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 RFI responses due August 17, 2026 at noon Mountain Time. This is market research only — no award will result from RFI responses — but CDE anticipates posting an RFP between October 2028 and January 2029, with contract execution targeted for July 1, 2029 and system go-live required by December 31, 2030.

The scope encompasses a cloud-hosted system supporting four primary license types (teacher, special services provider, principal, administrator) with over 60 endorsements, 18 authorization types, and 40 Career and Technical Education credentials. The system must accommodate approximately 600,000 educator users, 600 district users, 40 preparation program users, and 55–65 internal CDE and Attorney General's Office staff. Current data volumes include approximately 93 megabytes of educator data and 4 terabytes of supporting documentation across 3–4 million files requiring migration from the existing Microsoft SQL database.

Mandatory technical requirements include a 99.999% uptime service level agreement, multifactor authentication, encryption of data at rest and in transit, comprehensive role-based access controls with audit trails, WCAG 2.1 levels A and AA compliance, and disaster recovery capabilities meeting Colorado Office of Information Technology policies. The system must integrate with external systems including Colorado Bureau of Investigation LogiKCo, NASDTEC, and myColorado App, and internal systems including Oracle Database, CORE financial system, and Educational Testing Services. Payment processing must support Visa, MasterCard, American Express, Discover, and debit with a maximum 4% convenience fee cap and daily ACH deposits to the state treasurer. All personally identifiable information must be maintained in secure facilities within the United States.

CDE considers the current Level Data, LLC system, under contract through December 31, 2030, deficient — it fails to meet approximately 42 required functionalities and partially meets another 30. Vendors should address whether solutions should be COTS, MOTS, SaaS, or custom development, recommend implementation timelines, itemize costs separately for implementation and annual hosting/maintenance/licensing, and describe experience with at least three comparable state-level systems developed within the past five years. Pricing submission is voluntary. CDE will maintain RFI response confidentiality until after a subsequent award or determination not to proceed.