GRANTS MANAGEMENT SYSTEM

The South Carolina Department of Education (SCDE) is procuring a comprehensive, web-based grants management system through a Request for Proposal (RFP 5400020079) issued by the South Carolina Fiscal Accountability Authority. The system will serve SCDE offices, 70+ school districts, public schools, non-profits, and other applicants, with the primary objective of managing federal and state formula and discretionary grant applications. Specific functional requirements include needs assessment, grant application processing, budgeting, expenditure processing, compliance monitoring, and reporting capabilities. The system must interface with South Carolina's Enterprise Information System (SCEIS) for payment processing and support approximately 15-29 federal and state grant programs, including Title I through Title VII education grants, adult education, and career and technical education grants. Mandatory qualifications include that the base software must have been previously implemented for another distributing agency or educational entity, and the contractor must have been in business for a minimum of five years. The solicitation required submission of electronic technical and business proposals, with the original due date of October 1, 2020, and a non-mandatory pre-proposal conference held on September 1, 2020. The project has a targeted implementation completion date of June 1, 2021, with a contract period spanning an initial three years and potential for four additional annual renewals.

The procurement does not specify explicit set-aside designations or restrictions on responding organizations. The incumbent vendors include HMB (expired GEMS contract 4400016602) and 806 Technologies (expired Title1Crate contract 4400017152), both currently operating under extension agreements pending this procurement. The system must accommodate approximately 150 internal SCDE staff users, 1,350 district users, 125 community-based organization and higher education users, and 120 external grant scorers. Significant technical requirements include processing, storing, and hosting all government data within the continental United States, providing disaster recovery and business continuity planning, and implementing comprehensive security controls meeting NIST standards and South Carolina information security requirements. Contractors must carry liability insurance of $1,000,000 per occurrence for commercial general liability and $5,000,000 to $10,000,000 for information security and privacy coverage. The system must achieve a 99.999% availability standard and, if cloud-based, must have FedRAMP-certified infrastructure. While specific award values are not detailed, the contract allows for both contractor-hosted and state-hosted solution pricing across a potential seven-year contract period.