To all vendors who responded to RFP #3303 for Consulting Services:
Please review the attached additional questions and responses submitted in response to the Letter of Configuration issued on 12/5/03 on behalf of Mississippi Employment Security Commission for website/portal development services.
If you have any additional questions or concerns, please feel free to contact me via email.
Question 1
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Vendor Question 8: The response refers vendors to the following link to get information on the State's guidelines on archival of public records.
We did not find the guidelines on this specific page or when dug more deeply into the site. Can you provide us the specific page or can we contact the MDAH directly to get the guidelines? In general we want to ensure we are not breaking any RFP guidelines by contacting State agencies other than MESC.
You may contact the Dept. of Archives and Historyregarding the guidelines for the archival of public records. The email address is : . The phone number is: (601) 576-6850.
Question 2
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LOC Sect. 9: This section says the portal configuration environment using UNIX servers. What flavor and version of UNIX is MESC planning to use? (i.e. AIX ver. 5.2,
HP-UX ver. 11i, etc.) This could impact what software vendors are able to use and how that software operates.
Unix servers to be used by MESC will be IBM p-series running AIX 5.2.
Question 3
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In the LOC, the last sentence of Item 5.3 states "Financial reports for the last two completed fiscal years shall be included in responses." Private companies consider their financial information very sensitive and proprietary. Having submitted several competitive bids over the past few years we understand that many times all information submitted becomes part of the public record. In this specific LOC is it possible for the State of Mississippi to keep the financial records a vendor provides confidential? Can the financial documents be provided separate from the LOC response? If they are provided under separate cover would this make a difference as to whether the State is able to keep them confidential?
As stated above, all information submitted in response to an RFP or LOC does become part of the public record. Providing the information under separate cover does not make a difference as to confidentiality, it would all be considered part of the project file. However, all requests to review information related to a bid must be submitted to ITS under an 'open records request' process. Prior to ITS releasing any vendor-specific information, the target vendor is contacted and given the opportunity to obtain a court order blocking the release of the information. This is standard procedure and not difficult to obtain.