In a Request for Qualifications issued Aug. 19, the city of Los Angeles’ Information Technology Agency (ITA) wants to hear from tech companies capable of providing “application and cloud professional services” and “the services of high-quality contract staff” to ITA and other city departments as needed. Among the takeaways:
• The intent, the city said, is to pre-qualify companies that can offer contract staff to ITA in “two distinct situations”: temporary work that doesn’t justify permanent hiring; and situations that “require unique skill sets in various aspects” of IT and cloud computing. ITA is the lead city department in developing and implementing “a common centralized enterprise infrastructure and enterprise design” for the development and implementation of “various city applications,” per the RFQ. The agency also works with other city departments and bureaus to develop “approved decentralized implementations consistent with the common standards of infrastructure,” to bring departments “into the enterprise model in phases utilizing the centralized infrastructure model … .”
• The RFQ is the first of a two-phase procurement process, with the second phase being the bid and award of work orders. Those that pre-qualify through the RFQ “will be awarded a pre-qualified contract for as-needed services (contract) by ITA.” Then, as needed, ITA will seek bids or responses from those firms for the services needed; and the bid or response then selected will be “incorporated and made a part of the applicable pre-qualified contract.” Other city departments can also then contract with the pre-qualified firms. However, any pact doesn’t commit the city “to award any as-needed work orders for any projects to any pre-qualified firm” — and the city may still contract with firms not on the list.
• ITA seeks responses from companies interested in providing services in one or more of these areas of qualification: Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) Forms; OpenText Documentum; Drupal Development and Support; Case Management (CM)/Customer Relations Management (CRM); Oracle WebCenter and Siebel Services; Custom app/dev using PHP, Python, .NET, Java and Native Mobile App; graphics and media; hosted cloud environment services; and data science and analytics.
In AEM, respondents must provide “comprehensive strategy, roadmap, and solutions” to comply with various AEM Forms design and development requirements; and must have done at least three major AEM Forms projects — mission-critical and with a budget of at least $1 million — in the last five years. Those selected may help L.A. install, upgrade or expand citywide or departmental AEM system infrastructure architectures. Respondents with Documentum app/dev experience must have a similar experience level and may wind up assisting the city similarly. They’ll also need at least five years’ experience developing apps “that extend the capability of the default out-of-the-box features of the underlying Documentum products to suit specific departmental business requirements and produce a client-desired application … .” In Drupal, respondents must have at least three years’ experience, have completed major projects and have extensive history developing Drupal websites for organizations that employ more than 500; and providing training and knowledge transfer to developers after delivery and launch. ITA began using Drupal as its preferred Content Management System in 2014, per the RFQ, and the agency has done more than 40 websites including “its most high-profile websites such as lacity.org and lamayor.org.”
• The contract term for these engagements will be three years, with a city option of two one-year extensions. ITA intends to award the new contract to the top two respondents per area of qualification who score 70 or over on the evaluation; or should an agreement not be reached, to the next highest scorer in each qualification area. The deadline is noon Friday for questions and to register for the mandatory Sept. 1 respondents’ conference. Responses to the RFQ are due by 3 p.m. Sept. 30.
