IRFP Amendment 1 - Q&A.pdf

SoS Version Dated 01/25/2019

RFP: S-16500-00011292 – LONG-TERM SOCIAL MEDIA ARCHIVING SOLUTION –

AMENDMENT 1 – Q&A AND CLARIFICATION

1. Can you provide clarification on the scope of work to be done, what Proposers/Contractors will have access to?

a. At a high level, the scope of work to be done would be to archive, preserve, and provide access to current and archived social media content from the Secretary of State’s office plus four archived social media accounts from previous Gov. Kate Brown. Those four Governor Brown accounts aren’t active, but we will need to preserve the content and provide access if a PRR arises. The contractors/proposers would only have access to publicly posted social media content. They would have no access to other SOS content

(ie. Email, network fileshares, etc).

2. Our solution pricing is based on the number of users whose content is to be archived. The State of Oregon has some 17K+ employees. Are we (contractor) to capture all the employees content? We can then price it accordingly. (assuming no, but I want to confirm that we only need to capture content from about 10 accounts, plus a handful for archiving non-active accounts)

a. We only capture the social media accounts for the Secretary of State’s office plus four archived accounts from previous Governor Kate Brown. Those accounts are listed in the next answer below.

3. Even though our solution captures over 120+ content sources, we’d like to know what social media content you’d like to capture. (I can specify which platforms are a must vs extra on the supporting documentation)

a. Currently, we are capturing the following social media accounts: (this would be the minimum number of accounts needed with the idea of expanding this list in the future) We have 4 inactive but still extant accounts from the previous governor. We would also be looking to connect to new active accounts from the current governor’s office and overtime that will expand the course because as thigs shift, we’ll continue to have a need to store the old accounts.

• Governor Kate Brown Instagram

• Governor Kate Brown Twitter/X

• Governor Kate Brown Facebook

• Governor Kate Brown YouTube

• Oregon Secretary of State, Elections Division Twitter/X

• Oregon Secretary of State, Elections Division Facebook

• Oregon Secretary of State Facebook

• Oregon Secretary of State Twitter/X

• Oregon Secretary of State, Archives Division Facebook

• Oregon Secretary of State, Archives Division Twitter/X

4. The RFP states that the proposer/contractor will need to archive private messages. Would we have the credentials of the person of interest?

a. This solicitation presumes that there would be a connection into the account itself, such as an API that connects directly into the social media platform to capture any content being produced, deleted, removed, etc.

5. Would we (contractor) have access almost like a proxy to see anything that the user does internally within their account? We wouldn’t just be accessing these platforms via public

API?

a. Correct, the intent is that is should be plugged into the account on the back end.

6. Does this solicitation have an incumbent? Can you share any data or public contract information?

a. Yes, we are currently using PageFreezer on a limited term contract. At this juncture, we’re basically starting from scratch.

7. Do you have any preferences on data storage? (i.e. using a government cloud provided by AWS or Azure)

a. We don’t have a preference of one over another, necessarily. With any product, it goes through a vetting process with our cybersecurity group.

8. Would the source code need to be made available to the cybersecurity group?

a. We don’t believe so. Agency security will likely ask for full specs, how it works, where data lives, what happens to that data at rest and then transmission, who has access to the data, what sort of security facility, but it’s largely a matter of disclosure, rather than direct access.

9. This is a sensitive project because we’re dealing with credentials to the accounts of major public figures, so how information is stored is very critical. Cryptography is something that we (contractor) see as being instrumental in this project. What type of jobs will need to be processed server side? Will we need to be, for example, generating PDF reports to be sent to certain individuals? Or do we not really need access to that data? Could we, for instance, hand over a cryptography key to maybe some key personnel at the Oregon capital or so on that manages access to those credentials? If we don’t need access to the accounts ourselves, why not shift that responsibility to someone else?

a. We (Agency) are currently the ones that input that information into a platform. The software platform has capabilities, but it requires us to be the ones that input those credentials, and the management of those credentials is between the owner of the account and us as the per people working with this. You as the contractor would not need to be the ones inputting that information.

10. There are two ways to approach this project – the SaaS approach or the local software approach, meaning software that could run on infrastructure maintained by the state rather than our infrastructure or on computers. If you need to export data from an account and want an executable that runs local on a computer maintained by the state – you could enter those credentials with no transaction through a third party. Direct to the social media platform, then you (Agency) could get that data out of the account, export it, and it stays in-house and we (contractor) would have no access to that information.

a. We (Agency) find SaaS models are the most convenient for us to operate with just because of local infrastructure. Allocation has been a challenge for us at times, but we’re interested in hearing about potential alternatives. Internal IT would be able to decide if other options are too much for them to handle. If we go the local infrastructure route, we may have to bring in more teams, which could take longer.

11. Would we (contractor) be taking on the already existing data? If so, would we need to be in contact with the incumbent?

a. Part of our current challenge is the complication of export. We’re likely not asking the new contractor to take on old content or find ghost content, but we would expect you to capture whatever currently exists online and going forward.

12. Is the past data valuable to you? Is there any point in migrating it?

a. Yes, it is valuable – but we will likely be taking an ad-hoc approach to past data and storing it in our own content management system. The publicly available content is the most crucial long-term.

13. Do you have access to the old data in “cold storage”? Do you have issues viewing or exporting it?

a. Yes, we have access to the old data. Our challenge has been exporting in mass, which hasn’t been convenient or really achievable, but we can pull pieces out. A bulk data export feature is absolutely one of our desires.

14. If you can view smaller segmented pieces of data from the old system, would you be interested in software that could iterate through many API calls to your current incumbent’s platform and export that data into a CSV or something?

a. We are looking into all possible options, but we are somewhat resource limited on that front currently with our IT support.