Exhibit_A_-_Requirements_Matrix.xls
XLS spreadsheet 94 KB Posted
- Solicitation number
- 25-P-92JRD
- Issued by
- Volusia County, Florida
About this file
The document is a Requirements Matrix (Exhibit A) for Volusia County, Florida, detailing specifications for a publicly accessible website for publishing legal notices. The county seeks a contractor to provide a web-based system that allows the county and authorized governmental agencies to upload, manage, and publish notices online, in compliance with Florida Statute 50.0311. The proposed solution must support approximately 200 annual notices from the county and potentially accommodate up to 25 additional governmental agencies, including municipalities, the school board, special districts, the court system, and constitutional officers. The system must be scalable, support concurrent usage, allow flexible onboarding, and maintain consistent performance regardless of the number of participating agencies.
The contractor must provide a secure Notice Management Portal with robust features including role-based access control, multi-factor authentication, detailed audit logging, and the ability to create, review, approve, and publish notices. The website must offer mail notification subscriptions, allowing residents and property owners to request email or first-class mail notifications for specific notice categories. Pricing structures must be itemized, with separate pricing for the county and potential participating agencies, and must be less expensive than newspaper publication. The system must guarantee 99.9% uptime, meet WCAG 2.0 Level AA accessibility standards, and ensure data retention for at least 5 years. The Seventh Judicial Circuit Court of Florida will be able to publish notices without charge, and the system must support various technical requirements including responsive design and compatibility with multiple browsers and platforms.
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Functional Requirements
| Complete the following table with the appropriate response(s) as defined below: | |
| Response Code | Definition |
| Y - Yes | The functionality exists in the proposed product, and/or the Respondent agrees that the requirement will be adhered to upon any potential award. The functionality shall be implemented ‘out of the box’ without configuration, customizations or modifications to the existing applications or reports. |
| N - No | Requirement shall not be provided. |
| CO - Configuration | Requirement shall be met through changes to settings of tables, switches, and rules without modification to source code. Include any changes to the existing or “out of the box” workflow functionality. |
| CU - Customization | Requirement shall be met by changing existing software or through the use of software tools such as application report writer, query, etc. Note: In the Comments column next to this response, you shall indicate the following: Description of customization Estimated level of complexity (High, Medium, Low) |
If there is an additional cost it shall be included in the cost proposal exhibit.
| F- Future | Requirement shall be met by packaged software that is currently under development, in Beta test, or not yet released. Note: In the Comments column next to this response, indicate the date when requirement shall be available for implementation. If possible, also indicate any additional costs. | |||||
| 3 - Supplied by 3rd Party | The requirement shall be met by a third-party software package, and the third party software is included in this Proposal for implementation. Note: In the Comments column, indicate the name of the proposed 3rd party software package and indicate the interface/integration services being proposed. | |||||
| Comment Field | Provide information, description, clarification, or explanation to assist the County in making an informed decision. | |||||
| Publicly Accessible Website for Publication of Legal Notices | One Response Per Requirement | Comments | ||||
| Y/N | CO | CU | F | 3 | ||
| 5.0 SCOPE OF WORK | ||||||
| 5.1 General | ||||||
| A. The Contractor shall provide the County a publicly accessible website (“Website”) for publication of advertisements, legally required advertisements, and public notices (“Notices”) pursuant to Section 50.0311, Florida Statutes. | ||||||
| B. The Contractor shall ensure that the Website complies with all applicable Florida and federal laws, including without limitation, the relevant provisions of Chapter 50, Florida Statutes, and the Americans with Disabilities Act, 42 U.S.C. § 12101. | ||||||
| C. The Contractor shall allow other local governmental entities in Volusia County such as municipalities, the school board, special districts, the court system, and constitutional officers (“Governmental Agencies”) as defined in Section 50.0311, Florida Statutes, to use the Website to publish Notices. Only Governmental Agencies which have been authorized by the County through a memorandum of understanding will be allowed to publish Notices on the Website. | ||||||
| D. The Contractor shall provide all necessary software, licensing, maintenance, and training required to allow the County and authorized Governmental Agencies to publish Notices to the Website. | ||||||
| E. The Contractor shall confirm that their solution can accommodate the following potential capacity requirements: | ||||||
| 1. The County currently estimates that approximately 200 Notices are published annually by the County. | ||||||
| 2. The system shall be scalable to potentially accommodate Notices for up to 25 additional Governmental Agencies within Volusia County that may become authorized through a subsequent memorandum of understanding with the County. | ||||||
| 3. The Contractor acknowledges that the County cannot guarantee a minimum number of Notices, a minimum number of participating Governmental Agencies, or the volume of Notices from authorized Governmental Agencies. | ||||||
| 4. The system shall: | ||||||
| a. Support concurrent usage by multiple governmental entities | ||||||
| b. Allow for flexible onboarding of new agencies over time | ||||||
| c. Support varying volumes of Notices from different agencies | ||||||
| d. Maintain consistent performance levels regardless of the number of participating agencies | ||||||
| e. Scale both storage and processing capacity to accommodate growth in usage | ||||||
| F. The Contractor shall provide a secure web-based system ("Notice Management Portal") that allows the County and authorized Governmental Agencies to upload, manage, and publish Notices to the Website. | ||||||
| G. The Contractor shall describe the pricing structure for the services being proposed, including: | ||||||
| 1. Separate pricing structures for the County and the potential participating Governmental Agencies. | ||||||
| 2. Itemized costs for each type of service offered | ||||||
| 3. Minimum fees or usage requirements | ||||||
| 4. Administrative fees | ||||||
| 5. Costs for onboarding new Governmental Agencies | ||||||
| 6. Volume discounts or tiered pricing, if applicable | ||||||
| H. The contractor shall explain how individual agencies will be invoiced for services rendered. | ||||||
| I. The Contractor shall identify any minimum term requirements for Governmental Agency participation and clearly state whether the County or Governmental Agencies will have any financial obligations beyond the published fee structure. | ||||||
| J. Pursuant to Section 50.0311(3), Florida Statutes, the cost of publication on the Website for authorized Governmental Agencies shall be less expensive than the cost to publish in a newspaper of general circulation. | ||||||
| K. The Seventh Judicial Circuit Court of Florida shall be able to publish Notices on the Website without charge per Fla. Stat 50.0711(4). | ||||||
| L. The Contractor shall, without additional charge, allow publishing of court actions and accept legal advertisements for the purpose of service of process. Such publication is in accordance with a required schedule agreed upon between the Contractor and the clerk of the court. | ||||||
| M. The system shall be capable of generating an affidavit of proof of publication form consistent with Section 50.051, Florida Statutes. | ||||||
| 5.2 Public Website Functionality | ||||||
| A. The Contractor shall describe the capabilities for the County to customize the design, layout, and branding of the Website. | ||||||
| B. The Website interface shall allow Notices to be filtered by category and/or the publishing government entity. | ||||||
| C. Notices shall be searchable by any available criteria, including but not limited to, agency, date of publication, key words, title, and category (e.g., general notice, procurement, bid, land use, solicitation, ordinance, etc.) | ||||||
| D. Notices shall indicate the date the Notice was first published on the website. | ||||||
| E. The Website and Notice Management Portal shall be responsive in design and able to function on desktops, tablets, and mobile web browsers and platforms, including compatibility with Edge, Chrome, Safari, Firefox, and all current browsers on Microsoft (Windows), Google (Chrome, Android), and Apple operating systems, and future web browsers and platforms that may become available and must not require the use of browser extensions, add-ons, or plug-ins. | ||||||
| F. The Contractor’s software shall not embed or show any advertisements or other content not explicitly approved by the County. | ||||||
| 5.3 Notice Management Portal | ||||||
| A. The Contractor shall provide a secure web-based system ("Notice Management Portal") that allows the County and authorized Governmental Agencies to upload, manage, and publish Notices to the Website. | ||||||
| The system shall include features such as: | ||||||
| 1. A secure login portal for authorized County and Governmental Agency personnel to access the system and manage Notices. | ||||||
| 2. An intuitive interface for adding attachments in various formats, such as text, PDF, or images to Notices. | ||||||
| 3. Tools for scheduling the publication and removal of Notices based on user-defined criteria or statutory requirements. | ||||||
| 4. Options for categorizing and tagging Notices to facilitate search and retrieval by users. | ||||||
| 5. A review and approval workflow to ensure the accuracy and appropriateness of Notices before publication. | ||||||
| B. The Notice Management System shall provide robust user account administration and access control capabilities, | ||||||
| including: | ||||||
| 1. Role-based access control (RBAC): The system shall support the creation of different user roles with varying levels of permissions, such as administrators, publishers, reviewers, and read-only users. Roles shall be customizable to align with the County's and Governmental Agencies' organizational structures and workflows. | ||||||
| 2. User account management: Administrators shall be able to create, modify, and deactivate user accounts, reset passwords, and assign users to specific roles. The system shall enforce strong password policies and support password expiration and rotation. Users shall be able to reset their own forgotten passwords without requiring manual intervention, while ensuring appropriate authentication measures are in place to prevent unauthorized access. | ||||||
| 3. Multi-factor authentication (MFA): The system shall support MFA to enhance security and prevent unauthorized access. MFA shall be required for all user accounts with privileges to publish or manage Notices. | ||||||
| 4. Agency-based access: The system shall allow for segmentation of user accounts and Notices by Governmental Agency, ensuring that users can only access and manage Notices pertinent to their specific agency. | ||||||
| 5. Audit logging: The system shall maintain detailed audit logs of all user actions, including login attempts, Notice uploads, approvals, deletions of draft Notices, and modifications. Audit logs shall be tamper-proof and accessible to administrators for review and reporting purposes. | ||||||
| 6. Integration with external identity providers: Where feasible, the system shall support integration with the County's and Governmental Agencies' existing identity management systems (e.g., Active Directory, SAML) to facilitate single sign-on and centralized user management. | ||||||
| C. The Notice Management System shall provide on-demand access to an unlimited number of users, and concurrent users, support an unlimited number of submitted Notices, and offer 24/7 access. | ||||||
| D. The system shall provide a clear, auditable workflow for submitting, reviewing, approving, and publishing Notices, with explicit user actions required to transition a Notice from a draft or pending state to an officially published state. | ||||||
| E. The Contractor shall describe any features that will allow users to create and save Notices in draft mode for publishing later. | ||||||
| This description should include the following details. | ||||||
| 1. The workflow for how draft Notices are edited and modified until they become effective date including how a Notice is published (e.g., automatically after the effective date). | ||||||
| 2. The system shall maintain an audit trail of all modifications made while a Notice is in draft mode. | ||||||
| F. Once a Notice has been published, the system shall freeze the content, categorization, and all other attributes of the Notice, preventing any further modifications. | ||||||
| G. The system shall maintain a permanent, unalterable record of the Notice in its published form, including a timestamp of when publication occurred. | ||||||
| H. If a published Notice needs to be updated or corrected, the system shall require the creation of a new, separate Notice that references the original Notice's unique identifier. The original Notice shall remain in its frozen, as-published state. | ||||||
| I. The system shall provide clear visual indicators and labels to differentiate between draft, pending, and published Notices within the Notice Management System. Superseded Notices are identified in both the public Website and the Notice Management System. | ||||||
| J. The Contractor shall describe, in detail, how the Notice Management System will enable Governmental Agencies to independently administer their own Notices: | ||||||
| 1. How user roles and permissions will be structured to ensure that Governmental Agency users can only access and manage their own agency's Notices, while still enabling centralized oversight and administration by the County. | ||||||
| 2. The workflow for submitting, reviewing, approving, and publishing Notices within a Governmental Agency, and how this workflow can be customized to align with each agency's internal processes and approvals. | ||||||
| 3. How Governmental Agencies will be able to track the status, metrics, and history of their published Notices, including generating reports and exports specific to their agency. | ||||||
| K. The Contractor shall describe, in detail, the technical and procedural controls in place to ensure the integrity and immutability of published Notices, including measures to prevent unauthorized modifications, deletions, or backdating of Notices. | ||||||
| L. Each Notice submitted for publication through the Notice Management System shall be assigned a unique, system-generated identifier ("Notice ID") that will remain associated with the Notice throughout its lifecycle. The Notice ID shall be included in the public Website and shall remain permanent and unchangeable. | ||||||
| M. The Notice Management System must provide the ability to link procurement Notices to external websites. | ||||||
| N. The Notice Management System must provide the ability to attach PDF (or other document format) files and images as part of the Notice. The Website shall support common file formats and have a user-friendly interface for attaching files. | ||||||
| O. The Notice Management System shall provide the ability to create templates to facilitate the creation and distribution of specific Notices. Templates shall be customizable and easily managed by authorized users for the County and Governmental Agencies. | ||||||
| P. The Contractor shall describe any capabilities of the system to automatically publish new Notices on the statewide website established and maintained as an initiative of the Florida Press Association as a repository for such Notices (www.floridapublicnotices.com). | ||||||
| 5.4 Mail Notification Subscriptions | ||||||
| A. The Website shall provide the ability for residents and property owners to request first-class mail or e-mail notification of legally required advertisements and Notices published by a Governmental Agency to the Website. | ||||||
| B. When requesting e-mail or first-class mail notifications, the Website shall allow the requestor to specify their preferences for receiving notifications from specific categories (e.g., general notice, procurement, bid, land use, solicitation, ordinance, etc.) or a specific Governmental Agency. | ||||||
| C. The Contractor shall describe measures included in the proposal to validate email addresses and mailing addresses provided by residents and property owners to safeguard the integrity of the notification system and prevent fraudulent or illegitimate requests from overwhelming the system. This may include, but is not limited to, email confirmation, CAPTCHA, postage paid confirmation return letters, or other verification methods to ensure the authenticity of the notification requests. | ||||||
| 1. The verification process for email and first-class notifications will ensure that the requestor is a resident or property owner within the jurisdiction of the agency publishing the Notice. | ||||||
| D. The Contractor shall maintain a registry of verified names, addresses, and e-mail addresses of residents and property owners who have requested they receive legally required advertisements and public Notices by first-class mail or e-mail. | ||||||
| E. All requests for e-mail and first-class mail notifications shall be subject to an automatic expiration based upon a parameter maintained by the County. | ||||||
| F. The Website shall allow residents and property owners to renew a request for first-class mail and e-mail notifications prior to its expiration. All renewal requests shall be subject to the same verification process as the initial request. | ||||||
| G. The proposed system shall send timely reminders to users, prompting them to renew and verify their notification requests. Failure to complete the annual renewal and verification process shall result in the automated removal of the user's notification preferences from the system. | ||||||
| H. The proposed system shall provide notice to the County and each Governmental Agency of all requests for e-mail and first-class mail notifications. | ||||||
| I. The system shall provide the ability for the County and each Governmental Agency to download a registry of the names, addresses, and e-mail addresses of persons who have submitted requests for e-mail and first-class mail notifications. | ||||||
| J. For residents and property owners that have registered and been verified for e-mail and first-class mail notifications, the Contractor will autogenerate and send notifications after a Notice is published matching the criteria for the notification request. | ||||||
| K. The Contractor shall describe any methods for consolidating multiple Notices into unified mailings/emails for subscribers, organizing Notices by agency and type to optimize distribution efficiency and reduce duplicate communications. | ||||||
| 1. The Contractor shall describe any methods to distribute cost savings for the consolidation of Notices to publishing agencies. | ||||||
| L. The system shall allow an email address specific to the government entity that created and published the Notice to be copied (i.e., cc’d) on all emails it sends to comply with email retention laws. | ||||||
| M. The system shall allow an email address to be specified as the “reply-to” address in the emails it sends that is based upon the government entity that created and published the Notice. | ||||||
| 5.5 System Architecture | ||||||
| A. The Contractor shall provide a service level agreement (SLA) guaranteeing a minimum of 99.9% uptime for the Website and the Notice Management System. | ||||||
| B. The Website and Notice Management Portal shall be responsive in design and able to function on desktops, tablets, and mobile web browsers and platforms, including compatibility with Edge, Chrome, Safari, Firefox, and all current browsers on Microsoft (Windows), Google (Chrome, Android), and Apple operating systems, and future web browsers and platforms that may become available. | ||||||
| C. The Contractor websites and reports shall meet WCAG 2.0 Level AA accessibility standards. | ||||||
| D. The Contractor shall place a County supplied Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) notice on all publicly exposed websites. | ||||||
| E. The Contractor shall provide a link to the Website for the County and Governmental Agencies to post on their respective websites. | ||||||
| F. The Contractor’s software shall not require any browser plug-ins, extensions, or add-ons. | ||||||
| G. The Contractor’s software shall not require the use of a Java client or JRE. | ||||||
| H. The Contractor shall provide an overview of the infrastructure security and redundancy methodologies employed to ensure the security and availability of the proposed solution and the agency data maintained therein. | ||||||
| I. The proposal shall describe the Contractor’s security monitoring procedures, including the types of security events being monitored and the procedures for monitoring personnel activity. | ||||||
| J. The Contractor shall provide an incident response plan that outlines procedures for detecting, reporting, and responding to security incidents. This should include procedures to immediately notify the County of incidents at the time of detection. | ||||||
| K. The Contractor shall provide a disaster preparation and recovery plan, including preparation time objectives, backup and restore procedures, recovery time objectives, recovery point objectives, and testing of data recovery procedures. | ||||||
| L. The Contractor shall identify the physical location of the hosting sites, redundancy, and describe the physical security measures in place at the data center facilities, including access controls, surveillance, fire suppression, backup power, and other environmental controls. | ||||||
| M. The Contractor shall provide information about the scalability and availability of the hosting sites, including the ability to handle increased demand, redundancy, and failover measures in place, and network connectivity. | ||||||
| N. The Contractor shall describe the access control mechanisms in place, including authentication and authorization systems, multi-factor authentication, role-based access controls, and any other mechanisms used to control access to the Notification Management System that align with the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) cybersecurity framework and the Center for Internet Security Controls (CIS) framework. | ||||||
| O. The Contractor shall provide information about the frequency of vulnerability assessments, penetration tests, and any other security testing procedures performed. An executive summary of findings from these assessments and tests will be provided to the County upon request. | ||||||
| P. The Contractor shall identify all third-party service providers used to deliver the proposed solution, including a description of the services being provided. The proposal should include the security and compliance measures in place at each third-party provider. | ||||||
| 5.6 Data Management | ||||||
| A. All data maintained in or generated for Notices including associated metadata, attachments, and activity logs shall be the property of the specific government entity that created and published the Notice. | ||||||
| B. The proposal shall include information about the Contractor’s policies and procedures for data retention and deletion, including any legal or regulatory requirements that apply. | ||||||
| C. The County and Governmental Agencies shall have the ability to export, report on, and locally archive the data related to their own Notices at any time, in standard, non-proprietary formats. | ||||||
| D. The Contractor shall not manually delete, auto-delete, or delete on a schedule the County’s data, including logs, without written permission of the County. | ||||||
| E. All data, transactions, and other records related to the solution implemented shall be retained, in their entirety, for a minimum of 5 years from the date that the Notice was published, subject to any exceptions, limitations, or provisions set forth in relevant legislation, regulations, or other governing legal requirements that affects retention. | ||||||
| F. In the event of the termination of the contract between the County and the Contractor, the Contractor shall be responsible for providing all Notice data back to the County and each individual Governmental Agency in a complete, usable, and agreed-upon format, and for verifying the successful transfer of that data before deleting any data from their own systems. | ||||||
| G. The solution shall provide the County with access to an Application Programming Interface (API) for the purpose of archiving records in a County system. The API should be well-documented, secure, and support common authentication methods. It must allow for easy integration with other systems and platforms by enabling efficient data retrieval of core data and reporting tables using automated web requests. | ||||||
| H. The solution shall support direct access to the cloud-based database through secure connection protocols (e.g., SSL/TLS). The vendor must provide clear instructions on setting up and configuring the connection. This access should allow authorized users to query and view data in near real time access. The Contractor may recommend alternative solutions to direct access to production data such as accessing a data warehouse database that is updated daily. The County reserves the right for final approval of any proposed solutions. | ||||||
| I. All the abovementioned access methods should ensure data privacy and security, comply with relevant data protection regulations, and include robust access control mechanisms. The Contractor shall provide comprehensive documentation for all access methods, including setup, configuration, authentication, and sample code or queries. | ||||||
| J. The Contractor is required to provide sufficient storage to meet the requirements defined herein. | ||||||
| 5.7 Support | ||||||
| A. The Contractor shall describe the mechanisms for the County and Governmental Agencies to request support, report issues, and provide feedback for the systems, and the Contractor's committed response times and escalation procedures for addressing agency inquiries. | ||||||
| B. The Contractor shall describe the change management processes in place, including any procedures for making changes to the system, and any requirements for notifying the County and authorized Governmental Agencies of changes. | ||||||
| C. The Contractor shall provide a quarterly training session open to the County and all participating Governmental Agencies. As part of this training, Contractor shall provide updates regarding Contractor’s product road map, new features, and functionalities. The training may be held at a location within Volusia County or online, as designated by the Contractor subject to County approval. |
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