RFI_Questions_&_Answers_-_Final.pdf

Department of Education, Federal Student Aid (FSA) Participation Management (PM) RFI Number: ED-FSA-17-RFIPM

Government Response to Contractors RFI Questions

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RFI Section Provided by

Vendor Questions & Answers

1. General Question: Would the preferred environment be Windows or Linux based?

Government Response: For the user-facing front-end, a Windows-based web-browser accessible environment would be preferred as that is the dominant OS environment for our user community.

2. General Question: Does the government have a targeted budget for the solutions?

Government Response: The budget is dependent on the solution proposed.

3. General Question: How many users will the solution need to support?

Government Response: There are currently more than 67,000 Unique Active users tracked in system.

4. General Question: How many concurrent access sessions will the solution need to support?

Government Response: In addition to being capable of accommodating the peak monthly volumes noted in the attached Processing Volumes document, the PM system should be capable of supporting 80 concurrent users completing 33 enrollments per minute simultaneously under normal conditions. The system should be easily configurable though (upon FSA request) to support up to 500 concurrent users generating 1,500 concurrent user sessions and approximately 200 enrollments per minute.

5. Section C – Submission Process, Question: Does the total page count include the title page, cover letter, table of contents and blank pages?

Government Response: No

6. Section B –

Background, Question: What platform or technology is used for Identity Access Management (IAM) today?

Government Response: For PM, this is currently a CICS mainframe (COBOL) back-end with two websites. Additional technical information is available under the Production Operations section of the Current State document included with posting.

RFI Number: ED-FSA-17-RFIPM

Government Response to Contractors RFI Questions

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7. Section B – Background, Question: What's the purpose of the school file data and what does the user provisioning solution need to process?

Government Response: The purpose of the school file data is to 1)first, generally identify institutions which are currently valid and approved for Title IV participation, and 2)secondly, provide the user-provisioning system with the names and contact information for all “key approvers” /signatures needed (like the institutional president, etc.) of requests for access. When requests for user access come into the PM system, the signatures provided by key approvers during the data services sign-up process (managed by PM) are compared against the “key approvers” that were established during the institution’s Title IV participation agreement sign-up process.

8. Section C – Submission Process

Question: Can cover page, TOC, logos, header and footer content, figures, images, and captions be excluded from formatting constraints? In this context header & footer content refers to page numbering, disclaimers, marks of confidentiality, corporate identifiers, or other material intended to create continuity across all the pages. It does not intend to exempt content meant to circumvent or undermine the intent of the maximum page count. In this context, any content that acts to respond to the solicitation would not be covered by this exclusion.

Government Response: Yes, but the content must be easily readable with the unaided eye.

9. General Question: For vendors proposing cloud solutions, does FSA require FEDRAMP high or moderate?

Government Response: This system will most likely be hosted on FSA’s own cloud solution (off site data center), which is operated by a separate vendor and compliant with all relevant NIST 800-53 security controls. The PM application vendor would be coordinating closely with the data center on all issues related to release deployments, ever-greening, capacity planning, software security scans, disaster recovery, routine maintenance down-times, and other outages. The relevant NIST 800-53 security controls (which are the joint responsibility of both FSA’s hosting vendor and the PM application vendor) can be found in the Security section of the High Level Requirements document.

10. Attachment

A:

Section 8.2 Appendix B:

Question: Could FSA provide all files embedded in the pdf?

Government Response: Yes. See Attachment C.

RFI Number: ED-FSA-17-RFIPM

Government Response to Contractors RFI Questions

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Processing Volumes,

11. Attachment A:

Section 3 :

Customer Support

Section 6:Productio n Operations, Question: Could FSA provide the number of operational support users of PM?

Government Response: Accept our apologies; we need to clarify your question. If you’re looking for the number of internal FSA staff providing operational support, that number is between 5-10. At this time, we cannot provide data about the current number of contractual customer service representatives and mailroom staff supporting the system. However, rather than prescribe a specific staffing target, we encourage vendors to review the data provided in the Processing Volumes document to identify their own ballpark estimates for staffing.

12. Attachment A:

Section

2.2.1 Initial

Enrollment, Section 2.2.1.3, Question: Does FSA anticipate that a new solution will be paper free? Can all signatures and consents be captured electronically?

Government Response: No. It is FSA’s intent that the new solution have the capability to be completely paperless, capturing all signatures and consents electronically. However, we must retain the capability for a paper back-up system for now with the possibility of severing that requirement later on.