LSE Moodle migration to managed hosting service.

Tender description

Summary of the work LSE Moodle migration to managed hosting service. Expected Contract Length 2 years Latest start date Monday 1 May 2023 Budget Range Indicative budget: Migration £50,000 - £64,000. Annual costs thereafter £110,000 - £120,000 inclusive of hosting and support. Additional funding available for extra features e.g. bespoke theme development. Why the Work is Being Done Previously, LSE has maintained its own Moodle instances in AWS supported by an in-house dev ops and sys admin team. However, changes to staffing and increased reliance on Moodle across the school mean this solution is no longer viable. Moodle is used globally 24/7 throughout the year for teaching and learning. Students and staff expect a highly reliable service and up-to-date core features and plugins. The current system relies on temporary contractors and updates are limited to minimum necessary security patches, which is impacting the quality of the service for students and staff. Migration to a new hosting solution MUST be completed before September 2023 but ideally should be in place by summer 2023, allowing the possibility of a subsequent - or simultaneous - upgrade to Moodle 4.1. Currently, LSE uses Moodle 3.9, which is nearing end of life for security support. Problem to Be Solved The outsourced management of Moodle infrastructure will need to: - Provide LSE with two global, always available instances of Moodle that can support the expected traffic from LSE staff and students. - Remove from LSE all burden for managing any back-end infrastructure, code for Moodle or its plugins, database management, cloud security and AV checks etc - Provide an archiving solution that archives every moodle course for three years, allowing read-only access to staff and students with permission. - Create a 'clean' copy of every course for each academic year, removing student data but retaining files and activities. - Continue to support the functions necessary to teaching that are currently supported by a suite of third-party plugins (see attached documentation) - Keep Moodle up to date, including moving LSE to Moodle 4.1 as soon as possible. - Integrate with LSE's existing systems, especially the timetabling system, to ensure users can log in with their LSE credentials and be automatically added to the correct modules and groups each semester - Migrate the existing data from LSE's current main Moodle and short courses Moodle instances so that existing course design work is not lost. Who Are the Users As a Moodle Administrator I need: - Full administrator permissions in Moodle so I can support other users. - A testing environment exactly mirroring production settings so I can test plug-ins and workflows - To be able to retrieve back-up (mbv files) for all courses so that I can help users find lost material - To be able to retrieve or request older backups of courses (not just the most recent) so I can restore lost material - To be able to request new features (especially the addition of new plugins from the Moodle directory) to be added for my users. - To add LTI integrations to Moodle at the front end so that I can embed activities provided by other LSE partners. - To have a contact with whom I can quickly get in touch for support so that I can quickly escalate any issues that can't be handled by frontline support. NB - for additional users - see attachment Early Market Engagement Informal pre-tender market engagment involved contacting suppliers listed on moodle.org as certified partners for initial conversations. As a result, the following recommendations were incorportated into our requests for this project - A request for two separate Moodle instances for our regular and short course programmes. - An invitation for creative alternative solutions to the current model for archiving material from previous academic years. - LSE has provided detailed descriptions of our current Moodle environments (attached) in answer to supplier FAQs Work Already Done Moodle is very well established as LSE's VLE. It has been deployed in the cloud as infrastructure as code, since 2020. The features requested in this invitation represent the features needed to allow Moodle admin superusers in Eden Digital to continue supporting the service to the standards expected by 15k+ Moodle users across the school. Existing Team Supplier will work with LSE's Eden Digital team, who consist of: - a VLE manager, running LSE's side of the project and migration - Senior Learning Technologists will participate in testing and delivery. - A project manager and a communications manager will ensure the timeline and milestones are clear and that information is shared. - LSE's Data and Technology Services will also be available for consultation on integration with existing LSE systems such as timetabling, enrolment, and authentication, and to provide technical information when needed. No direct contact with any of these partners will be required. Current Phase Discovery Skills & Experience • Demonstrable experience providing Moodle cloud hosting to an educational institution - 20% • Minimum of three years' experience providing cloud hosting solutions for Moodle - 20% • Minimum of three years' experience in deploying infrastructure as code - 20% • Cloud compliance and security certified - minimum ISO 27001 - 10% • Experience providing a service for at least 4k concurrent users - 10% • Demonstrable experience in administering large MariaDB database (or equivalent) - 10% • Previous experience migrating data from an existing Moodle instance - 10% Nice to Haves • Demonstrable experience providing Moodle cloud hosting for a UK Higher Education Institution - 35% • In-house Moodle developers - 35% • History of contributing new plugins or solutions to the Moodle open source community - 10% • Experience working with a UK university to develop bespoke features for Moodle - 10% • In-house theme developers with expertise in UX and design - 10% Work Location N/A Working Arrangments The supplier will work remotely to provide this service. In the first stage of the project, meeting regularly with VLE manager to discuss the timeline and milestones of the project. Weekly meetings via Zoom to set and track tasks to complete migration. For the migration itself, the supplier and project team will agree a window of downtime in which this can take place (outside of standard working hours, if possible). Once migration has been completed and we move to BAU, the supplier will offer support and troubleshooting via live support (8am - 6pm, London time). Security Clearance Baseline Personnel Security Standard (BPSS) Additional T&Cs No additional terms and conditions No. of Suppliers to Evaluate 4 Proposal Criteria • Archiving (6%) • Upgrades (6%) • Hosting (6%) • Migration (6%) • Availability (6%) • Recovery and Resilience (6%) • Security (6%) • Integration with other systems (6%) • Analytics (6%) • Moodle Refresh/Rollover (6%) • Historical archive (6%) • Course deletion (6%) • Course backup retrieval (6%) • Plugin/LTI support (6%) • Theme (6%) • Contingency - Can you take over management of LSE's existing AWS infrastructure as an interim step if a summer 2023 go-live date is not feasible? (5%) • Contingency - Does your solution include the option for LSE to remain on Moodle 3.9 until June 2024 if an upgrade cannot be completed during the summer break 2023? (5%) Cultural Fit Criteria • Can you describe your process for handling customer care escalations? (20%) • How would you collaborate with LSE when testing new plugins or features, and what data would you share? (20%) • How do you manage customer care during office hours and in emergency situations? (20%) • Do you offer opportunities for consultancy or collaborative development with your customers? (20%) • If we were to partner with you to develop new plugins or features, how do you ensure that they are available for the wider Moodle community to use? (10%) • Do you provide opportunities for your customers to share expertise and collaborate with your developers to improve Moodle for everyone in the education sector? (10%) Payment Approach Fixed price Assessment Method • Reference • Presentation Evaluation Weighting Technical competence 45% Cultural fit 5% Price 50% Questions from Suppliers No questions have been answered yet.