IT software development services

Tender description

SEEMiS Group LLP (“SEEMiS”)is a Limited Liability Partnership owned and managed by Scotland's 32 local authorities. SEEMiS is seeking to co-develop a replacement system for the existing education management system used throughout Scotland by Educational Establishments. SEEMiS is seeking a co-developer, to develop a replacement for its existing Management Information System (“Existing MiS”). The replacement exercise is known as the “Next Generation” project, and the replacement system is known as the “Next Generation System”. Existing MiS: The Existing MiS is used by all of Scotland’s 32 local authorities in order to manage their nurseries, primary schools and secondary schools. It is accessed by 47 000 active users, and processes records for 2500 schools / nurseries and 670 000 active students. Each of the 32 local authorities is a member of SEEMiS (each a “Member”). The Existing MiS holds the “Golden Record” for all children in Scottish Local Authority education, from nursery through to completion of their education. It holds several million additional, archived records. The Existing MiS has been in operation for a number of years. It is based on a range of technologies including SQL Server, JAVA, JBoss and Glassfish. It delivers a solution providing, but not limited to, the following key functionality: — Core School Administration: Enrolments and Placements, Student Records, Attendance, Timetabling, Staff Records, School Calendar, Staff Allocation, Notifications and Messaging, Behaviour Support etc., — Payment Management and Associated Feeds: processing of applications for e.g. EMA, Clothing and Grants etc., — Wellbeing: planning and supporting the wellbeing of children, — Business Intelligence: management information reporting on finance, SQA results, Attendance, Census etc., — Nursery Administration: management of nurseries including applications, — Monitoring and Reporting: pupil attainment monitoring and reporting, — Supply Teacher Booking: records of supply teachers and associated booking, and — Pupil Transport: administration of home to school transport. Some of the technologies used in the Existing MiS are approaching end of life in terms of supportability. Next Generation System: The Next Generation System will replace the Existing MiS. As such it will need to provide much of the same functionality. SEEMiS will be the lead for all customer / Member engagement, including the elicitation of detailed functional requirements. SEEMiS will: i) conduct engagements with its customers / Members prior to the start date of the anticipated contract under this procurement (“the Contract”); and ii) engage with the successful bidder (“the Supplier”) to formulate a final agreed work programme for the Contract. The Next Generation System should be a “best of breed” solution that will build upon the high standards of service currently delivered and that will be responsive to emerging and future Local Authority / Education sector requirements. Fundamental to the Next Generation System is the provision of open standard based API’s that will allow for best of breed, secure integration to Member and third party systems / products. The Next Generation System must allow for rapid development of additional modules by SEEMIS, and should support a multi-tenant architecture (each of the 32 Members being the data controller for their own data). SEEMIS needs to be able to further develop / configure Next Generation System after the contract work advertised here is complete. The Next Generation System will have a minimum expected life of 10 years from go-live. That go live is scheduled for 24 months after the start date of the Contract.