RFI 2025007 - EDMS.pdf

Request for Information

ELECTRONIC DOCUMENT MANAGEMENT SYSTEM (EDMS)

RFI No.: RFI #2025007

RFI No. RFI #2025007 1 of 12 (Revised 04.25.22)

REQUEST FOR INFORMATION

ELECTRONIC DOCUMENT MANAGEMENT SYSTEM (EDMS)

DEP Posting Number: RFI #2025007

The Florida Department of Environmental Protection (“Department or DEP”) is issuing this Request for Information (RFI), as defined in section 287.012(22), Florida Statutes (F.S.), to Interested Entities concerning certain commodities and services relating to Electronic Document Management System (EDMS) solutions. Please note that under section 287.012(22), F.S., responses to this request are not offers and will not be accepted by the Department to form a binding contract.

Interested Entities can view and download this RFI from the Vendor Information Portal (VIP) website at https://vendor.myfloridamarketplace.com/. Once at this site, the steps listed below should be followed to access the VIP.

• Click “Search Advertisements”

• Under the “Organization” search field, select the “Department of Environmental

Protection”

• Scroll down and click on “Search”

• Click on the applicable RFI number https://vendor.myfloridamarketplace.com/

DEP RFI No. RFI #2025007 Page 2 of 12

TABLE OF CONTENTS

SCHEDULE OF EVENTS

Section 1.00 – INTRODUCTION

1.01. Purpose and Scope

1.02. Procurement Officer

1.03. Questions

1.04. Addenda

1.05. Submittal of Response

1.06. Public Records

1.07 Redacted Submissions

1.08. RFI Process

SECTION 2.00 – TECHNICAL REQUIREMENTS

2.01. Overview

2.02. Background

2.03. Key Functionality

2.04. Vendor Response

SECTION 3. 00 – VENDOR CONTACT INFORMATION

SECTION 4.00 – COST INFORMATION

DEP RFI No. RFI #2025007 Page 3 of 12

SCHEDULE OF EVENTS

The following schedule will be strictly adhered to in all actions relative to this posting. The Department reserves the right to make adjustments to this schedule and will notify Interested Entities in the request by posting an addendum on the VIP. It is the responsibility of the Interested Entity to check VIP on a regular basis for such updates.

DATES EVENTS METHOD

08/09/24 RFI Advertised Vendor Information Portal https://vendor.myfloridamarketplace.com/

08/14/24 @ 5:00

PM (ET)

Questions Submitted in Writing

Submit via email:

Attn: Sabina Flanagan, Procurement Officer E-mail: Sabina.Flanagan@FloridaDEP.gov

RFI # 2025007 MUST BE IN SUBJECT LINE OF EMAIL

On or about, 08/20/24

Answers to Questions Posted, on or about

Vendor Information Portal https://vendor.myfloridamarketplace.com/

08/26/24 @ 5:00

PM (ET)

Response Due

Submit via email:

Attn: Sabina Flanagan, Procurement Officer E-mail: Sabina.Flanagan@FloridaDEP.gov

RFI # 2025007 MUST BE IN SUBJECT LINE OF EMAIL

– Remainder of Page Intentionally Left Blank – mailto:XXXXXXXXX@FloridaDEP.gov mailto:XXXXXXXXX@FloridaDEP.gov

DEP RFI No. RFI #2025007 Page 4 of 12

Section 1.00 – INTRODUCTION

1.01. Purpose and Scope. The Florida Department of Environment Protection (“Department or DEP”) is requesting information from Interested Entities with proven, verifiable, and documented expertise concerning certain commodities and services relating to Electronic Document Management System (EDMS) solutions. This Request for Information (RFI) is being issued strictly for the purpose of gaining knowledge of the products and services available on the market relating to Electronic Document Management System (EDMS) solutions.

THIS IS NOT A REQUEST OR INVITATION FOR COMPETETIVE BIDS, PROPOSALS OR REPLIES, AND NO

CONTRACT WILL BE AWARDED IN RESPONSE TO SUBMISSIONS.

If, as a result of the RFI, the Department decides to pursue contract(s) to provide any of the services mentioned and Interested Entities capable of providing such services are identified, a competitive procurement package may be developed and issued at a later date.

1.02. Procurement Officer.

Sabina Flanagan, Procurement Officer Procurement Section, Carr Building, Room 215 Florida Department of Environmental Protection 3800 Commonwealth Boulevard, MS#93 Tallahassee, Florida 32399-3000 Telephone Number: (850) 245-2187 Sabina.Flanagan@FloridaDEP.gov

1.03. Questions. Any questions from vendors concerning this RFI shall be submitted in writing, identifying the submitter and RFI number, to the Procurement Officer no later than the time and date specified in the Schedule of Events. All inquiries must be submitted by E-mail. All questions and answers will be posted on the VIP. It is the Vendor’s responsibility to periodically check the VIP. The Department bears no responsibility for any delays, or resulting impacts, associated with a Vendor’s failure to obtain the information made available through the VIP.

1.04. Addenda. If the Department finds it necessary to supplement, modify, or interpret any portion of the RFI documents, a written “Addendum” will be posted on the VIP. It is the responsibility of the Vendor to be aware of any Addenda that might have a bearing on their response.

1.05. Submittal of Response. Responses are due in accordance with VIP and Schedule of Events.

Vendors’ responses must be in writing and submitted electronically via email. Responses must be emailed to the Procurement Officer (Section 1.02). The naming convention for the subject line within your email is:

Subject Line: Your Company Name – DEP RFI No. RFI #2025007

Once received, all RFI responses and attachments shall become the exclusive property of the Department and will not be returned. The Department is not liable for any of the costs incurred by the Vendor in preparing and submitting a response.

The response package must contain a title page including the below contact information:

• Vendor/Company Name;

• Contact Name and Title;

• Address; and mailto:Sabina.Flanagan@FloridaDEP.gov

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• Phone Number and email address.

To ensure a clear understanding of the products and service, the Department may use this RFI as the basis for requesting demonstrations. These demonstrations will be at the department’s discretion and at no cost to the Department.

1.06. Public Records. Any material submitted in response to this RFI will become a public record pursuant to Chapter 119, Florida Statutes (F.S.), once it is shared with the Department. Any claim of confidentiality is waived upon submission, unless addressed as set forth below.

Disclosure and Ownership of Response Contents: A Vendor’s response to this RFI shall be a public record and subject to production, disclosure, inspection and copying consistent with the requirements of Chapter 119, F.S. All information in a Vendor’s response (including, without limitation, technical and price information) will be a matter of public record, subject to the provisions of Florida’s Public Records Act, Chapter 119, F.S., regardless of copyright status. Submission of a response to this RFI shall constitute a waiver of any copyright protection which might otherwise apply to the Department’s production, disclosure, inspection and copying of such response and contract, or any part thereof, except those parts asserted to be exempt under Chapter 119, F.S. The response, upon submission shall be the property of the Department (except those parts asserted to be exempt in the manner set forth below), and the Department, in its sole discretion, shall have the right to use, reproduce, and disseminate the response. The Department reserves the right to use any and all information contained in a response received to this RFI.

1.07 Redacted Submissions. If submitting a redacted version of its Response, the Respondent shall mark the cover of the redacted copy with the Respondent’s name, Department’s solicitation name, and number, and the words “Redacted Copy.” The Redacted Copy should only redact those portions of material that the Respondent claims are Confidential Information or exempt from Public Records Law.

An entire Response should not be redacted. An entire page or paragraph which contains Confidential Information or exempt material should not be redacted unless the entire page or paragraph is wholly Confidential Information or exempt from Public Records Law. In the Redacted Copy, the Respondent shall redact and maintain in confidence any materials the Department provides or seeks regarding security of a proposed technology system or information subject to sections 119.011(14), 119.071(1)(f), and 119.071(3), F.S.

In addition, the Respondent should submit a separate index listing the Confidential Information or exempt portions of its Response. The index should briefly describe in writing the grounds for claiming exemption from the Public Records Law, including the specific statutory citation for such exemption.

The Redacted Copy will be used to fulfill public records and other disclosure requests.

By submitting a Response, the Respondent agrees to protect, defend, and indemnify the Department for any and all claims arising from or relating to the Respondent’s determination that the redacted portions of its Response are Confidential Information or otherwise not subject to disclosure. If the Respondent fails to submit a Redacted Copy of its Response, the Department is authorized to produce the entire unredacted Response submitted to the Department in response to a public records request.

Per section 287.012(22), F.S., “Responses to these requests are not offers and may not be accepted by the agency to form a binding contract.” Vendors submitting information to this RFI are not prohibited from responding to any related subsequent solicitation. The Department reserves the right to use or reject any information supplied in response to this RFI.

DEP RFI No. RFI #2025007 Page 6 of 12

1.08. RFI Process.

The Department will review and analyze information received in response to this RFI to determine the feasibility of issuing a competitive solicitation for these products/services. Any request for cost information received will be used solely to gain a perspective of the potential budgetary magnitude.

Responses to this RFI will be reviewed for informational purposes only and will not result in the award of a contract. Submitting a response to this RFI shall not disqualify a vendor for responding to any related subsequent solicitation.

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SECTION 2.00 – TECHNICAL REQUIREMENTS

2.01. Overview.

DEP is interested in learning about enterprise EDMS solutions on the market capable of supporting the entire agency’s document management requirements.

2.02. Background.

The main EDMS currently used by DEP is OCULUS, a commercial product developed and supported by ROH Incorporated. OCULUS was originally deployed in 1998 and has expanded to many programs throughout the agency. A maximum of 400 concurrent users (i.e., users logged into the system at the same time) from a pool of approximately 2,000 potential users interact directly with OCULUS (either via direct insert or scanning) to manage documents. An additional 4,600 unnamed users can concurrently interface within OCULUS with search and view-only access to documents through a single public login.

OCULUS (version 6) is on-premises (at the Florida Digital Service State Data Center) and the estimated current space used in the system is approximately 32 terabyte (TB). The expected storage growth is 1 TB per year. The OCULUS architecture includes three (3) servers: two (2) production servers (one

(1) for OCULUS proper, and one (1) for several applications which interface with OCULUS) and one

(1) development server. OCULUS stores documents directly on a Windows Server 2022 file system.

The database platform for file paths is Oracle 19c.

OCULUS accepts both scanned documents and documents directly inserted from other applications.

Approximately one million documents per year are inserted into the EDMS. Approximately 10,000 documents are scanned and released through Kofax Capture scanner software (primarily version 11 and 10.2) and include Optical Character Recognition (OCR) capability. Less than 100 users currently utilize the scanning solution. The majority of file formats are PDF and Microsoft Office Suite. OCULUS accepts all file types except executable files (*.exe). There are approximately 1400 unique document types in OCULUS, but 100-300 are the most common types and would be the focus in a new system.

There are ten (10) index attributes corresponding to each document category, on average.

OCULUS is integrated with several of the agency’s key administrative and regulatory (e.g., permitting & legal case tracking) systems through various Application Programming Interfaces (APIs).

Document lookup is provided through a variety of web applications, where parameters are passed via URL to find specific documents by index attributes. Approximately 14.5 million documents currently exist in this system.

2.03. Key Functionality.

The Department is interested in solutions that include, but are not limited to, the following areas of key functionality:

• Per section 282.206(2), F.S., in its procurement process, the Department shall show a preference for cloud-computing solutions that either minimize or do not require the use of state data center infrastructure when cloud-computing solutions meet the needs of

DEP RFI No. RFI #2025007 Page 8 of 12 the agency, reduce costs, and meet or exceed the applicable state and federal laws, regulations, and standards for cybersecurity;

• Proven capability to support enterprise organizational-wide document management requirements;

• Supports the entire document lifecycle, including creation and capture, organization and management, workflow and approval, viewing and sharing, and retention and disposal;

• Ability to migrate data/documents into and out of the vendor EDMS, out of and into other EDMS systems, respectively, should the agency’s needs change;

• Robust and intuitive search functionality, including search for matching text within documents, keywords, based on maps, and advanced search options that include Boolean search capabilities;

• Provides ability to augment attributions with keywords to assist in future searches;

currently, search capability in OCULUS is limited to a small number of categories, such as Facility ID, location, catalog (i.e., regulatory program name) and permit number, but an expanded set of keywords will be established by an intra-agency committee, and will be required for all new documents;

• Search and view documents via mobile devices;

• Provides ability to preview a document before opening and/or have a built-in document viewer;

• Provides an easy to use file download feature for external users, including bulk downloads;

• Insert, modify, manage, and purge ability in bulk and/or batch, on both with Windows and Mac operating systems, and using the following browsers: Chrome, Edge, Firefox, and Safari;

• Confidential information is easily identifiable—i.e., there would be a systematic way to flag confidential/sensitive documents in order to restrict access;

• Validation on naming, email formatting, etc.—i.e., syncing with Active Directory to ensure uniform naming conventions with regard to username and email;

• Insertion directly from bulk scanning/imaging software;

• Provides easily configurable workflows, for example:

o Workflows should be robust yet intuitive for professional staff to manage without requirement for IT programming resources;

o Should provide Graphical User Interface (GUI) tools for creating and modifying workflow steps;

o Should include automated emails to workflow parties; and o Should provide metrics for analysis of individual workflow-parties performance (e.g., identify how long a document was in an individual’s approval queue).

• Has a built-in reporting system;

• Has audit capability;

• Has document history (e.g., versioning);

• Supports direct queries for document and index information;

• Complies with industry standards for enterprise document management solutions;

• Supports a variety of program-specific document retention and disposal policies, including retention date on each document and email alerts as retention draws near;

• Systems database administration functionality should be manageable by DEP

Information Technology staff;

DEP RFI No. RFI #2025007 Page 9 of 12

• System must be configurable by a DEP systems administrator;

• No requirement for public users to have to sign up for an account to access content;

• Integrations via industry-standard methods (e.g., APIs);

• Ability to migrate scheduled tasks and database procedures used to populate taxonomy values originating from other DEP data sources (morning refresh). We have scheduled jobs that read/post data to populate metadata tables in OCULUS. We also have DEPStaging work environment that calls and populates Oracle data: it both posts documents and updates taxonomy information. One use case is retrieving metadata regarding facility information from legacy systems to reflect changes/additions from the previous day so lookups can be associated across disparate systems. Another is the need to populate specific catalogs/profiles for online permitting (storing user uploaded documents);

• Provides for direct insert of documents and indexing data from other web applications such as automated customer self-service portals, without the need to purchase additional licenses specific to this function;

• The formats for documents to be inserted into the EDMS should not be limited, except for any security restrictions to not allow certain executables file types; otherwise, all document formats should be supported and, where an EDMS based viewer is not available, opened via their native software;

• Ideally can be integrated with DEP’s Azure Active Directory single sign-on infrastructure to provide direct document access without additional logon (i.e., network credentials be passed through to the EDMS for users already logged in);

• Provide for secure view and search capability by role-based security levels, to include internal DEP users and external public (e.g., provide direct search and view access to documents for public access of public records, but protection for confidentiality);

• Has a development environment in addition to the production environment;

• Can be integrated with the Microsoft (MS) Office suite (e.g., Outlook) via add-ons for document insertion, retrieval, and email capabilities;

• Auto-emails based on criteria subscriptions and other database triggers are also of interest;

and

• Can be branded as a DEP interface for a seamless integration with other DEP applications and web sites.

2.04. Vendor Response.

The Department is requesting information from the EDMS vendor community on their product/service offerings. Response requirements are listed below but do not necessarily include all needed or preferred functionality. This document is meant only to assist vendors in providing their responses.

All responses to this RFI must contain, at a minimum, the following information:

• Vendor solution approach and recommendation(s) on an enterprise EDMS for the agency including a suggested high-level implementation plan for deploying any EDMS solution and for migrating documents from existing agency document management systems;

• Complete terms and conditions covered by product maintenance agreement (e.g., support levels, software usage restrictions);

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• Availability through any current Florida Agency Term Contract (ATC), State Term Contract (STC), or Alternate Contract Source (ACS);

• Vendor’s current number of installations and customers and size of customer base;

• Descriptions of similar projects including customer examples and case studies;

• If/how the proposed solution can integrate/interface with other systems (e.g., via APIs) and how existing scripts can be migrated;

• Description of backups and disaster recovery. DEP prefers a near-zero Recovery Point

Objective and a 12-hour Recovery Time Objective;

• Relevant white papers;

• The vendor’s contact information per Section 3.00; and

• Costs/pricing structure for proposed licensing model(s) per Section 4.00.

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SECTION 3. 00 – VENDOR CONTACT INFORMATION

Providers are asked to provide the following information:

CONTACTS

Primary contact regarding this submission? Name:

Email Address:

Phone:

Title or Role in Organization?

Primary contact to schedule Presentation:

(If other than contact above)

Name:

Email Address:

Phone:

Title or Role in Organization?

Company Website URL:

Type of Organization (Corporation, Partnership, etc.):

How long has your company been in this type of business?

Years:

Months:

Location of Project Manager that would serve the Department:

City:

State:

Location of Regional Sales Manager that would serve the Department:

City:

State:

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SECTION 4.00 – COST INFORMATION

Providers are asked to provide the following cost information:

DESCRIPTION

TIMELINE

(If Applicable)

ESTIMATED DOLLAR

AMOUNT / QUANTITY

PER /

Unit of

Measure

Estimated Support Rates:

Estimated Licensing Cost:

Estimated Upgrades and other Maintenance Costs per Year:

Estimated Third Party Licenses Requirement Costs:

Estimated Cost of Implementation Including Migration Service Fees:

Length of Typical Implementation:

Five-Year Total Cost of Ownership Estimate for the Proposed Solution: