Standard letters system integrated with SEEMiS system

Tender description

Summary of the work Quotations are sought for a replacement solution to create and digitally store letters sent by schools to parents. SEEMiS provides an MIS solution that captures pupil information for 670,000 pupils attending 2500 schools in Scotland. A flexible customisable solution is desired Latest start date 15/04/2017 Why the Work is Being Done Quotations are sought for a solution to create and digitally store letters sent by schools to parents. SEEMiS provides an MIS solution that captures pupil information for 670,000 pupils attending 2500 schools in Scotland. An existing solution is currently provided by SEEMiS that allows school staff and local authority HQ staff to create bespoke word templates that "mail merges" information from the SEEMiS MIS and creates letters to be posted to parents. The letters are then stored as PDF format against the pupil record. The current solution has reached end of life and an improved solution is sought. Problem to Be Solved Users will be allowed to store word templates that incorporate information from an existing MIS. Restrictions in the access of information at a field level and user account level must be included in any solution. All letters sent should be digitally stored in a PDF format (preferred) and recorded against individual pupils. The solution does not require storage space; this will be provided by SEEMiS. Templates created at a local authority level will be available to all schools within that area. Batch processing including pdf conversion of 1000 letters is standard. Who Are the Users Current users are: school admin staff and local authority HQ education staff. Requirements: The system will handle templates up to 0.5 Mb in size. No data used in letter generation will be placed on the client machine, even temporarily. Access control relating to fields or groups of fields must be secured at the server end and not depend on the client software behaving in a compliant manner. Users will be able to customise individual letters with additional information. Document management including deletion and search facilities. Users will be able to preview letters before processing Existing Team SEEMiS is a SME software house (57) handling the full software development lifecycle. Any solution proposed must be configurable by SEEMiS to allow for data configuration Current Phase Not applicable Skills & Experience • Demonstrable experience of development of a solution that meets the scope of the works or an existing solution that meets scope • AGILE project methodology knowledge and experience • JAVA and SQL server development for any proposed system development • Experience of knowledge transfer to customers • ISO 27001 familiarity Nice to Haves Providing solutions for educational establishments Work Location At the suppliers location any meeting etc will be at the SEEMiS Group LLP , Hamilton, Scotland Working Arrangments We are flexible in the working arrangements we believe that a minimum of one meeting on site in Hamilton will be beneficial. We have video conferencing facilities that we will utilise. Expenses are limited to : £100 for hotel accommodation, £25 for meal allowance. All expenses must be submitted to SEEMiS. Any expenses must be pre-agreed Security Clearance dependant upon the solution proposed the supplier's staff may require PVG basic disclosure No. of Suppliers to Evaluate 3 Proposal Criteria • Solution proposed will be evaluated against the System Usability,customer data, Integrations, Performance and Reporting criteria listed below. Suppliers will provide responses to how they will achieve the requirements listed • System Usability : The system must have in-system help features available for users to access at any time. • System Usability:The system must have a configurable, customisable interface that Relevant Users and System Administrators can navigate and understand easily • System Usability : The system's interface must meet accessibility standards for users with special needs. It must be WCAG 2.0 compliant. • System Usability: The solution must allow users to specify selection criteria for letters for upto ten fields • Customer Data : The solution must record letters against individual pupil record.The solution must have security assigned at a user level to restrict access to view information • Customer Data : The solution must allow for additional information to be added to all letters generated from templates at the point of letter creation • Customer Data : The solution must allow for additional information to be added to a selected pupil letter generated from templates at the point of letter creation • Customer Data: Version control of templates must be implemented • Customer Data: Templates should have user rights assigned to prevent unauthorised changes. This should be at local authority level and school level • Customer Data: Templates created by local authorities should be pushed to all schools within that specific authority • Customer Data: The solution must have the facility to create letters for both parents when requested • Performance: The solution must specify the time required to generate ,store and retreive letters. • Reporting: The system must have effective basic reporting functionality which allows the Council to schedule reports and export to various file formats. • Audit log: The system must allow System Administrators to efficiently access and interrogate the audit trail and error log data. The system must have effective and efficient issue/error logging functionality. • Integrations: The solution must integrate with the SEEMiS MIS • Document Management: The solution must incorporate a document management solution that allows users to delete, view and retreive individual archived documents • Added Value: Please detail any other added value you propose to provide at no additional cost Cultural Fit Criteria • Specify how you propose to work with SEEMiS • How your experience with other public sector bodies will prove beneficial • What areas of this proposed development you have identified as risks Payment Approach Fixed price Evaluation Weighting Technical competence 55% Cultural fit 5% Price 40% Questions from Suppliers 1. QuestionDo you have an expected or desired budget range for this opportunity? ResponseWe are flexible in our budget approach. Suppliers can offer a customisable software solution (to be customised by SEEMiS or themselves) or a bespoke development the desired budget range is up to £70K 2. QuestionDoes the solution have to be based on Microsoft Word? ResponseThe current solution utilises word templates. Individual users can create templates and upload them to the systemWe are open to solutions so we will consider solutions that offer different technologies and different processes. 3. QuestionIs this opportunity's contract with SEEMiS Group LLP ResponseYes this is a contract opportunity for SEEMiS Group LLP that we will host/own and provide to our customers 4. QuestionCan you provide more details in terms of technology, web-based or desktop based, integration and hosting of the current solution with SEEMiS please. ResponseThe client is a thick Java client. It uses SOAP web services to invoke back-end services hosted on existing application servers (Glassfish v3). 5. QuestionIn addition of the storage provided by SEEMiS, would SEEMiS be procuring necessary software licenses for the proposed solution like Application Server, Web Server, Database server etc or can the existing licenses of SEEMiS be utilised for the proposed solution? ResponseSEEMiS will use existing licences for servers or procure additional licences if necessary. You should specify the costs for the procurement of licences in your tender offer. 6. QuestionIs there a requirement of Single Sign On to the proposed solution with SSO being provided by SEEMiS based on open standards? If that is not the case then how will the user provisioning and management work for the school based users and how would the synchronisation of data be done? ResponseSEEMiS does not offer any form of SSO currently. If the solution is provided as a user application then an appropriate option for authentication will need to be identified and delivered as part of the joint integration effort. If the solution is provided as a component to operate within the SEEMiS environment, then SEEMiS will take responsibility for authentication. 7. QuestionAs per the requirement, the letters are to be generated for pupils hence the data for 670K pupils would be required along with their parents. How would this data be made available ? Would the data be loaded one-off and update daily as SEEMiS would be the master data source or are there web-services which can be utilised for fetching the records of the pupil for the purpose of letter generation. The on-demand webservice call will have an impact on the letter generation. ResponseDue to the volume of data and the infrequency with which any one item will be ac cessed, preference would be for an on-demand query rather than a feed, accepting that performance must to be considered. There are no web services which could currently be used for such a query, so this work would constitute part of the joint integration effort Alternately the solution could be provided as a component to be operated directly within the SEEMiS environment obviating the need for inter-system communications. 8. QuestionWould the data of the school along with the local authority and the users be managed in the proposed solution? ResponseThis is not a requirement of the solution as these data are already managed within SEEMiS.