Attachment-1-Vendor-Questionnaire-RFI-450.docx

REQUEST FOR INFORMATION

FOR

CHILD NUTRITION SYSTEM MODERNIZATION

RFI #450

ATTACHMENT 1 – VENDOR QUESTIONS

Issue Date: July 14, 2026

DESIGNATED CONTACT FOR INQUIRIES AND SUBMISSIONS

The New York State Education Department (NYSED) designated contacts for this request for information (RFI) are Tanya Jaracz (Program) and Thomas McBride (Fiscal). All inquiries and responses related to this RFI should be submitted via online form.

Administrative issues pertaining to sending/receiving email through NYSED’s HighQ system may be reported at cauhighqsupport@nysed.gov.

NYSED RFI # 450 – Attachment 1 This RFI is posted on the New York State Education Department’s Funding Opportunities webpage.

Instructions NYSED seeks to gain a comprehensive understanding of available technology solutions. Vendors are requested to provide responses to the questions below, specific to the proposed solution. Responses should follow a format consistent with the questions to facilitate review and comparison. The response should be submitted in Microsoft Word or PDF file(s) that is editable and Optical Character Recognition (OCR) searchable. Please do not submit the RFI response as a scanned PDF.

Identifying and Background Information

a. Company Background: Provide general background information regarding your company, including its location, years in business, and organizational structure.

b. Contact: Provide a contact person, title, address, phone number, and email address. The contact person may be used to set up a potential demonstration.

c. Contract Information: Include any NYS Contract Numbers (e.g., PTXXXXX) and applicable contract numbers/states for contracts held outside NYS. Indicate what products and services are available under each contract.

Vendor Profile and Public-Sector Experience

a. Describe your experience delivering similar software solutions to state education agencies, school districts, boards of cooperative educational services (BOCES), institutions of higher education, or other public sector entities or clients and how the solution improved reliability and/or enhanced workflows.

Solution Overview

a. Describe the software solution(s) you propose that could address NYSED’s high-level business needs. Your description should include:

i. How your solution is classified (e.g., low-code, no-code, full-code/custom-developed, commercial off-the-shelf [COTS], or hybrid).

ii. The maturity and current adoption of the solution (e.g., number of active clients, deployment scale).

iii. If your solution is currently in use for another child nutrition program and/or government program similar in nature.

iv. Business processes supported by your solution (e.g., claims, payments, applications, approvals, monitoring, reporting).

Pillar 1: Configurable, Modern Architecture

a. Configurability

i. Describe how your solution supports modular development and configuration of functionality. Include details on:

· Availability of pre-built or reusable components (e.g., templates, workflows, application programming interfaces [APIs], user interface [UI] components).

· How components can be reused, extended, or integrated across implementation.

ii. Describe your processes for introducing updates, corrections, new features, and NYSED-specific customization requests to your solution.

b. Modern Architecture

i. Describe your solution’s architecture and how it supports a modern, modular, and future-ready platform. Include details on cloud capabilities (e.g., cloud-native or cloud-agnostic design; support for public, private, hybrid, multi-cloud, and Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program [FedRAMP] moderate environments), use of microservices or service-oriented architectures, API-first design (e.g., representational state transfer [RESTful] and/or event-driven interfaces), and approaches to scalability, optimizing performance, and planning capacity (e.g., auto-scaling, load balancing).

ii. Describe how your solution supports ongoing operations and reliability, including maintainability for system updates and upgrades, alignment with development, security, and operations (DevSecOps) and infrastructure-as-code (IaC) practices, high availability, fault tolerance, and disaster recovery capabilities. Include how your approach supports life-cycle management aligned to build, operate, adopt, and transform (BOAT) principles.

c. Interoperability

i. Describe how your solution can integrate with state and federal systems.

ii. Describe how your solution supports successful data migration from legacy systems. Include examples of how data accuracy, completeness, and continuity are maintained during migration.

iii. Describe how your solution integrates with common software as a service (SaaS) applications, data sources, and legacy systems.

Pillar 2: User-Centric Digital Transformation

a. User Experience and Navigation

i. Describe how your solution delivers a modern, user-centered experience, including configurable workflows, screens, and data fields for applications, claims, and audits; support for diverse user environments; streamlined and flexible workflows; and features that improve usability, such as search functionality (e.g., unified case views), guidance tools, and targeted error alerts.

ii. Describe how your solution supports accessibility, self-service capabilities for external users, and automation features, such as auto-populating data to improve efficiency and reduce manual effort.

b. Communications

i. Describe how your solution supports internal and external communication, including multichannel communications (email, short message service [SMS], notifications, secure messaging); how the solution enables configurable recipient lists; reduces reliance on external communication tools; maintains a single, historical record of communications; and improves efficiency through targeted or specific error alerts.

c. Data Management

i. Describe how your solution supports comprehensive master data management, including managing structured fields and metadata, maintaining a complete audit trail of data changes, enforcing data validation rules (including automated validation and referential integrity), eliminating duplicate data entry, ongoing data quality monitoring, and end-to-end data lineage tracking.

d. Document Management

i. Describe how your solution supports centralized document management, including maintaining a single source of truth within the Child Nutrition Management System (CNMS), enforcing role-based access controls; enabling automated document tagging, indexing, and retrieval; and ensuring secure document life cycle management with defined retention policies.

e. AI Capabilities

i. Describe your solution’s artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities, including support for AI-assisted or agentic development (e.g., generating, configuring, or testing code), using AI agents to automate workflows and decision-making, and approaches to responsible and secure AI (e.g., data isolation and model governance).

ii. Describe how AI capabilities can be enabled or disabled within your platform, including the level of control available (e.g., systemwide, feature-level, or user/role-based).

Pillar 3: Transparency, Oversight, and Security

a. Security, User, and Risk Management

i. Describe your solution’s overall security framework, including identity and access management capabilities (e.g., multi-factor authentication [MFA], single-sign-on [SSO], identity federation, role-based access, and external user management), underlying security architecture (e.g., zero-trust principles, encryption of data in transit and at rest, and alignment with standards, such as National Institute of Standards and Technology [NIST] and FedRAMP moderate), and support for auditability and continuous security monitoring (e.g., audit trails, vulnerability management, threat detection, and incident monitoring).

b. Reporting and Analytics

i. Describe your solution’s reporting and analytics capabilities, including user-configurable report design and data analysis, maintenance of audit-ready data and documentation, built-in monitoring and alerting, and the ability to minimize reliance on external tools.

c. Dashboards

i. Describe how your solution supports work management and user productivity, including role-based dashboards for internal and external users; work queues for task, case, and priority management; configurable alerts and reminders; status tracking; and the ability to reduce reliance on external tools, such as spreadsheets and calendars.

Cost and Licensing (High Level)

a. Describe available pricing and licensing models.

b. Describe service levels typically provided to public-sector clients.

c. Identify major cost drivers and assumptions.

d. Describe your approach to cost transparency and management.