RFP 2523-883 FAQs.docx

Page | 2DSHS RFP 2523-883 – Enterprise Cloud Fax FAQs

1. What is the current scope of the size and the number of pages incoming and outgoing across all the departments?

A: As low as 10 pages to 10,000 pages a day depending on case & workload as the Department of Social and Health Services has 250+ small offices, communicatee offices, finance offices, critical state hospitals, and many care centers for their customers. Each of these facilities has their busy up time during the month, some will fax 1000 pages a day to and from doctor including entire cases loads.

2. Is the awarded vendor going to use the current fax lines?

A: Yes and No. Some DIDs or Numbers will have to be ported, and some can be new numbers and in the future the vendor will be required to supply new lines with the approximate area code and prefix.

3. Who is the current telecom provider?

A: Washington Technology Solutions

4. Per the RFP, is there a current preferred solution?

A: Yes, Enterprise Cloud eFax services

5. How many fax lines are currently being used?

A: 1400 + lines with some agencies not being counted as they are using temporary cloud contracts with an additional 300+ lines

6. What portion of the departments for the first migration?

A. We would suggest migrating to 2 programs at a time with a goal of completing everything by June 30, 2026. There may be 100 to 200 phone lines that DSHS is looking to migrate by the end of June 2026.

7. What is the anticipated deployment timeline?

A: Once a contract is agreed upon and signed, we would work with the vendor and set up a reasonable timeframe that would meet everyone’s business requirements to receive training, port numbers, and build out service with the vendor. We would like to see everything completed within 6 months.

8. Do you currently have a Project Manager for this entire project?

A. Yes.

9. Will all procurement be centralized or each individual business level (sic)?

A: Yes, we have central procurement group.

10. Is there a timeline or a roadmap to get away from electronic fax altogether?

A. DSHS does not anticipate migrating completely to electronic fax as there may always be users depending on physical fax equipment.

11. Please provide more specifics on these three types of routing:

A: Fax to folders: Folders will either be created by the user in the end user’s SharePoint portal or in a portal created by the vendor that is shared between them both.

Fax to printers: Faxing service should allow us to contact directly any fax machine the end usage has with numbers or DIDs managed by the vendor selected.

Fax to email: As a cloud service our end users need the ability to fax an email as a message transmitted.

12. What are your records retention policies?

A: The retention period that DSHS requires the vendor to host and manage will be for the life of the contract, or until program (aka business unit) Administrators mark the documents for deletion.

13. What is the current volume across business units and how many Business Units will there be? Specifically, we are interested in the total amount of inand outbound pages per month across all business units and 1,200 numbers that need to be ported. In other words, how much traffic will go through all 1,200 numbers and how much traffic will be sent outbound by users on a monthly basis?

A: There are over 250 different DSHS offices, each of which are considered a “business unit,” in the state of Washington spread all over and faxing has an average of 100 to 10,0000 pages per day with each office having different peaks during the month.

14. Our solution doesn’t support ATA adapters. Our solution is 100% cloud based.

Does that rule us out as a potential vendor to support DSHS?

A: A: No, it does not, but the solution must support some type of ATA-equivalent hardware adapters, that can pass a DSHS security design review, which means the hardware adapters must be compliant with applicable existing security policies.

15. In order to win the bid, does the service platform need to be FIPS 140-2 or 140-3 compliant (i.e. NIST validated encryption module)?

A: FIPS 140-3 is crucial for future-proofing your compliance and ensuring your products are up-to-date with the latest security standards and global interoperability.

16. Does the platform need to be FedRAMP certified in order to be compliant with Federal Government requirements for Federal Agencies such as HHS or the Dept of Veterans Affairs?

A: No it does not.

17. In order to win the bid, does the service platform need to be Sec 508 compliant?

A: Yes, we need to meet the Standards of Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 as we will have staff with disabilities working with us and using the equipment.

18. Is the purpose of the ATAs to provide support for legacy fax machines?

A: Yes you are correct.

19. Do the copiers have fax capability (sometimes, this is an optional module installed in the copier)?

A. Yes.

20. Is the highest security platform (i.e. FedRAMP) more important than having the Sfax interface?

A: We will not need FedRamp with a recent change in our policy, but would like to have a solution that enables you to send, receive, annotate, digitally sign and manage faxes without printing a single physical document. All your documents are protected by strong encryption.

21. Concerning Support Levels, does DSHS plan to provide level 1 support to the state's users making use of the service platform, and as necessary opening tickets with the Service Providers for problems that are not simple and immediately resolvable?

A: Yes, DSHS administrations will support the basic Level 1 troubleshooting before submitting a ticket for additional help. BUT the vendor and DSHS would have to come to a basic agreement as to what is expected at Level 1.

22. Can you expand on the three support levels you require?

i. Contractor shall provide Level 1 Support which pertains to the most severe issues such as a Program Error involving a situation where all features and functions of the Cloud Services are unavailable and no practical alternate mode of operation is available. Contractor shall use commercially reasonable efforts to answer or return Level 1 calls within four (4) hours. DSHS shall call the Contractor support team to designate the request to be a critical request, at which point the Contractor shall engage its support services.

ii. Contractor shall provide Level 2 Support which occurs when certain features and functionality are not available, and no practical alternate mode of operation is available. Level 2 requests will be assigned to the next available programmer. Contractor will use commercially reasonable efforts to answer or return DSHS’s calls seeking Level 2 Services within an average of one (1) business day.

iii. Contractor shall provide Level 3 Support will receive the normal next-inline priority assignment. Level 3 requests will be worked on in the order in which they are received.

23. How many total business units are in scope?

A. Approximately 250.

24. Is there a total anticipated volume for all business units that are in scope for the first phase of this RFP?

A. We would suggest migrating to 2 DSHS Programs at a time with a goal of completing everything by June 30, 2026. There may be 100 to 200 phone lines that DSHS is looking to migrate by the end of June.

25. Do you anticipate the continued usage of physical devices or a push to full cloud usage?

A. Yes, we anticipate continued use of physical devices, hence the need for ATAs until there is full cloud usage.

26. How many business lines (analog) are you planning on porting?

A. Approximately 1200.

27. Are we looking for this enterprise fax to work with different platforms such as EMRs and EHRs – system of record?

A. No, but it is a feature that would be desirable.

28. Can you provide an example of the data that should be entered into the RFP’s Cost Proposal Tables and explain how the data will be evaluated to generate scores?

A. Please see the attached Excel Worksheet entitles “Cost Scoring Example for Inclusion in FAQs.”