USDA_FSA_Bridges_to_Opportunity_RFI.pdf

Request for Information for

USDA/FSA – Bridges to Opportunity (BTO)

This Request for Information (RFI) notice is issued solely for information and planning purposes – it does not constitute an Invitation for Bids (IFB), a Request for Proposal (RFP) or an indication that the Government will contract for any of the items and/or services contained in this notice. In accordance with FAR 52.215-3, Request for Information or Solicitation for Planning Purposes, the Government will not pay for any information/items submitted in response to the RFI. This request for information does not commit the Government to contract for any supply or service whatsoever. Further, the USDA/Farm Services Agency, Acquisition Management Division is not at this time seeking proposals and will not accept unsolicited proposals. Not responding to this RFI notice does not preclude participation in any future RFP, if any is issued. No determination as to the viability of this requirement has been made at this point and there is currently no solicitation for this effort. Any solicitation resulting from this RFI notice will be announced separately.

Part 1 – Overview

1.1 Background

Secretary Vilsack has challenged FSA to leverage its unique county office footprint and relationships with local agency partners and stakeholders to help customers access a broader array of resources in their local area. To that end, FSA is developing a project referred to as Bridges to Opportunity (BTO) to explore the concept of offering resources and referrals to its customers for partner organizations as an additional service provided by FSA.

1.2 Document Purpose

The purpose of this document is to define general requirements to facilitate the selection of an IT solution, hereinafter referred to as “Solution” that enables a referral and partner resource service to operate effectively within FSA’s computing environment. The Solution must allow the user to easily execute customer referrals to partners, assist in determining resource and service needs of customers, and actively contribute to delivery of partner resources.

Additionally, the Solution shall facilitate FSA’s relationship with customers and partners, provide access partner resources and facilitate a one-stop service for customers that offers access to the broadest array of agricultural knowledge, skills and abilities available. The basic Solution design shall allow for future public-facing, self-service, and networking capacity for customers and partners.

1.3 Definitions

The following basic definitions are used throughout this document:

BTO “Bridges to Opportunity”

Customer Individual or organization (including private business) seeking resources through FSA

CIP “Customer Interest Profile” contains basic customer contact information, farm, business and/or personal information, and specifics regarding their area of interest and inquiry through BTO; CIP is a primary component used in conducting an opportunity search through Solution and the resource library to generate a customer report.

Solution Software application accessed and controlled by the user to provide BTO services to the customer and manage partners and resources

OS “Opportunity Search” is a query executed by Solution of the resource library based on the CIP to generate a customer report.

Partner Organization or individual with an interest in serving customers within the agricultural community

PRP “Partner Resource Profile” contains basic partner contact and organizational information and resource data; PRP is a primary component in producing results from an OS of resource library when generating a customer report.

Resource Information, education, programs, services and facilitation provided by a partner

Resource Library RL – A library to store partner resources accessed by the Solution

System of Record SOR – FSA’s existing systems and information sources containing current customer and partner business information.

User FSA employee who accesses and controls Solution to serve customers or partners; the user may be located in the county, state or national office, but all would be able to fully serve customers and partners, as well as access, update and maintain Solution and RL.

1.4 Scope of Work

The desired Solution will be an application that integrates with FSA’s existing systems of records and computing platform. Solution must possess several dynamic characteristics, including but not limited to the following:

1.4.1 Connect & Communicate – Have the capability to connect customers with partner organizations through a referral process, making partner organization resources available to customers; allow automatic and user-initiated communication with partners and customers.

1.4.2 Access & Share – Be able to readily access and share information or resources with customers and/or partners; store or access information, resources, and customer and partner contact information.

1.4.3 Easy to Use – Allow user to easily refer customers to partner organizations as an integrated part of the employee’s routine program and service delivery responsibilities.

1.4.4 Track & Monitor – Be able to log and track referrals, allow for referral follow-up and service delivery evaluation, enhancement and guidance.

1.4.5 Analyze & Evaluate – Contain analytic components, as well as adaptable reporting functions, that facilitate long-term agency-customer-partner-community network-building and solidarity.

1.4.6 Scheduling events and campaigns – Include the native ability to define, initiate, and conduct events and campaigns. These events and campaigns can be created and run by all users of the Solution.

Part 2 – Business Process

2.1 Introduction

An effective Solution must enable FSA employees to connect and refer customers to partners and partner resources quickly and easily. Customer may be existing FSA clients or the general public who otherwise do not and will not use FSA programs and services. The BTO business process involves disseminating partner resources directly to customers; referring customers to partners for resources; and facilitating the delivery of partner resources through FSA.

2.2 Business Cycles

The BTO business cycles generally include three distinct, yet interrelated, areas of activity:

customer service, partner relations and community networking.

2.2.1 BTO customer service action is represented by the following workflow:

2.2.1.1 A customer visits or calls the FSA office at the county, state or national level to inquire about obtaining resources related to their area of interest.

2.2.1.2 The user accesses Solution to create or update a CIP, search the RL for pertinent resources and PRPs, and generate a BTO customer report:

2.2.1.2.1 The user identifies the customer as either an existing FSA customer with data in FSA’s SORs or a new customer with no data in FSA’s SORs:

2.2.1.2.1.1 If an existing FSA and/or previous BTO customer, Solution accesses the

SOR or CIP to create or update the CIP.

2.2.1.2.1.2 If a new customer granting permission to be in FSA’s SOR, the user creates a CIP by entering customer data into the SOR.

2.2.1.2.1.3 If a new customer seeking to remain anonymous, the user creates an ad hoc

CIP for temporary use by FSA for 30 days. This timeframe allows for customer and partner follow-up and service evaluation. Customers’ personally identifiable information contained in ad hoc CIPs will be deleted after 30 days but non identifiable information will be retained in the system for analytical and evaluative purposes.

2.2.1.2.2 The CIP is then populated with customer interest information, from general to specific categories of business type and scope of inquiry, through a Solution questionnaire that contains search parameters that mirrors that contained in the RL and PRPs.

2.2.1.2.3 An “opportunity search” (OS) is conducted of the RL that reveals matching resources and PRPs for the CIP.

2.2.1.2.4 With the CIP and OS complete, Solution generates a customer report that outlines all related resources and PRPs, and ranks the relevance of each; the report also defines the type of service (direct, referral or facilitation) involved with the various resources and outlines user action for each.

2.2.1.2.5 The customer report is immediately printed for user-customer review and discussion; it may also be sent electronically to the customer, and it is stored in Solution (or a connected Solution-SOR).

2.2.1.2.6 (reserved)

2.2.1.3 The user carries out the customer-desired BTO service according to the customer report in three possible ways:

2.2.1.3.1 Direct Service – Pertinent resources are provided directly to the customer during the visit, or at a later scheduled time; these resources are available to the user and accessible through the RL.

2.2.1.3.2 Partner Referral – The customer is referred to a partner to receive pertinent resources; the referral is executed electronically by the most technologically advanced means.

2.2.1.3.3 Resource Facilitation – The user or designated FSA employee facilitates the delivery of partner resources, possibly providing some resources directly, convening meetings with essential partners, and/or collaborating with partners to provide resources to the customer.

2.2.1.4 Solution initiates follow-up actions to ensure the customer received the desired resources and evaluate the service experience; the customer is contacted electronically and asked to respond to an online survey; the user may be instructed to follow up with a direct contact depending on the survey results.

Follow-up action may also include subsequent and ongoing customer notifications related to resources identified on the customer report and information contained in the CIP.

2.2.1.5 Solution initiates follow-up actions to ensure partners delivered service appropriately.

2.2.2 Partner relations action is represented by the following workflow:

2.2.2.1 (Reserved)

2.2.3 Community networking action is represented by the following workflow:

2.2.3.1 (Reserved)

2.3 Business Scenarios

The BTO business process is generally categorized into three types of customer service: direct, referral and facilitative. Each type requires a different level of user and system action, which are described in the following scenarios:

2.3.1 Direct Service

During an appointment at FSA to report her crop acreage, farmer Candice mentions to FSA Program Technician (PT) Linda that she really wants to start growing vegetables to sell at local farmers markets, in addition to her current cash-crop farming operation.

Linda asks Candice if she would like her to do an OS of the BTO RL for information that might help Candice realize her dream. Candice agrees, and Linda accesses the Solution to provide the BTO service.

The first step is to build a CIP for Candice by accessing pertinent customer data stored in the SOR and define the area of interest through a Solution questionnaire; Solution conducts an OS to match the CIP with pertinent resources in the RL to generate a BTO customer report.

The customer report identified two fact sheets developed by a regional partner (Extension Service) on vegetable farming and marketing produce locally. The report also provided organizational and contact information for the local farmers’ market association. The fact sheets and report were given to Candice for her review and use. Linda also asked Candice if she wanted to be kept up-to-date on additional information regarding her cited interests and Candice agreed. Linda accessed BTO Solution and enabled RSS feeds and text alerts for farmer Candice.

One week later Solution generated a follow-up email and online survey for Candice to determine whether the service provided was satisfactory. She completed the survey, which automatically populated a resource rating system; customer comments were also provided to the partner on the usefulness of the resources. Two months later a new food hub was established in a nearby community and became a BTO partner. Farmer Candice was informed about this new partner automatically by Solution, met with the food hub director and secured a grower contract, and in the following year began marketing vegetables through the food hub, significantly boosting her annual income.

Over the course of three months the office generated 14 direct service customer reports.

The Solution determined the percent of survey respondents, evaluated their service experience, analyzed economic impact and identified customer interest trends. As a result, FSA County Executive Director (CED) Nanette was able to meet with partners to further enhance available services. Individual customers were informed of new developments and opportunities, resulting in a stronger network in the local community.

2.3.2 Partner Referrals

Local master chef Juan, a new customer to FSA, visits the office to see about accessing locally grown foods for his restaurant. PT John informs the customer that a search of the RL can easily be completed to see if assistance could be provided. As a new customer, Juan is not in the FSA SOR, and indicates that he does not want to be in the SOR because “he doesn’t trust the government.” “No problem,” John replies, “we can do an ad hoc inquiry for you anonymously.” Juan appreciates that approach and agrees to the ad hoc inquiry.

An ad hoc CIP was built for the Juan through a Solution questionnaire, the RL was searched and a customer report generated. The report identified the new food hub as a top PRP match for the CIP information. John asked Juan if he wanted to be referred to the food hub and Juan agreed, providing his email address and contact information to allow the referral to be processed. Additional, interest-specific information was required from Juan regarding the types, quantity and quality of the food he wants. He also asked to schedule an appointment to meet with the food hub representative.

Solution generated a referral email to the partner with the Juan’s contact, CIP and additional interest-specific information, along with his request to meet with the partner.

Upon receipt of the referral email, the partner set up a meeting with the customer. Juan subsequently purchased large quantities of food from the partner, significantly increasing the demand for local farmers’ products.

One week later the system generated a follow-up email and online survey for Juan to complete to determine whether the service provided was satisfactory. Juan completed the survey, which automatically populated a resource rating system; customer comments were also provided to the partner on the usefulness of the resources. Upon completion of the online survey, the CIP was deleted from the system as part of the ad hoc service.

Two months later Juan returned to FSA and request to be added to the SOR and be kept up-to-date on new developments. He also said he was starting a non-profit cooking school to educate the public on healthy food choices and preparation. He wondered if FSA’s BTO service could help him out. FSA CED Loretta said BTO could potentially be of value to Juan and other partners and customers; she added Juan to BTO as a partner, along with the educational information he provided as resources.

Over the course of three months the office generated 23 customer reports and customer-to-partner referrals. Solution determined the percent of survey respondents, evaluated their service experience, analyzed economic impact and identified customer interest trends. Through voluntary and confidential input from customers and partners, BTO contributed to $1.3 million dollars of economic growth in the community.

2.3.3 Resource Facilitation

A dairy farmer Greg was visiting the FSA office to meet with his FSA Farm Loan Officer (FLO) Latrice and review his year-end analysis. In the course of their discussion, Greg mentioned that he had recently toured a dairy operation in Pennsylvania that had an anaerobic digester for electrical generation; he really liked the concept but felt that trying to make it happen was insurmountable. Latrice said she could do a BTO inquiry to see if there is more information to help Greg determine the feasibility of doing such a project on his farm.

A CIP was built by accessing the FSA SOR and completing a Solution questionnaire.

The customer report revealed several resources available including: several partners that directly work on such projects, 5 fact sheets, 3 online videos, 2 demonstration farms in the region, and a forthcoming university short course. Additionally, a facilitation plan, cooperatively developed by FSA and Extension, was available for FSA staff to assist the customer walk through the process.

After providing some of the direct resources (fact sheets, videos, etc.) to Greg, FLO Latrice set up a meeting at the FSA office with representatives from essential partners: a state regulatory agency, FCS lender, REA, state grant agency, a clean energy foundation and key USDA agencies. From the meeting the Greg was able to develop a feasible project plan, apply and receive funding, secure necessary permits and restructure other debt with an FSA guaranteed loan with FCS to make the anaerobic digester become a reality on her dairy farm.

Routine Solution follow-ups were completed. This BTO facilitation resulted in Greg significantly reducing overhead costs on his dairy, nearly 200 residences and businesses, including the local food hub and Juan’s non-profit cooking school and restaurant, benefited from Greg’s on-farm generation of electricity. Additionally, all partners involved collaborated to develop an educational series to assist rural businesses and farmers realize clean energy projects locally; FSA BTO serves as the primary scheduling, notification, RSVP and monitoring application for this partner-customer community and helped make the seminar happen.

Part 3 – System / Technical

3.1 System Overview

The USDA FSA specifies the following system and technical requirements for the Bridges to Opportunity (BTO) Solution. These requirements outline the desired system specifications and technical characteristics of an ideal BTO solution.

3.1.1 Platform:

The USDA/ FSA employs a “Cloud First” approach to system selection, design, and development. The BTO Solution should ideally be a cloud-native application hosted on the vendor’s infrastructure. A hybrid cloud configuration is also desirable if it can be demonstrated to facilitate enhanced and/or simplified integration capabilities to FSA Systems of Record (SORs). On-premise solutions will also be considered if they demonstrate the ability to meet all stated functional and scalability requirements.

3.1.2 Scalability

The BTO solution is accessible by two primary user groups, the County Office personnel and FSA partner organizations. The Solution also stores profile information and associated metadata and transaction history related farmers, ranchers, and agricultural producers nationwide.

FSA Farm Programs reach about 12 million farmers, ranchers and producers. For planning purposes, assume that during the first year of operations, the Bridges to Opportunity application will house profile information for about two million customers, be accessed by about thirteen thousand (13,000) FSA County Office Employees, and receive and store content from five thousand (5,000) service partners.

3.1.3 System User Access Methods

The county office staff will access the system in two models:

1. Personal computers: desktops & laptops + 2 major operating systems + several popular web browsers

2. Mobile devices: tablets & smart phones + 2 major operating systems + several popular web browsers

3. Bridges to Opportunity users will also include staff who may have technology accessibility needs. Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 requires Federal agencies to make their electronic and information technology (EIT) accessible to people with disabilities. In the spirit of the law, the BTO application must give disabled employees access to information that is comparable to access available to others.

3.1.4 Interoperability / Data Access

The solution should natively support all common message and data interchange methods including but not limited to restful web services, XML, ESBs, etc. All customer, partner, transaction, analytics, and other operational information present in the system must be accessible through service integration. Data access should be provided by the solution natively and be accessible by the FSA at any point for any reason. Unrestricted access to this data should be provided in the normal cost of the platform and should not incur any additional and/or separate fees.

3.1.5 Security

The USDA has a standard solution for positively identifying members of the public who can rightfully access secured data. The eAuthentication system is built on the widely-used Computer Associates SiteMinder platform. The public can self-register for a Level 1 account allowing access to general tools and data. However, to reach personally identifiable information (PII) or other customer-specific business information, a Level 2 account is required. Service partners must present valid identification in person to at selected USDA locations where the data they can access can be properly configured to allow FSA Farm Portal access.

Reuse existing eAuthentication solution for forgotten user names and password resets

The USDA eAuthentication system already supports emailing of forgotten username and resetting of forgotten password. The BTO application will rely on these services to support these access functions.

Hosted/Cloud-based solutions must be FedRAMP compliant and certified. The BTO Solution may also be subject to additional security requirements related to the receipt, storage, and transmission of Personally Identifiable Information (PII).

Part 4 – Conceptual design

4.1 Narrative

The Bridges to Opportunity application will be accessed through a browser interface. This interface will be accessible through the existing IT infrastructure available at the FSA county offices.

Through this web interface, the county office user will be able to:

4.1.1 Create a new transaction (case) to record the services rendered

4.1.2 Retrieve relevant information about a producer (producer profile).

4.1.3 Perform a natural-language, intelligent search that identifies and locates resources (partners and/or services) relevant to the producer’s stated needs.

4.1.4 Produce a “receipt for service” transcript containing the search and results

4.1.5 Create a “referral event” in which the county office staff member facilitates an introduction and discussion between the service partner and the farmer/producer. The creator of the event should be able to schedule the event, invite attendees from the farmer/producer list and from the service provider list. This event creation should notify invitees via their preferred method of communication of the date and time of the meeting event. After the event is completed, feedback should be solicited from the attendees via email or their preferred method of communication.

Through this web interface, the service partner will be able to:

4.1.6 Submit and manage content links for inclusion in the intelligent search used by county office personnel

4.1.7 Manage tags and metadata related to content links

4.1.8 Exchange messages with other service providers as well as county office staff. This messaging service should support as many communication channels as possible including live web chat, mobile text messaging, and email.

4.1.9 Create and manage referral events in similar manner as described in the previous section

4.2 Conceptual Diagram

User Portal (5.1.1, 5.1.7)

Partner Profile & Content Management (3)

Customer Profile Management (2)

Partner Profile

Data (3)

Customer Profile

Data (2)

Partner Content

(6A)

Resource, Referral, and Facilitation Services (4, 6C, 6D, 6E)

Updates/changes

Updates/Changes

Analytics Dashboard (5) Producer

Partner

County Office Worker

BTO Search (6B)

Search Partner Profiles, Content, and services

Provide relevant search results to the resource, referral, and facilitation interface.

Figure 1: This diagram is a graphical view of the BTO concept as described in section 1.3.1. Each component is linked to the corresponding salient feature in Sec. 4.3

4.3 Salient Solution Features

The FSA BTO success criteria document provides the following seven functional areas that must be satisfied in order to accomplish the BTO vision. These seven areas outline the salient features of the BTO application:

4.3.1. Portal / primary interface – A primary entry point to manage delivering BTO services to customers and partners, as well as access to other FSA programs and services with the long-term capacity to deliver FSA programs and services through the portal. The user experience needs to be intuitive and the interface streamlined. This interface is the primary entry point for all BTO services.

This interface also must also provide a separate, configurable, public access portal. This public access portal must provide all customers (producers, ranchers, farmers, etc.) and partners (service providers) access to their stored information described in sec. 4.3.2 and

4.3.3. The ability to modify this information must be configurable.

4.3.2. Customer Profile – A comprehensive view of the customer’s agricultural situation, from basic contact information to their agricultural operation, to their interests and desires for the future. Constructing such a profile will require access to customer information contained in various FSA Systems of Record (SORs) related to customer and program participation data. Allowing the customer to view and update their profile is desirable.

4.3.3. Partner Profile – A comprehensive view of partner organizations, including but not limited to the organizational mission, the programs, services, and information (i.e.

“resources”) provided, and individual contacts for specific areas of expertise within the organization. Allowing partners to maintain their profile and available resources is highly desirable.

4.3.4. Services – BTO services fall into three general areas, as follows:

4.3.4.1. Resources – Provide information in varying forms (e.g., documents, videos, event information, seminars, educational opportunities, etc.) offered by partner organizations immediately and directly to the customer.

4.3.4.2. Referral – Refer a customer to partner organization contacts that are in closest proximity to the customer that can provide one-on-one assistance to address the customer’s needs.

4.3.4.3 Facilitation – Facilitate partner-to-partner collaboration in response to customers’ needs and prevailing challenges faced by the local agricultural community. Event creation and management is a feature that will be utilized within this service.

Additionally, an interactive and dynamic means to foster ongoing dialogue and collaboration between partner organizations would be ideal.

4.3.5. Analytics – The ability to analyze and evaluate customer needs and partner offerings to be responsive and proactive in serving the agricultural community; track customer, partner, and agency activity; determine trends and identify prevailing customer needs and challenges; and compile pertinent information (knowledge articles, etc.) that addresses agricultural concerns based on customer inquiries and partner collaboration.

4.3.6. Functional Requirements – Basic functionality required to support the defined BTO services and portal components include:

4.3.6.1. Library – A means to store, maintain and access partner and FSA resources.

Information may be in various forms, including structured and unstructured data.

4.3.6.2. Search – A natural-language search function that effectively retrieves the most pertinent and local resources relative to an individual customer’s interest. This search function should intelligently index content and associated metadata to provide highly relevant and target search results. Further it should track content usage to increase accuracy of future searches.

4.3.6.3. Outputs – Provide a summary of customer services delivered to the customer that can be sent electronically.

4.3.6.4. Communication – Effective methods of communicating with customers and partners, deliver resources to customers, and facilitate ongoing dialogue between partners.

4.3.6.5. Events – A means of creating and managing events for partners and customers (mass invites, RSVP, follow-up evaluation, etc.).

4.3.7. FSA Service Tracking – A means for employees working with all FSA programs, services and applications to establish and maintain a comprehensive case management service for customers and partners. In particular, providing a “Receipt for Service” (RFS) application within the Solution is highly desirable. The receipt for service should be auto-populated with customer information from SORs and service information should be auto-populated as much as possible from activities taken by the county office representative.

A well implemented auto-population significantly reduce manual information entry.

4.3.8. FSA Service Chat – A real-time messaging interface that allows county office personnel to exchange and save conversations. All users of the platform should be able to look up and send messages to platform users. The chat should support presence awareness as well as the ability to store and forward message when users are unavailable or offline.

Part 5 – Response

5.1 Functional requirements

Solution providers responding to this RFI should provide answers to the following questions in the spaces provided. Please be as succinct as possible.

Requirement How does the proposed solution meet this requirement?

4.3.1

Portal / primary interface – A primary entry point to manage delivering BTO services to customers and partners, as well as access to other FSA programs and services with the long-term capacity to deliver FSA programs and services through the portal. This interface also must also provide a separate, configurable, public access portal. This public access portal must provide all customers (producers, ranchers, farmers, etc.) and partners (service providers) access to their stored information described in sec. 4.3.2 and 4.3.3. The ability to modify this information must be configurable.

4.3.2

Customer Profile – A comprehensive view of the customer’s agricultural situation, from basic contact information to their agricultural operation, to their interests and desires for the future.

Constructing such a profile will require access to customer information contained in various FSA Systems of Record (SORs) related to customer and program participation data. Allowing the customer to view and update their profile is desirable.

4.3.3

Partner Profile – A comprehensive view of partner organizations, including but not limited to the organizational mission, the programs, services, and information (i.e.

“resources”) provided, and individual contacts for specific areas of expertise within the organization.

Allowing partners to maintain their profile and available resources is highly desirable.

4.3.4.1

Resources – Provide information in varying forms (e.g., documents, videos, event information, seminars, educational opportunities, etc.)

offered by partner organizations immediately and directly to the customer.

4.3.4.2

Referral – Refer a customer to partner organization contacts that are in closest proximity to the customer that can provide one-on-one assistance to address the customer’s needs.

4.3.4.3

Facilitation – Facilitate partner-to-partner collaboration in response to customers’ needs and prevailing challenges faced by the local agricultural community. Event creation and management is a feature that will be utilized within this service. Additionally, an interactive and dynamic means to foster ongoing dialogue and collaboration between partner organizations would be ideal.

4.3.5

Analytics – The ability to analyze and evaluate customer needs and partner offerings to be responsive and proactive in serving the agricultural community; track customer, partner, and agency activity; determine trends and identify prevailing customer needs and challenges; and compile pertinent information (knowledge articles, etc.) that addresses agricultural concerns based on customer inquiries and partner collaboration.

4.3.6.1

Library – A means to store, maintain and access partner and FSA resources. Information may be in various forms, including structured and unstructured data.

4.3.6.2

Search – A natural-language search function that effectively retrieves the most pertinent and local resources relative to an individual customer’s interest. This search function should intelligently index content and associated metadata to provide highly relevant and target search results.

Further it should track content usage to increase accuracy of future searches.

4.3.6.3 Outputs – Provide a summary of customer services delivered to the customer that can be sent electronically.

4.3.6.4

Communication – Effective methods of communicating with customers and partners, deliver resources to customers, and facilitate ongoing dialogue between partners. This includes messaging (both internal to the system and using email), SMS/Text, live web chat, etc.

4.3.6.5

Events – A means of creating and managing events for partners and customers (mass invites, RSVP, follow-up evaluation, etc.). This feature should include the ability to attach collateral and resources to events. Event management can be initiated by internal (FSA) resources and partner resources

4.3.7

FSA Service Tracking – A means for employees working with all FSA programs, services and applications to establish and maintain a comprehensive case management service for customers and partners. In particular, providing a “Receipt for Service” (RFS) application within the Solution is highly desirable. The receipt for service should be auto-populated with customer information from SORs and service information should be auto-populated as much as possible from activities taken by the county office representative. A well implemented auto-population significantly reduce manual information entry.

4.3.8

FSA Service Chat – A real-time messaging interface that allows county office personnel to exchange and save conversations. All users of the platform should be able to look up and send messages to platform users. The chat should support presence awareness as well as the ability to store and forward message when users are unavailable or offline.

4.3.9

Data access - Data access should be provided by the solution natively and be accessible by the FSA at any point for any reason. Unrestricted access to this data should be provided in the normal cost of the platform and should not incur any additional and/or separate fees.

4.3.10

Scalability - The BTO application will house profile information for about two million customers, be accessed by about thirteen thousand (13,000) FSA County Office Employees, and receive and store content from five thousand (5,000) service partners.

5.2 Solution Components

Please provide a functional component diagram of the primary solution components and their relationships as well as a brief summary. All components listed in the costs section of this RFI should be depicted in this diagram for functional reference.

5.3 Deployment requirements

Please provide a brief description of the solution delivery process and rough order of magnitude (ROM) level of effort (LOE) given the solution requirements provided. This should include efforts related to discovery and design, development/integration, deployment, testing, and production roll-out. For solutions that require infrastructure to be purchased separately, estimates on infrastructure requirements and alternatives should also be provided. This narrative should also cover ROM delivery time line estimates as well.

5.4 Risks, Issues, Gaps?

Please provide any specific additional information regarding this solution that the FSA should be aware of when reviewing this and other RFI responses. This section should include risks, issues, gaps, that solution evaluation teams may not be aware of.

5.5 Scalability / Load test information

In sec. 4.3.9 of this questionnaire respondents are asked to explain how their proposed solution will scale to meet the demands of this initiative. Please provide specific load test scenarios performed on the proposed solution and provide any relevant examples of similar solutions deployed using the same technology implementation.

5.6 Demo / Screenshots / Wireframes

Please provide a visual demonstration of how the proposed solution would meet the requirements presented in this RFI. Still pictures/slides and/or links to online content, may be attached below and/or referenced and bundled with RFI responses.

5.7 Costs

Please provide an estimate of the costs associated with procuring, developing and deploying the solution proposed. Responses should be comprehensive and outline expected costs for the first three years.