Section 6 - Standard Forms of Contract

Request for Expressions of Interest

Consulting Services- Firm Selections

Ministry of National Economy

Government Services for Business Development

Developing of the MONE PORTAL AND E-SERVICES

Reference No. CS14

The Ministry of National economy (MONE) now invites eligible qualified consulting firms (“Consultants”) for designing and implementing the MONE portal and e-services. The firm will be responsible for building Portal and e-services engine and platform. The firm needs to work closely with the MoNE ICT team to make sure that the portal will be designed according to objectives of the project within 8 months. Interested Consultants should provide information demonstrating that they have the required qualifications and relevant experience to perform the Services. The short listing criteria are:

· The firm should have experience in ASP.Net web development for at least 5 years;

· The firm should be specialized in e-services development;

· The firm should have proven experience working with developing web portals and e-services;

· The availability of appropriate skills among staff in the firm;

The attention of interested Consultants is drawn to paragraph 1.9 of the World Bank’s Guidelines: Selection and Employment of Consultants under IBRD Loans and IDA Credits & Grants by World Bank Borrowers dated January 2011(“Consultant Guidelines”), setting forth the World Bank’s policy on conflict of interest.

Consultants may associate with other firms in the form of a joint venture or a sub consultancy to enhance their qualifications.

A Consultant will be selected in accordance with the Quality Cost Based Selection (QCBS) method set out in the Consultant Guidelines.

Further information can be obtained at the address below during office hours from 9:00 am to 2:00 pm.

Expressions of interest must be delivered in a written form to the address below (in person, by fax, or by e-mail by October 29, 2014.

The address referred to above is:

Ministry of National Economy- Ramallah-

Al Masyoun- Ministries Compound- near Supermarket BRAVO

Mrs. Ohoud Hammad

1st floor- PIU

Fax: 02-2981219

Email:

Dr. Mohammad Mustafa

Minister of National Economy
Annex A: Terms of Reference

Government Services for Business

Development Project (GSBD)

Developing the Ministry of National Economy (MoNE)

Web Portal and E-Services - NO.:CS14/2014

Background

The Palestine Liberation Organization, for the benefit of the Palestinian Authority has received financing from The World Bank, International Development Association towards the cost of the Government Services Business Development Project (the Project). The Project aims to improve MoNE’s ability to deliver timely, efficient, and quality business development information and services to citizens, including to MSMEs, women business owners and other marginalized groups, to facilitate business start-up and development by a) establishing an institutional unit (Business Development Unit) responsible for consolidating and disseminating analysis and information related to business development and developing a Ministry-wide Business Development Strategy and Implementation Plan; and b) by creating a Government-to-Business Platform (G2B) to provide high-quality services and information to businesses.

MoNE is theimplementingagency for this project.A Business Development Unit (BDU) has been created in MoNE to provide business related information, data and services to companies and oversee MoNE’s business development agenda.The BDU is part of the Private Sector Development Unit in MoNE’s new structure, and includes international and local experts.

MoNE is currently running a website that provides information about MoNE news and events and some e-services to public. To provide better services to public as well as other customers that would benefit from the information being provided by the ministry, the MoNE is planning to build new advanced web portal and
e-services to further improve the quality of service to public as well as external stakeholders. Once fully operational, the portal and e-services shall be the single point of entry in transacting business with MoNE.

I. Duration of the Contract

The contract for the portal development and e-services shall be 8 months commencing January 1,2015 and continuing through August 30, 2015.

II. Assignment Objective

MONE is appointing a qualified Consultant firm to be responsible for designing and implementing the MONE portal and e-services. The firm will be responsible for building Portal and e-services engine and platform. The firm needs to work closely with the MoNE ICT team to make sure that the portal will be designed according to objectives of the project and according to proposed duration.

III. Scope of Work

3.1 Concept of Operation

The development and deployment of the MoNE Portal shall be the responsibility of the FIRM. The software license should be compatible with MoNE existing hardware platform and operating system that run Microsoft Windows platform on advanced servers technology and specifications such as dual CPUs/4 cores.

Portal development shall be dynamic using ASP.Net MVC framework using XML standards and presenting layers architecture such as presentation, business and data access, security, resource layers.

3.2 Portal Development

The CONSULTANT FIRM shall deliver and make operational the following within eight (8) months upon signing the contract:

3.2.1 Re-design MoNE prevailing website user interface (enhance thematic design) to suit the needs of the new modernization design; Consultant firm should provide the MONE with 4 suggested designs to choose.

3.2.2 Provide (Arabic, English) interface.

3.2.3 Provide easy look and feel interface with some light flashes and menus, navigation bars and template design;

3.2.4 Provide "How To" channel and its contents that will detail a step-by-step procedure for most MoNE services and availing e-services complete with its document requirements, registration and e-forms to be submitted;

3.2.5 Enhance search engine facility (similar to Google Search) to allow search of various content types including but not limited to HTML pages and acrobat files;

3.2.6 Provide a channel that will allow employees (internal or external) to securely upload and download files and attachments and access MoNE internal information such as circulations, HR data such as employee profile, upload vacations, review annual leaves balance, monitor staff attendance … etc
(see annex1).

3.2.7 Enhance facility for re-setting/change of password;

3.2.8 Provide a channel that will allow MoNE to publish news and announcements. News and announcements must be time bound i.e., must automatically revert back to default content once the display period has expired;

3.2.9 Provide a channel that will allow MoNE to publish articles, bulletins, decisions, publications, photos via photo gallery components and publish laws, economic papers, statistics, complaint module…etc with log file to register a cumulative number of unique hits on some visited topics.

3.2.10 Provide a channel to include Ministry important link.

3.3 Systems Integration

The CONSULTANT FIRM shall deliver and make operational the following within a period of eight (8) months upon signing of contract:

3.3.1 Provide single sign-on functionality with MONE e-services. It must allow other existing and future e-services of the ministry to do single sign-on using the same infrastructure.

3.3.2 Allow MONE personnel to access email through the MONE Portal.

3.3.3 Development of e-services should be compatible with ZONAR national standard http://zinnar.pna.ps.

3.3.4 Provide web services pool structure to enable MONE to exchange data with other stakeholders.

3.3.5 Portal should provide some pages to keep demographic information on customers when asking about some information and services (popup pages).
The demographic information should include:

a. Name

b. Address

c. Mobile

d. Size (micro/ small/ medium/ large) based on our national definition

e. Ownership (male/ female)

f. Sector

3.3.6 Provide list of e-services to MoNE

1. Company registration module that allow user to register company online and track all registration and certificate issuing steps;

Company registration procedure should be fully computerized through the following steps

Step 1: Name Reservation

The proposed name for the company must be approved first;
MoNE e-services should provide a customer with a full
searching capability based on multiple searching criteria
(search by name, type, location, goals, etc) (see annex2)

Step2: Register Company

Once the name has been approved, the filing of the incorporation

Request should be complemented online (see annex3)

Step3: Generate Certificate of Registration

Company registration certificate should be generated automatically
and include company registration number and all needed
information (see annex4).

Step4: MoNE e-services should provide customer with a complete
follow up and amendments facilities to his/her company profile such
company activities and ownership (see annex5).

2. Trademarks registration and tracing should be fully computerized and all requests should be complemented online with full searching capabilities (see annex6).

3. Develop new e-objection system that enables customer to intercept
on companies, trademarks … etc (see annex7).

4. Develop a list of e-services related to
1. Factory Registration, modification, renew, enquiry (see anex8)

2. Certificate of Origin (see annex9)

3. Agency Record Registration, modification, renew, enquiry
(see annex10)
4. Trademark enquiry, transfer of ownership, receiving objections

(See annex11)
5. Renew company's certificate

6. Statistical reports
7. Issuance of Import license (See annex12)

8. Import license (See annex13)

9. Trader registration (see annex 14)

10. Trade Registration (see annex 15)

(See MoNE service manual at
http://www.mne.gov.ps/pdf/daleel.pdf)

The MoNE Portal should be accessed through user identity management. The identity management should be achieved by providing customers with user name and password; users need to fill new registration form contains all required personal fields and then process e-services requirements and instructions with log file to register accumulative number of hits and changes.

3.4 User Acceptance

The CONSULTANT FIRM shall provide the MONE’s Acceptance Team with the UAT Test Plan and Test Cycles one (1) week before the conduct of the UAT as approved by MONE and pass the User's Acceptance Test within five (3) months from receipt of Notice to proceed as evidenced by a Certificate of Acceptance and/or Ready for Use.

The CONSULTANT FIRM shall use MoNE familiar and compatible Development and Management Tool (Rational Testing) for the UAT and shall undergo the Application Scanning as part of the UAT.

3.5 Capacity Building: Technology Transfer and Training

3.5.1 Technical Training

The CONSULTANT FIRM shall provide technology transfer to at least three (3)
MONE IT personnel at no additional cost to the MONE upon final version
acceptance.

Technical training shall include the following courses:

- Web/Portal Design and Development (at least 16 hours)

- Portal Systems Administration (at least 16 hours)

- Content Management Systems Administration (at least 20 hours)

3.5.2 End User Training

The CONSULTANT FIRM shall provide end user training to at least ten (10) MONE personnel at no additional cost to the MONE within sixty (60) calendar days upon acceptance (at least 20 hours).

3.6 Technical Support

3.6.1 The CONSULTANT FIRM shall provide technical support via telephone/fax, on-site assistance to resolve technical and other related problems. Resolution can be delivered in the form of telephone, electronic and/or on-site resolution. It shall refer to a condition wherein the reported problem is resolved by the CONSULTANT FIRM to the satisfaction of the MONE. Problem and resolution shall be logged in the MONE Help Desk.

3.6.2 The CONSULTANT FIRM shall meet with some users from MoNE and some private sector actors, investors and business owners to test the actual implementation of e-services and user interface.

IV. Expected Deliverables

4.1 Inception Report Development; and monthly Progress Reports

The firm shall submit an Inception Report fifteen (15) calendar days from signing the contract.

The firm shall submit a monthly progress report by the end of each month respectively.

4.2 Portal Source Code, design, database schema and structure

The CONSULTANT FIRM shall deliver to MoNE a running portal source code with all components, packages and dlls used in the portal development and implementation including database schema and structure.

Source code shall be documented and implementing one of source code
international standard

Source code and all related documents shall be submitted 8 months after
signing the contract

4.3 Development tools and database licenses

The CONSULTANT FIRM shall develop and implement MONE web portal and e-services using a licensing Microsoft Visual Studio 2013 Professional Edition with MSDN as main development tool and a licensing Microsoft SQL server 2012 Enterprise Edition (2CPU- 4 cores) as database engine ,and the consultant firm shall purchase the mentioned development tools and licensing to be owned by the MONE.

4.4 Documentation

The CONSULTANT FIRM shall provide Technical Documentation of developed portal

4.4.1 User Manual

4.4.2 Functional Specifications

4.4.3 Technical Specifications including database structure and design.

4.4.4 Program Specifications and Source Codes

All succeeding changes to the system shall be incorporated in the corresponding system documentation(s).

The CONSULTANT FIRM shall use the familiar and compatible Development and Management Tool (Rational Documentation) for the systems documentation.

A Certificate of Acceptance shall be issued by the MONE as proof of the acceptability of the said documentation.

All documentations shall be submitted 2 weeks after final version of portal software installed and implemented.

V. CLIENTS INPUT AND COUNTERPART PERSONNEL
(a) Services, facilities and property to be made available to the Consultant firm by the
Client:

· Desks and other needed facilities at the MONE premises

· PIU will provide the required facilities and service to the firm and the experts when needed

· IT unit will provide the required training on existing database and services to the firm expert when needed.

· IT unit will provide the required e-services procedures and structures

· IT unit will provide needed information and data related to portal content and structure.

(b) Professional and support counterpart personnel to be assigned by the Client to the Consultant firm’s team:

· The communication team at the MoNE

· The BDU relevant staff

· MoNE IT unit relevant staff

· The concerned department's representatives at the MoNE.

VI. Team Composition &Qualification Requirements for the Key Experts (and any other requirements which will be used for evaluating the Key Experts