Online educator credentialing, prep, & investigation system

The Colorado Department of Education is issuing a Request for Information on an online educator credentialing, preparation, and investigation system, with vendor responses due August 10, 2026 at noon Mountain Time. This is an RFI for planning purposes only and will not result in an award; CDE maintains an incumbent contract with Level Data, LLC through June 30, 2030 and has not determined whether or when a formal solicitation will follow.

The system must support educator licensing operations processing over 50,000 applications annually, issuing more than 41,000 licenses and authorizations across four license types with 60-plus endorsements, managing 18 authorization types including 40 Career and Technical Education credentials, and handling over 1,000 background investigation cases annually. The platform must manage approximately 93 megabytes of current educator data plus approximately 4 terabytes of supporting documentation in 3 to 4 million files, support 25 to 35 internal state users from CDE and the Attorney General's Office, and enable applicants to create single online profiles for multiple license applications. Key technical requirements include role-based access controls, audit trails, analytics and reporting, customizable workflows, public credential lookup, 99.999% uptime SLA, encryption at rest and in motion, and integration with external systems including the Colorado Bureau of Investigation, NASDTEC, myColorado App, Oracle Database, RITS, CORE, and Educational Testing Services Exam systems.

CDE seeks vendor feedback on COTS, MOTS, or SaaS web-based hosted platforms or custom-built solutions. Vendors must describe at least three similar state-level or statewide credentialing projects completed within the past five years. The system must comply with Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.1 at levels A and AA and all Colorado OIT accessibility standards, with vendors required to indemnify the state against non-compliance costs. All confidential state data must remain in secure United States facilities. Pricing submission is voluntary; vendors may respond to as many or as few of nine questions as applicable. Vendor responses remain confidential unless CDE later issues a formal solicitation resulting in award.