Dept of Education Website Content Management System

The South Dakota Department of Education is requesting competitive proposals for a modern, state-hosted Content Management System to replace legacy platforms supporting doe.sd.gov, history.sd.gov, and library.sd.gov, with proposals due August 28, 2026, and questions due July 31, 2026 under RFP 26RFP19882.

The scope includes a drag-and-drop editing interface, role-based administrative controls, ADA/Section 508 compliance, mobile-friendly design, payment processing integration with Converge/Elavon, newsletter functionality for approximately 10,000 users, PowerBI-compatible data visualization, embedded translation, and analytics including document tracking. The awardee must design 2–3 mock website templates, assist with content migration from existing sites, facilitate user testing, provide training and documentation, and deliver 90 days of post-launch technical support. Implementation is phased: discovery, CMS setup, content migration, feature integration, testing, training, and go-live support. Proposals must address three separate hosting options — vendor-hosted, state on-premises, and state cloud PaaS — with distinct cost models for each.

Critical IT compliance mandates are established by South Dakota's Bureau of Information and Telecommunications (Exhibit D) and include SOC 2 Type II audit compliance or FedRAMP certification, encryption at AES256 with SHA256 hashing minimum, Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.1 Level AA, single sign-on via OAuth 2.0, annual web application vulnerability scans against OWASP Top 10, multi-factor authentication, and data residency restricted to continental United States. Vendors must support security assessments against CVE/CWE standards, complete an incident response plan with defined timeframes (7 days for critical/high issues, 14 days for medium, 30 days for low), and disclose all AI tool integration and data handling. Contractors must certify compliance with South Dakota Executive Order 2023-02 excluding ownership or control by foreign nationals or governments from China, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Russia, or Venezuela.

The estimated contract term runs September 1, 2026, through August 30, 2031, with three optional one-year renewals. The State anticipates award in September/October 2026. Evaluation criteria weight cost and reliability at 20 points, experience/qualifications/approach at 25 points, available resources at 15 points, past performance at 10 points, project locale familiarity at 5 points, project management techniques at 15 points, and ability to handle special constraints at 10 points. Mandatory insurance includes commercial general liability ($1 million per occurrence), professional liability ($1 million), and cyber liability ($1 million). Questions should be directed to Rochelle Kenzy at Rochelle.Kenzy@state.sd.us with subject line "RFP#26RFP19882"; all responses distributed by August 14, 2026.