Backfile Conversioninitiative (Digital Conversion)

Respondent ______

CITY OF TACOMA

* RESPONSE FORM *

Request for ProposalIT16-0305F

Backfile ConversionInitiative (Digital Conversion)

Respondent ______

FIRM/PERSONNEL/REFERENCES/SUSTAINABILITY / Provide responses in the corresponding fields.
Executive Summary
Introduce and provide an overview of your submittal/proposal.
Provide a description and explanation of your underlying philosophy in providing these services.
Provide a short history and description of your firm, including organizational structure, areas/regions served, number of employees, number of years in business under current and previous names, including DBAs (doing business as), etc.
Provide background information of the parent company, if any.
Presence, if any, in Puget Sound/Pacific Northwest region.
Location of the office from which this work will be performed.
Documentation of corporate status and business licenses.
Name,title, email address, and telephone number of the person authorized to execute a contract on behalf of the Respondent.
Name, title, email address, and telephone number of the person who will be managing this Contract on behalf of the Respondent
Disclose any intention to utilize subcontractors to perform this work, and if so, provide similar information as above for identified subcontractors.
List any current or known forthcoming business ventures or related transactions such as proposed sale of company, buy-outs, acquisitions, mergers, new investors, etc., that may impact the business partner relationship with the City of Tacoma.
Disclose any affiliations or alliances that are in place with utility companies, software organizations, or other related firms.
Disclose involvement in any business litigation in the past five years, including whether your firm has, for legal reasons, been removed from a contract or failed to complete a contract as assigned.
Qualifications/Experience/Capacity of Firm
Describe your firm’s background, qualifications, relevant experience, and documented success as related to this Scope of Work, and municipal, county, state, or federal governments.
Provide additional information that will enable the City to evaluate the capabilities, track record, and financial stability of your firm. (Optional)
Answer yes or no to the following requirements about the facility where the documents will be stored and scanned and media conversion services performed:

• Air conditioned
• Security Alarm system
• Fire Sprinkler system
• Is your fire sprinkler system a wet or dry system
• Fire extinguishers marked in accordance with Fire Department regulations throughout the facility
• Will all City records be kept at least 2 feet above the floor while stored in your facility

Qualifications of Key Personnel to be Assigned to this Project (The personnel presented must be committed to this project for the expected term of the Contract.)
List key personnel that will manage and work this project including the relevant background and experience of the partners, managers, supervisors and other professional staff you propose to assign to this project.Include a brief biography or resume outlining the experience of each that will be involved.
Indicate the role(s) each individual will be assigned and the relative amounts of time that will be allocated.For example, clearly identify those that will be directly involved in the work or would act as a support resource.
Describe how you would assure the continuity of the assigned personnel during the term of this project
Proposed Methodology and Approach
Do you and/or your subcontractors create templates to capture scanned metadata or indexing?If yes, explain and provide or attach a clearly marked sample.
Describe how the template for imaged data is created either manually or automatically during the imaging process.
Describe your process for indexing digital images, and pictographic files, include details on any post processing.
Describe the approach you would use to prepare for and conduct Scan on Demand work while meeting the Scope of Work requirements of this RFP.
Describe the quality assurance procedures used by your firm.
Describe the City resources you would require to complete the task in the Scope of Work.
Describe how you will validate contract information and processing orders for digital imaging and services?This includes but is not limited to inquiries regarding billing, customer support and other contract administration issues.
Describe your flexible approach to differing file naming conventions used by different City Departments.What constraints would there be if any?
Describe your approach to interaction with City staff for unresolved incidents that may occur.
Describe your approach to end-to-end incident management and closed-loop problem resolution and reporting.Include a description of your minimum resolution time?Describe your approach and methodology to ensure incident resolution.
Describe your approach to delivery of organization-wide training.
Provide examples (or samples) of reports used in planning, tracking, executing, and communicating throughout the Scope of Work described in this RFP.
Technology to Perform and Secure the Work
Describe the redundancies of your hardware platform, supporting peripheral equipment, data communications, and software tools that facilitate backup and recovery systems.
Provide a technical description of portal access services for data retrieval.Include the storage size available to customers, how often it is refreshed, and what your procedures are for delinquent data to prevent data loss.
Provide the location and geographic diversity of your datacenter(s).Include the type and tier of datacenter.
Describe the type of connectivity and bandwidth required to access the City’s digitized data (dedicated lines vs. peer to peer (P2P) or virtual private network (VPN).
Describe your delivery method (web/published app/direct connection).Indicate the types of Application Program Interfaces (APIs) supported and if there are any user groups that share development efforts written to those APIs.
Describe your release cycles, if any and any lock in issues.Include how this would impact the City.
Provide details on the methodology or technology used to safeguard Image data from the scanner to the device accessed to retrieve the data.
Discuss how data is maintained within U.S. borders if you use cloud based transfer methods, including encryption for data in transit and at rest, and what (if any) data segmentation capabilities do you or your subcontractors possess.
Program Administration
Describe your turnaround process from pickup, imaging to return of documents.Include details on how PDRs or urgent need turnaround times affect price.Indicate what systems you have in place to meet customer demand
Will the contract support functions be handled by you or subcontracted to other companies?If the latter, provide information on the subcontractor’s responsibilities.
Provide the location of the responsible office that will perform the daily ongoing management of this Contract?
Service Level
Provide details of your support approach to digital imaging customer support.Does your approach include primary employees, contracted employees or both?
State whether there is any loss in quality when scanned images are created and what the average percentage of loss in quality is.The City desires loss of quality to not exceed one percent in converting to scanned images
Provide details regarding the recovery of corrupted data.Include the process to reimage data or recover, quality assurance, and return corrupted data
Provide details of how quickly your services can provide access to imaged data.
Provide details of how you track performance and product quality in order to facilitate service level agreements (SLA) and audits from customers.Indicate if you use a customer service support advisor.
How will account information be passed to new staff in the event of employee turnover to ensure the same level of service?
What method does your company use to remove wrinkles from documents before scanning?
What method does your company use to proper page orientation of final products for maximum readability?Include techniques for eliminating unnecessary blank pages for multi-page documents.
Discuss the imaging per hour volume of your equipment.Indicate how target document size affects the volume-per-hour rate and if there is any required set up time to change document sizes on your equipment.
Is there an additional charge to reassemble in the same order and return the document after scanning is complete?
Provide details on how you will prevent the loss of aged data that is unclaimed by customer.
Provide details on your approach to quality assurance to ensure that physical files are not misplaced during the imaging process.
Additional Information to be Submitted
Provide additional information that will enable the City to evaluate the capabilities, track record, and financial stability of your firm. (Optional)
Fees and Charges / Value
Breakdown imaging and microfilm charges and service related charges (shipping, document preparation, indexing, post production activities, etc.). Allow for cost accounting by City department for image-per-page costs.
Are indexing services billed by field, document, or keystroke?
Include a sample invoice to show method of billing for a sample project.
Describe any price discounts that may be available, e.g., prompt pay discount.
Describe the method or practice that will be used for billing this project, e.g., monthly, by request, by deliverable, etc.
References
Provide five or more recent client references able to verify your firm’s overall expertise for this scope of work, preferably at least two of which would be related to public sector clients.The clients should have worked with your firm within the last three years.For each reference provide the following information:

• Company name and description of primary business
• Website address, if applicable
• Contact person(s) and title
• Address
• Phone number
• Email address
• Description of services provided
• Location where services were performed
• Dates of service

Small Business enterprise (SBE) / Minority and Women’s Business
Respondent is a City of Tacoma certified SBE firm.
Yes / No
Respondent is partnering with a qualified City of Tacoma certified SBE firm. Yes / No
Respondent is a certified state of Washington Minority and Women’s Business Enterprise. Yes / No
Respondent is partnering with a certified state of Washington Minority and Women’s Business Enterprise. Yes / No
Sustainability Efforts
Demonstrate your firm’s commitment to providing the services identified in this RFP in a sustainable manner.What measures will your firm take to minimize impacts to the environment in the delivery of these services?Provide details of efforts, practices, and/or processes.
Demonstrate your firm's commitment to sustainable business practices, which could include, but is not limited to a formal sustainability program and/or policies covering recycling measures, energy conservation plans, water conservation policies, a green cleaning policy.Please provide details and include copies of reports, policies or plans if available.
Credit Card Acceptance – EFT/ACH Acceptance
Provide a statement regarding your ability to meet the City’s credit card requirements as well as identifying your reporting capabilities (Level I, II, or III).
Provide a statement regarding your ability to accept payment by electronic funds transfer (EFT) by Automated Clearing House (ACH).
Exceptions
Detail proposed alternative forms of contract or exceptions, if any, to the City of Tacoma Professional Contract (Appendix B).
Detail proposed exceptions, if any, to City of Tacoma Standard Terms and Conditions (Appendix C).

IT16-0305FResponse Form1

Respondent ______

REQUIREMENTS / Will be Performed as Specified or Better /
Describe Exceptions
Scope
Provide document imaging/scanning services with indexing and proper orientation of film, geospatial, microfiche, microfilm, paper, and pictographic, and reversal film documents, with dimensions 3”x5”, 8½”x11”, 8½”x14”, 11”x17”, and 24”x36”.
Provide document preparation, including, but not limited to, removing all staples and paperclips, repair all torn documents with non-reflective tape, straighten all folded plans and mount any irregular size memorandum on standard 8½” x11” paper and otherwise make the documents ready for processing, as necessary to scan all files.
Metrics
Provide resolution of imaged data willbe a minimum of 300 DPI or higher for those documents where it is required to meet the quality requirements.The returned data willbe in in an electronic format required by, or acceptable to, the City.The City’s preference for retrieval of digitized data is a secure, permissions based portal with attached cloud storage.
Meet a turnaround time of two weeks, not to exceed one month, for processing of archive data prior to return of digitized data and files to departmental point of contact (POC).
Meet a turnaround time not to exceed 72 hours, for processing of scan-on-demand files prior to return of digitized data and files to departmental POC.

Provide to the City reports comparing the documents provided to the final output with each product delivery. Examples of reports could include, but are not limited to:

• Final output in relation to Quality Control IAW the City’s requirements.
• Requested turnaround time compared to actual turnaround time.
• Any issues that affect the City’s ability to access or obtain digitized data.
• Disclosure of any breaches while in possession of City data.
• Acceptance rate of documents vs. non acceptance.
• Start-to-end resolution times for escalation of issues.

Technical Requirement
Provide optical character recognition (OCR) services that provide an accurate conversion of image data into a searchable PDF or TIFF format.
Provide services in accordance with standards set by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) and Association for Information and Image Management (AIIM).
Provide Scanned Short Term (retention rate of less than six years) images in an acceptable file format such as TIFF (Group IV for Black & White (bitonal) images; Group V for grayscale and color Images), or PDF, PDF/A at 300 DPI or higher for those documents where it is required to meet the quality requirements.Individual file size is not to exceed 150 MB.
Provide Scanned Long Term (retention rate of more than six years) images in an acceptable lossless file format such as TIFF (Group IV for Black & White (bitonal) images; Group V for grayscale and color Images) at 300 DPI or higher for those documents where it is required to meet the quality requirements.Individual file size is not to exceed 150 MB.
Handling and Receiving
Meet requirements for handling sensitive or privileged information and/or data such as Personally Identifiable Information (PII), Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), intellectual property, or other confidential, proprietary, or sensitive data.Requirements may include, but are not limited to, a Non-Disclosure Agreement, and/ or Business Associates Agreement.
Meet requirements for handling data with additional security requirements such asCritical Infrastructure Protocols (CIP), Western Electricity Coordinating Council (WECC), Criminal Justice Information Systems (CJIS) information, which may include, but are not limited to, fingerprinting, background check, a Non-Disclosure Agreement, and/or a Business Security Agreement
Provide transport of all City documents in closed, preferably climate controlled vehicles.
Provide pick-up and delivery of City documents at City designated locations.
Provide accurate inventory and location of all City documents, with any discrepancies being resolved with the escalation procedure.
Provide immediate return of files or reprioritization to facilitate imaging and prompt return similar to the scan on demand requirements.
Quality Control
Preserve all data in identical or functional equal to the original record, provide maximum readability and post processing digital images.
Segment and associate multiple files when a single file exceeds 150MB maintaining the unique file name specified by the City department POC.
Report to the City all images that cannot meet benchmark specificationsfor discussion and instruction.
Meet City expectation of not scanning blank documents, with the exception of a page that is marked intentionally left blank.
Desired Services as Needed
Provide digital conversion of film, reversal film, microfiche, and/or microfilm to multi group-IV tagged image file format with a minimum of 300 DPI and individual file size is not to exceed 150 MB.
Provide digitized video services with indexing at 720x486 pixels at 30 frames per second, a minimum 8 bits per channel, with audio tracks being recorded at 48 KHz or higher where required to meet the quality requirements.Desired lossless format is MPEG4 and the file header shall remain in non-proprietary format.
Provide digitized audio services with indexing at 44.1 KHz, bit depth of 16 or higher where required to meet the quality requirements with the file header remaining in non-proprietary format.Indicate if you can provide preferred quality is 96KHz at a bit depth of 24 inMPEG4 format,
Provide intelligent character recognition (ICR) Servicesto accurately capture of handwritten data into a searchable PDF or TIFF Format.
Provide options for documents that cannot be removed from their resident city department, such as on-site or mobile solutions.
Provide services on maintained and calibrated systems IAW ANSI/AIIM MS44-1988 (R1993) Recommended Practice for Quality Control Image Scanners.
Provide microfilm following the Washington State Microfilming Standards while ensuring microfilm identification dataPresent microfilm back file in a silver-halide 16mm form.
Regulations
Provide services in accordance with Chapter 434-662 WAC and 434-663 WAC, RCW 40.14.040 and all applicable laws and standards issued by the state of Washington.

IT16-0305FResponse Form1

Respondent ______

TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS / Will be Performed as Specified or Better /
Describe Exceptions
Security
Define and deploy a secure configuration for the application, frameworks, application server, web server, database server, and platform. This includes keeping all software up-to-date, including all code libraries used by the application and underlying operating system.
Use secured direct object references to an internal implementation object, such as a file, directory, or database key.
Use Trusted Transport Layer Security (TSL) certificates to protect secure transmissions of logins and secure data.
Additional data willnot be added to City documents during scanning process unless specified in this contract or required by federal, state,or local laws.
Perform checks on URL access rights before rendering protected links and buttons each time these pages are accessed.
Prevent sensitive data exposure by utilizing standard encryption mechanisms for both data in transit and at rest (e.g., AES-256, TLS).
Describe what (if any) portal or cloud services you provide for customer access to imaged data. Include storage size, access methods, and duration of cloud services.

IT16-0305FResponse Form1