, 20+ domestic Passport facilities, two domestic visa processing centers, and over 240 Posts. CA is going through a modernization effort to replace legacy systems and services with a unified system (ConsularOne) that will support functions of the offices of Passport Services (CA/PPT), Visa Office (CA/VO) and Overseas Citizens Services (CA/OCS). For this effort, CA has acquired the Oracle Siebel CRM tool to support this modernization. While the CRM tool will serve as the core of the technical modernization, CA will need additional technologies to meet the needs of the workforce and the traveling public. CA requires an Appointment Scheduling and Management (AS&M) solution to integrate with the CRM tool, and provide a DoS enterprise level capability for ConsularOne and future projects. CA's initial scheduling requirement is to enable online appointment scheduling for customers and AS&M for users to support the Electronic Consular Report of Birth Abroad (eCRBA) services. The process of granting U.S. citizenship to children born abroad requires an in-person interview to be scheduled with Consular staff at Post. Scheduling capabilities for passports, visas and other services will also need to be supported. 5. Objective: The objective of this RFI is to identify potential vendors (large, small and socioeconomic concerns) who can provide enterprise software that meets the requirements described below. 6. Reference Information: The following enterprise requirements are associated with AS&M: Technical Requirements (1-11) 1. Message exchanges, Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP), Extensible Markup Language (XML), Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) - The COTS product shall allow for integration with other systems via exchanges of messages or data files where the message or data files may need to be translated or reformatted to match the standards or interface descriptions specified by systems on both sides of the message exchange. Integration through web services may use either SOAP-based XML message exchanges or may implement Representational State Transfer (REST) services based on HTTP verbs (i.e., post, get, put, delete). 2. Open application programming interfaces (API's) for data import and export - The COTS product shall provide open APIs that enable data from other systems to be imported into the software system and enable data managed by the software product to be exported to a data warehouse or to other directed data stores. The COTS product shall allow third-party tools to extract their data and perform needed transformations prior to loading the data into a data warehouse. 3. Auditing and logging - The COTS product audit log shall capture information on user identification, user logon and logoff date/times, transaction type, database access type (create, read, update, delete, search, report), record changes, and before and after views of records accessed. 4. Operational environment - The server portion of the COTS product shall be capable of running on a Java, Linux platform in a Department of State Data Center. 5. Security - The COTS product shall support: 1) identification, authentication, and access control for all customers and users, 2) single sign-on capability based on use of the Homeland Security Presidential Directive (HSPD)-12 mandated Personal Identity Verification (PIV) cards issued to all employees, 3) limiting authorized users' access to only software applications within their scope of authorization, and 4) limiting data access based on user's role and privileges. The software product shall support receiving customer data submissions transmitted via the CA customer's web browser over the Internet using a secure connection from a portal to the customer's browser. Data in transit protection will be based on a FIPS 140-2 validated encryption mechanism at the network (e.g., Internet Protocol Security [IPsec] or transport layers [e.g., Transport Layer Security [TLS]/Secure Socket Layer [SSL]). 6. User roles - The COTS product shall provide for policy-based access control for user role assignments. The COTS product shall allow each user entity to be assigned one or multiple attributes that represent different access privileges. 7. Privacy - The COTS product shall provide security controls at the Federal Information Security Management Act of 2002 (FISMA) moderate level required to protect privacy information in the system, such as personally identifiable information (PII). 8. Browser-based access - The COTS product shall provide browser access to the software system from any modern browser. 9. Multiple language capability - The COTS product will be implemented and used globally. All information will be in English. However, customers shall have the option to select the language for instructions on how to fill out the forms. The COTS product shall support at least these languages out of the box: Spanish, Arabic, Chinese (Simplified), Portuguese, French, Russian, Montenegrin/Serbian, German, Hebrew, Japanese, Turkish, Indonesian, Hindi, Korean, Romanian, Chinese (traditional), Italian, Polish, Thai, Vietnamese, Bengali, Urdu and Persian. 10. Customer and user interface portal - The COTS product shall provide a configurable web-based 1) customer (external user) portal and 2) user (internal user) portal to enter data, attach files, request help, obtain status of service request, and see messages from customer service staff. The portal software will provide a configurable widget framework enabling users to tailor their own portal views to their specific work needs and preferences. The user interface shall be based on current technologies such as HTML 5, Cascading Style Sheets Level 3 (CSS3), and JavaScript. 11. Mobility - The COTS product shall support mobile users, both internal and external users. Functional Requirements (12-18) 12. Workflow management - The COTS product shall have a built-in workflow management capability that will allow workflows to be designed and configured for appointment management related activities in the processing environment. 13. Historical information - The COTS product shall store historical information regarding all customer interactions with CA for as long as needed. 14. Notification capability - The COTS product shall provide the capability to create notifications to the following: other internal applications or services, staff, customers, other CA systems, and external systems. 15. Search capability - The COTS product shall provide a robust search/query capability that enables access to the customer appointment data. The COTS product shall support more advanced searches that would access information on multiple customers who may be linked in some way or may have other commonalities relevant to a service appointment request and allow non-person specific queries. 16. Reporting services The COTS product shall provide the capability to generate summary and detailed reports on customer appointment information. The COTS product shall support CA users who may require certain reports on a scheduled basis (such as daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, etc.) or on an ad hoc basis, for example, to deal with specific issues or events. 17. CRM system interface The COTS product shall be capable of integrating with the Siebel CRM system. 18. Time reporting The COTS product shall provide a capability to collect and report on the total time (system and personnel) expended on various customer appointment requests. Non-Functional Requirements (19-22) 19. Data capacity The COTS product shall be able to process and store large volumes of transactions associated with customer appointments. For example, roughly 33 million service requests and associated customer account records must be accommodated on an annual basis. Of the 33 million records, 18 million records will increase by 4 percent per year; 12 million records are expected to increase by 15 percent per year; and 3 million records will increase by 12 percent per year. 20. Availability The COTS product shall be available for normal use 99.99 percent including any scheduled downtime. 21. Vendor maintenance support (patching, upgrades) The vendor for the COTS product shall provide timely patching for security vulnerabilities and shall release regularly scheduled software product upgrades to correct problems, improve performance, and add software functionality. 22. Performance The COTS product transactions will have a 0.5 second response time. This does not include file upload and external system response times. Transaction response time for switching between application views shall not be affected by the volume of data in the system. 7. Workload Statistics CRBA statistics: The current volume of CRBA requests is approximately 66,000 - 70,000 requests annually, or an average of 264 - 280 per day issued worldwide. Volume of CRBA issuance varies by Post. Posts with the highest volume of CRBA issuance (during 2009) included: Frankfurt 4,363, London 4,224, Jerusalem 3,246, Tel Aviv 2,662, Manila 2,563, and Tokyo 2,311. Mexico City also has a high volume of CRBA requests. However, CRBA requests are relatively small scale compared to passport and visitor visa requests. Passport statistics: In Fiscal Year (FY) 2013, there were 13.5 million passport book and card products issued, or an average of 36,986 passport book and card products issued per day. CA has 29 passport agencies that conduct passport applicant interviews, and therefore will use the enterprise AS&M solution. The volume of interviews varies by location. Visa statistics: In FY 2013, there were 10.7 million Non-Immigrant Visa (NIV) applications and 9.2 million issued, or an average of 29,315 applications and 25,205 visitor visas issued per day. Volume of visa requests varies by location. As a performance measure, 80 percent of NIV applicants worldwide are required to be interviewed within 3 weeks of application. Interfaces An example of the application tools that AS&M has to interface with are eCRBA, IAM, Siebel CRM and others as they are identified. The below includes AS&M requirements and an example of user stories that were collected for the eCRBA service. AS&M Requirement Statement / eCRBA User Stories 1 Ability for automated scheduling for customers, consular users, or other third parties to select/schedule appointment time for service or consultation. / As a customer or third party user, I want to select/schedule an appointment time so that I can be seen for services or consultation. Customer must pay for service request prior to scheduling their appointment. 2 Ability for customers, consular users, or other third parties to cancel, reschedule, or change location for existing appointments or blocks of appointments. / As a customers or third party user, I want to cancel, reschedule, or request a change of location for an existing appointments so that I can update my appointment schedule as needed. (Customer may NOT change location for CRBA appointment - customer can REQUEST a change of location from a user.) 3 Ability to create calendars at multiple levels such as individual, office, facility, or global. / As a System Admin user, I want the ability to create calendars at multiple levels such as individual, office, facility, or global in order to manage/coordinate appointments at different levels of CA. 4 Ability to read, update and delete calendar views set at multiple levels, such as individual, office, facility, or global. / As a System Admin user, I want the ability to read, update and delete calendar views set at multiple levels, such as individual, office, facility, or global in order to manage/coordinate appointments at different levels of CA. 5 Ability to create calendar appointments. / As a user, I want the ability to create calendar appointments so that I can schedule appointment times for customers. 6 Ability to read, update, and delete calendar appointments. / As a user, I want the ability to read, update, and delete calendar appointments so that I can make changes to appointments as needed. 7 Ability to set and update capacity for appointments based on hours of operation and available staff. / As a user, I want the ability to set and update capacity for appointments based on hours of operation and available staff so that customers can select available appointment times for their service request. 8 Ability to set and update capacity for appointments based on specific service types such as visa classes, passport types, consular services, languages. / As a user, I want the ability to set and update capacity for appointments based on specific service types such as visa classes, passport types, consular services, and languages so that customers can select the appropriate times/dates based on their service needs and language preferences. 9 Ability to configure and apply business rules specific to appointment scheduling, such as cut-off times to schedule, buffer times for advance scheduling. / As a user, I want the ability to configure and apply business rules specific to appointment scheduling, such as cut-off times to schedule, buffer times for advance scheduling to avoid appointments running over into non-operational hours or overbooking appointments. 10 Ability to configure and apply rules specific to matching a user, customer or system driven appointment request to an available appointment slot based on service type, capacity or appointment management rules. / As a system owner, CST wants the ability to configure and apply rules specific to matching a user, customer or system driven appointment request to an available appointment slot based on service type, capacity or appointment management rules so that the user or customer is presented with available appointment times that they can select from. 11 Ability for customers, consular users, or other third parties to view appointment times for service or consultation. / As a user, I want the ability to view appointment times so that I can schedule customers for service or consultation. 12 Ability for customers, consular users, or other third parties to cancel, reschedule, or change location for existing appointments or blocks of appointments. / As a user, I want the ability to cancel, reschedule, or change location for existing appointments or blocks of appointments so that I can update customer appointments as needed. The following provides examples of the types of users associated with the above user stories. Types of Users: Description Customer: A customer is a person requesting or receiving services from Consular Affairs for themselves or on behalf of someone else. Persons requesting or receiving services from Consular Affairs on behalf of themselves are designated as either U.S. citizens or Foreign Nationals. The majority of requests for CRBAs are from customers who are living in a foreign country. For an eCRBA Request, a Customer may be: • One or both parents of the child(ren) born overseas, • the child born overseas, or • an agent facilitating either parent's or the child's claim. Customers complete and submit service requests and schedule appointments for the CRBA service. For CRBA Secure Document Services (SDS), Customers appear for interviews for the CRBA to be adjudicated and receive the CRBA (if approved). Third Party Users Persons requesting or receiving services on behalf of someone else, often designated as third party users, include beneficiaries, representatives of commercial organizations who coordinate services on behalf of individuals, Congressional liaisons, lawyers, and individuals in other roles. Additional requirements will be developed to address the privacy and security issues related to account creation, management, and access on behalf of Consular Affairs customers. User A user is defined as a Department of State employee or representative, such as U.S. contractors or locally engaged staff (LES), that use the ConsularOne system to provide citizen and non-citizen services. Third Party Users: Persons requesting or receiving services on behalf of someone else, often designated as third party users, include beneficiaries, representatives of commercial organizations who coordinate services on behalf of individuals, Congressional liaisons, lawyers, and individuals in other roles. Additional requirements will be developed to address the privacy and security issues related to account creation, management, and access on behalf of Consular Affairs customers. User: A user is defined as a Department of State employee or representative, such as U.S. contractors or locally engaged staff (LES), that use the ConsularOne system to provide citizen and non-citizen services. • Foreign Service Officers (FSOs) or LES at overseas posts responsible for managing appointment calendars and verifying that the application is complete and has all required documentation accompanying it • FSOs and LES who perform the work of data entry, cashiering, adjudication, and the issuance of the CRBA certificates • Domestic print staff at the Tucson and Arkansas print centers who personalize and print the CRBA • Passport Vital Records staff for processing and printing requests for replacement CRBAs. • System Admin users who are internal users responsible for administering the AS&M application External Users: Non-DoS government employees and contractors accessing ConsularOne through a Web interface via Internet or a VPN from their agency to the DoS. For the eCRBA service, External Users are likely to be employees of the Social Security Administration. System A system is any machine or technology providing a benefit or service to Customers, Users or another system. System: A system is any machine or technology providing a benefit or service to Customers, Users or another system. For the eCRBA process, a system may be: • the final ConsularOne solution that provides primary support to the eCRBA process to meet business requirements; • interfacing systems that require data related to the CRBAs, or • shared components that provide enterprise-wide technical capabilities, such as the Enterprise Service Bus and Enterprise Reporting capabilities.&emsp; 8. MARKET RESEARCH - REQUEST FOR INFORMATION (Capability Statement) Instructions: Interested parties are requested to respond to this RFI with a capability statement and supporting artifacts. Statements and Questions for the Vendor Please address the following statements and questions: 1. Describe how your product integrates with Siebel CRM. 2. Describe how your product integrates with Identity and Access Management (IAM) tools to manage roles and access. 3. CA desires an AS&M COTS solution that is configurable and doesn't require custom coding. a. Please describe how your solution meets this requirement. 4. Describe how your product can be scaled and implemented as an enterprise solution. 5. CA desires a COTS application supporting AS&M. It will become a component of the ConsularOne business services layer. a. Architecture 1. Please describe your COTS solution architecture at a high level. 2. Please describe where in your architecture your business rules engine is located. b. Please describe the data elements the AS&M application is required to access with Plain English explanations, if required. c. Reporting 1. Describe your solution's approach to enterprise-level reporting for CA. 2. Describe the types of reports that come as part of the solution. 3. How are modifications to reports performed? 6. Currently, each facility does not have its own appointment scheduling software, but there are four to five different applications that handle AS&M - and most posts have to use more than one to support appointments for different services (i.e., one application for NIV interviews, another application for CRBA interviews, a third application for other types of visas or other citizen services). Greeters (staff who greet applicants/customers and check them in) need to use all different apps to support the process. a. Discuss how your AS&M solution will solve this problem with one enterprise solution. 7. Provide a summary of your corporate expertise, and work experience as it relates to the requirements of similar AS&M solutions. Please specifically expand upon architectures, implementation, etc., particularly in Government or large commercial industry settings. Please describe experiences and lessons learned with other implementations and deployment such as migrating a customer from one electronic AS&M system to another electronic AS&M system. 8. The future vision includes the ability to proactively manage human and facility resources in light of the demand for services. a. Discuss how your COTS solution manages throughput and resource management? What predictive measures does it use? b. Discuss how your COTS solution produces and displays data to inform efficient use of resources. 9. Transition to the new system and its eventual sustainment are considered to be significant cost drivers. Describe how business rules are established and modified in your COTS solution. 10. Is your AS&M system 508 compliant? Explain how your AS&M system is 508 compliant. 11. Can your system support multiple languages? Describe how your system supports multiple languages, or allows for language selection. 12. What components/modules is your COTS solution comprised of? 13. What are the recommended hosting and licensing strategies for your Enterprise solution? a. What hosting options (e.g. local vs. SaaS) does your solution support? What are the pros and cons of each? What are the cost implications? b. How is the product licensed (i.e. as a single product or by module)? c. Will your COTS require annual license, upgrade, and maintenance fees? 14. Please provide a list price with part numbers for your COTS solution. 15. What other NAICS codes, other than 511210, do you sell your COTS solution under? 9. Instructions and Response Guidelines Interested parties are requested to respond to this RFI with a white paper and supporting artifacts. Proprietary information must be clearly marked as such. Section 1 of the white paper shall provide administrative information, and shall include the following: Name, mailing address, overnight delivery address (if different from mailing address), phone number, fax number, and e-mail of designated point of contact of respondent. Identify the respondent's CAGE code and DUNS number. Small Business/Socio-Economic status of respondent, if any, (i.e. small business, small disadvantaged business, 8(a) small business, service-disabled veteran-owned small business, HUBZone small business, woman-owned small business, and economically-disadvantaged women-owned small business). Note: The applicable NAICS code for this effort is 511210. If the solutions suggested are available on the respondent's GSA Schedule contract or any other Government-wide contract (e.g. GWACs), provide the number of that/those contract(s). White papers should be submitted in Microsoft Word compatible format and are due no later than 19 August 2015, 11:00am EDT. Responses in Section 2, Capability Approach, shall be limited to 20 pages plus any supporting artifacts and submitted via e-mail only to MazkourNL@state.gov. The number of pages in Section 1 of the white paper shall not be included in the 20 page limitation. 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. Section 1 - Administrative Information Provide administrative information including the following as a minimum: • Name, mailing address, overnight delivery address (if different from mailing address), phone number, fax number, and e-mail of designated point of contact. • Identify the respondent's CAGE code and DUNS number. • Proprietary information must be clearly marked as such. • Small Business/Socio-Economic status of respondent, if any, (i.e. small business, small disadvantaged business, 8(a) small business, service-disabled veteran-owned small business, HUBZone small business, woman-owned small business, and economically-disadvantaged women-owned small business). Note: The applicable NAICS code for this effort is 511210 -- Software Publishers • If the solutions suggested are available on the respondent's GSA Schedule contract or any other Government-wide contract (e.g. GWACs), provide the contract number of that/those contract(s). Section 2. - Capability Approach Interested parties are requested to provide a high-level matrix detailing how the proposed software will be able to meet all the requirements outlined in the PWS. This response should include sufficient information for each requirement identified. *Interested parties are advised to examine this Request for Information to ensure its response provides all of the information requested. Interested parties are cautioned that merely re-stating the requirements with a statement that the software performs this requirement DOES NOT reflect an understanding of the requirements or the software's capability to perform. Statements such as "the Offeror understands" and "the Offeror has a long history of outstanding support" along with responses that paraphrase the requirements will be considered as insufficient information to support a firm's capability. Phrases such as "standard procedures shall be employed" or "well known techniques will be utilized" will also not be considered sufficient. Questions Questions regarding this announcement shall be submitted in writing by e-mail to the MazkourNL@state.gov. Verbal questions will NOT be accepted. Questions will be answered by email; accordingly, questions shall NOT contain proprietary or classified information. The Government does not guarantee that questions received after (8/11/2015) will be answered.
Web Link: FBO.gov Permalink
(https://www.fbo.gov/notices/9cf62bd47f112608954ffbc608619725)
Place of Performance: Address: Department of State, Bureau of Consular Affairs, Consular Systems Technology (CST), 600 19th Street NW, Washington DC, District of Columbia, 20006, United States; Zip Code: 20006
Record: SN03829174-W 20150809/150807235208-9cf62bd47f112608954ffbc608619725 (fbodaily.com)
Source: FedBizOpps Link to This Notice
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