Web-based IEP and special ED mgmt system

The South Carolina Department of Education (SCDE) is seeking a comprehensive web-based Individualized Education Program (IEP) and Special Education Management System through a Request for Proposal (RFP) to serve 81 Local Education Agencies (LEAs), including three charter school districts, three Governor's schools, and two justice department districts, supporting approximately 110,000 students with disabilities ages 3-21. The procurement requires a solution that can either be a commercially available off-the-shelf (COTS) product hosted on-premise or a customized software solution that can be vendor/cloud-hosted, with mandatory functionality at Level 4 for data entry, document creation, local and state reporting, record sharing, training, and maintenance. The evaluation will be based on qualifications and experience (25 points), implementation plan (20 points), functionality requirements (20 points), proposal description (20 points), price (15 points), and live demonstration (25 points), totaling 125 possible points. Key submission dates include a proposal deadline of February 17, 2023, at 11:00 AM ET, with a pre-proposal conference held on January 5, 2023, via Teams web conference. Questions were due by January 9, 2023, at 10:00 AM ET, and the award notification is scheduled for April 13, 2023, with tentative live demonstrations planned for March 29-30, 2023.

The solicitation does not specify explicit set-aside designations or restrictions on responding organizations. The contract will be a multi-agency license agreement for all South Carolina LEAs and SCDE, with no restrictions on the number of users and role-based data access. Vendors must meet stringent security, privacy, and compliance requirements, including FERPA, IDEA, HIPAA compliance, Section 508 accessibility standards, and adherence to South Carolina's Enterprise Privacy Office and Division of Information Security policies. The system must support two-way communication with existing SCDE student information systems, including individual LEA Ed-Fi Operations Data Systems (ODS), and must comply with Common Education Data Standards (CEDS) and EdFacts reporting requirements. While no specific budget ceiling was announced, the contract term is seven years, consisting of an initial three-year term and four optional one-year renewal terms, with an estimated start date of April 25, 2023, and end date of April 24, 2030. Vendors are encouraged to propose competitive pricing for their solutions, with the state preferring in-house hosting but open to cloud-based solutions that best serve SCDE's needs.