RFI 19AQMMRFI261005 Global Talent Acquisition System.pdf

REQUEST FOR INFORMATION

Bureau of Global Acquisitions

Global Talent Acquisition System RFI 19AQMM-RFI-26-1005

Notice type: Sources Sought Agency: Department of State, Bureau of Acquisitions Location: Acquisition Management Title: Global Talent Acquisition System

Description:

The Department of State is seeking information regarding global talent acquisition and applicant tracking solutions capable of supporting recruitment activities at more than 170 US embassies and consulates worldwide. The desired solution should be native to, certified for, or capable of integrating with PeopleSoft HCM and should improve the applicant experience, reduce manual entry, accommodate country specific hiring processes, and provide comprehensive workflow management and reporting throughout the recruitment lifecycle.

Interested sources should describe their capabilities related to recruitment approvals, vacancy announcements, candidate screening, interviews and selections, offer management, onboarding, system integration, reporting and analytics, data migration, security, privacy, and artificial intelligence. Proposed solutions must also address applicable requirements, including FedRAMP authorization, FIPS 199 Moderate compliance, US based data residency, Section 508 accessibility, Department single sign on, and secure public access for applicants.

Section A: Introduction THIS IS A REQUEST FOR INFORMATION (RFI) ONLY. This RFI is issued solely for information and acquisition-planning purposes. It does not constitute a Request for Proposal (RFP), nor does it represent a commitment by the Government to issue a solicitation or award a contract. The Government is not currently seeking proposals and will not accept unsolicited proposals in response to this notice.

Respondents are advised that the Government will not reimburse any costs incurred in preparing or submitting a response. Participation in this RFI is voluntary, and failure to respond will not preclude participation in any future solicitation, if one is issued. Any future solicitation related to this requirement will be posted on SAM.gov. Interested parties are responsible for monitoring SAM.gov for additional information. This RFI supports market research conducted pursuant to Federal Acquisition Regulation Part 10 and FAR 15.201.

Section B: Background

Overseas recruitment for worldwide posts is currently supported by a commercial talent acquisition platform that operates independent of the Department of State internal integrated personnel management systems. That separation is the principal driver for this research. It produces duplicated data entry, delays in the hiring process, and no reliable measurement of hiring cycle time.

Existing federal staffing solutions are not a suitable fit. Locally employed staff are generally foreign nationals and are not hired into the federal service, so the hiring authorities, formats, and reporting obligations built into those solutions do not apply. Announcements are not posted to USAJOBS. Announcements are posted to country specific US Embassy websites.

Objectives

• Improve the applicant experience for a population that is largely composed of foreign nationals.

• Obtain configurable announcements that can be used by an international audience with appropriate security controls.

• Reduce manual processing, in particular the re-entry of selected candidate data into the human resources system of record.

• Establish reporting tools for hiring cycle time across the full process, including stages currently outside any system.

• Secure workflow management with ability to configure user permissions for services providers roles.

• Bring recruitment into the Department's integrated personnel systems.

• Reduce total cost of ownership.

Scope and Scale

Item Figure or Description Locations served More than 170 diplomatic posts overseas

Announcement volume Up to 8000 annually

Application volume per opening Average application volume is 4570

Applicant population Predominantly foreign nationals applying in their country of residence. Also United States citizen family members of Department employees, who hold a hiring preference.

Eligible third country nationals from other countries may apply to other countries announcements.

Internal users Human resources staff, hiring officials, and approving officials at post, with regional and headquarters oversight roles

Network placement Applicant facing components on the public internet. Internal user components on the Department's internal network

Compensation structures Includes local compensation and federal plan with multiple currencies

Constraints

The following are stated at the outset because they may determine whether a respondent is able to participate. Respondents should address these directly and state plainly where they cannot meet one.

1. Candidate personal information must be stored, processed, and retained within infrastructure subject to federal law and Department policy on data governance, access control, and retention.

2. Data must reside on infrastructure owned and located in the United States.

3. The solution must hold FedRAMP authorization, or the vendor must be prepared to obtain it. Impact level must be at least FIPS 199 Moderate.

4. The solution must conform to Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act.

5. Internal users authenticate through Department single sign on. Applicants must be able to view, apply for, and track a vacancy without holding any Department account or credential.

6. The solution must operate across many jurisdictions with differing local labor law, and support processes that vary by country.

Out of Scope

Respondents shall not include or price the following capability because it is managed through other Department processes and is not part of this requirement:

• Position description authorizing, storage, version control, and classification routing.

Section C: Responses

Respondents shall answer the questions below in the order presented and identify each response by its corresponding reference number. General marketing materials should not be submitted in place of direct responses.

When a capability is not supported, the respondent shall state that limitation clearly instead of describing an adjacent or alternative feature. If a capability is provided through a partner, subcontractor, third-party product, or other external service, the respondent shall identify the applicable party or product.

Responses shall be limited to 10 pages and submitted in Microsoft Word or searchable PDF format. Respondents shall clearly mark proprietary information and identify all assumptions, risks, dependencies, and questions they believe are unclear or improperly framed.

Company Profile Questions

Company Name:

Company Point-of-Contact:

Email:

Phone:

UEI Number:

CAGE Code:

Socioeconomic Status Current Schedules/GWACs Active Registration in the System for Award Management (Yes/No)

On the Excluded Party List (Yes/No)

Technical Capabilities Questions

A. Solution Overview and Deployment

A1. Describe your solution and the deployment models supported for a federal customer. Identify whether your response addresses a solution native to or certified for PeopleSoft HCM, a commercial platform that integrates with PeopleSoft HCM, or both.

A2. If your solution is native to PeopleSoft HCM, identify the supported versions and describe your approach to customer upgrades.

A3. Describe which capabilities are available through configuration and which require custom development. Provide examples from comparable deployments.

A4. Describe how your solution scales across a large number of independently operating locations under a single instance.

A5. Identify any component of your solution that cannot be deployed within a customer-controlled environment.

A6. Describe your post-deployment update process, including update frequency, anticipated system outages, and support for defects, enhancements, and ongoing maintenance.

B. Authorization to Recruit and Approval Workflow

B1. Describe how your solution creates, routes, approves, and tracks a recruitment request before a vacancy is advertised.

B2. Describe how approval chains and decision gates are configured. Identify the dimensions by which an approval chain may vary, such as location, grade, organization, or position type, and explain what is required to modify an established approval chain.

B3. Describe how the solution responds when an approval request is rejected or returned and how that action is recorded.

B4. Describe how elapsed time within an approval chain is captured and reported.

B5. Identify the information a customer must define before the approval workflow can be configured.

B6. Describe how the solution’s reporting and tracking functions can be configured to filter information by group work centers and specified teams.

C. Position and Classification Data

C1. Describe how your solution receives authoritative position data from an external system of record, including position number, occupational code, grade, salary, and organization.

C2. Describe how the solution prevents users from overriding values derived from an approved classification decision.

C3. Describe how the solution handles a position that does not yet exist in the system of record when recruitment begins.

C4. State whether your solution can receive position data from more than one system of record within a single instance and explain how that capability is configured.

D. Vacancy Announcement Authoring and Distribution

D1. Describe how vacancy announcements are authored, including the configuration of templates and the elements customers may change without vendor involvement.

D2. Describe how your solution supports announcements in multiple languages, including announcements that display two languages within a single posting.

D3. Describe how vacancy announcements are distributed. Identify which destinations are automated, which require manual action, and how the solution supports customer-owned websites.

D4. Describe how announcements are scheduled, opened, and closed according to the applicable local time zone.

D5. Describe how salary information is presented when local compensation structures apply instead of U.S. federal pay plans, including the use of local currency.

E. Candidate Portal and Application

E1. Describe your public-facing candidate portal, including branding capabilities, accessibility compliance, and how a single system instance presents vacancies for multiple locations.

E2. Describe how candidates apply without possessing an account or customer-issued credential and whether an account may be created after an application is submitted.

E3. Describe the account-recovery process. State whether the process may operate without security questions and explain how it supports users across multiple countries and languages.

E4. Describe how application forms are configured, translated, and maintained consistently across locations.

E5. Describe how the solution performs on low-bandwidth connections and mobile devices.

E6. Describe how applications received outside the system, including applications collected at job fairs or through third-party job boards, are added to a requisition individually or in bulk.

E7. Describe how candidates submit supporting documentation required by a vacancy announcement.

E8. Describe the self-service support information available to candidate-portal users and the associated change-management process.

F. Screening Ranking and Referral

F1. Describe how your solution screens applicants against minimum qualifications, eligibility requirements, and selection criteria. Explain how screening thresholds are established and modified by the customer.

F2. Describe the tools and functions available to a recruiter processing a high volume of applications. Reference a comparable example involving at least 200 applications for a single opening.

F3. Describe whether and how candidate identities may be withheld from hiring officials during the review process.

F4. Describe how human resources offices communicate with applicants, including notification of non-selected candidates, and explain how those communications are controlled.

F5. Describe how a shortlist is created and shared with a hiring official for review and comment.

Identify the information maintained for audit purposes.

G. Interview and Selection

G1. Describe how the solution schedules interviews involving applicants and panels with multiple assessors.

G2. Describe how interview dates and outcomes are captured and whether the entry of this information may be made mandatory.

G3. Describe how assessment scores and notes are stored and identify which users may access them.

G4. Describe how a selection decision is recorded and identify the resulting audit record.

H. Offer Management

H1. Describe how your solution creates, approves, delivers, and records a candidate’s acceptance of an offer.

H2. Describe how proposed compensation is validated against approved salary structures and explain what happens when a proposed offer falls outside the authorized structure.

H3. Describe support for a two-stage offer process in which a conditional offer precedes a clearance or certification requirement and a final offer follows completion of that requirement.

H4. Describe how the solution records and reports a pause in the hiring process, such as a period during which an external clearance is pending.

I. Onboarding Handoff and Integration

I1. Describe how an accepted candidate becomes an employee record in an external human resources system without the manual reentry of demographic, job, compensation, or position information.

I2. Describe the supported interface methods, including application programming interfaces, event-driven messaging, and batch-file exchanges. Identify the method recommended for this requirement.

I3. State whether a one-way transfer from your solution to an external system of record is supported as a standalone capability.

I4. Describe how onboarding tasks and document collection are initiated and how required documents may vary by country.

I5. Describe your approach to migrating data from an incumbent recruitment system and identify the information and resources the customer must provide.

J. Security Privacy and Data Custody

J1. Describe how your solution can be deployed so that all candidate personal information— including names, addresses, national identification numbers, self-identification data, and résumé content—is stored, processed, and retained within U.S. data centers under Department of State logical control and oversight. Identify every component, subprocess, subcontractor, sub processor, or telemetry flow that would operate outside this boundary.

J2. State your current FedRAMP authorization status and impact level. If the solution is not currently authorized, provide your plan and estimated timeline for obtaining authorization.

J3. Describe how customer data is logically or physically separated from the data of other customers.

J4. Provide an inventory of all sub processors and describe how customers approve or reject the use of a sub processor.

J5. Describe how your solution supports two distinct user populations: internal users authenticating through Department single sign-on within a controlled network and public applicants using the internet without Department issued credentials. Include information regarding multifactor authentication.

J6. Describe your audit-logging capabilities and the records retained to reconstruct a complete recruitment case file.

K. Reporting and Analytics

K1. Describe the reporting capabilities available to operational users, including workload views and the status of open requisitions.

K2. Describe the recruitment metrics provided as standard features, including time to fill and time to hire. Define precisely where each measurement begins and ends.

K3. Describe how customers measure elapsed time during recruitment stages the solution does not manage, such as an external clearance process.

K4. Describe how recruitment data is made available to an external analytics platform without manual extraction.

K5. Describe the ad hoc reporting capabilities and export formats available to customer analysts.

L. Operations Across Multiple Locations

L1. Describe how permissions are established at the individual country or location level and how temporary cross-location access is granted.

L2. Describe how multiple organizations operating at the same location can manage their respective vacancies and applicants without exposing candidate information to one another.

L3. Identify the elements that may vary by location through configuration rather than custom code.

L4. Describe how the solution accommodates seasonal increases in application volume.

M. Artificial Intelligence Features

M1. Describe any features that use machine learning or generative artificial intelligence, including résumé parsing, candidate matching, skills extraction, and drafting assistance.

M2. State whether each machine-learning or artificial-intelligence feature can be disabled by the customer and identify any functionality lost when the feature is disabled.

M3. Describe your approach to human oversight, explainability, and bias testing.

M4. Identify where model inference occurs and state whether customer data leaves the authorized deployment boundary for any artificial-intelligence function.

M5. Describe how the solution complies with applicable federal requirements governing the use of artificial intelligence.

N. Business Capabilities and Vendor Experience Questions

N1. Identify federal customers currently using the proposed solution and provide approximate user counts and the number of years the solution has been in service.

N2. Identify any customer operating the solution across a large number of international locations under a single instance.

N3. Describe an implementation of comparable scope and scale, including the period from contract award to initial production use.

N4. Provide two customer references the Department may contact.

N5. Identify all relevant certifications and authorizations held by your company and the proposed solution.

O. Acquisition Structure & Rough Order of Magnitude Pricing

Pricing submitted in response to this RFI is nonbinding, for market research purposes only, and will not be evaluated. The information is requested solely to support budgetary and acquisition planning. Respondents shall identify all assumptions underlying their pricing.

Provide rough-order-of-magnitude pricing for the following:

O1. Licensing based on the scope and scale described in Section B, including the applicable unit of licensing.

O2. Implementation and configuration.

O3. Migration of data from the incumbent recruitment system.

O4. Integration with an external human resources system of record.

O5. Training and change-management support.

O6. Annual support and maintenance.

O7. Optional modules relevant to the capabilities described above, priced separately.

P. Information Required to Develop a Competitive Solicitation Response

P1. Identify any additional information the Department should provide to enable vendors to prepare a competitive technical and price proposal/quote for this requirement.

P2. Identify any assumptions, risks, dependencies, or requirements that may affect implementation, schedule, performance, or pricing.

P3. Identify any question or requirement that is unclear, conflicting, or improperly framed and provide recommended revisions.

Response Submission

Responses shall be submitted electronically to:

Contracting Officer: Maria Anguiano Email: anguianom@state.gov Contracting Officer: Ashley Johnson Email: JohnsonAL1@state.gov

Response Deadline: October 12, 2026 Subject line: Response to Global Talent Acquisition System RFI [COMPANY NAME]

Respondents shall answer each question by its reference number and clearly mark any proprietary information. General marketing materials may not be included as supplemental information but shall not replace direct responses to the questions presented in this Request for Information (RFI).