A major state tax agency is requesting assistance from technology companies to provide a solution that will help residents in filing one of public officialdom’s most well-known forms.
The California Department of Tax and Fee Administration has issued a Request for Quote (RFQ) seeking vendors to provide a system that will enable “electronic filing of the Fair Political Practices Commission Statement of Economic Interest, Form 700, in a Software as a Service (SaaS) environment.” (Per the FPPC, the Form 700 is required to be filed by “every elected official and public employee who makes or influences governmental decisions,” to ensure “officials are making decisions in the best interest of the public and not enhancing their personal finances.”) Among the takeaways:
• According to the RFQ’s Statement of Work, the contractor selected must provide all labor and materials to deliver a complete solution and must configure the solution’s features and capabilities to meet contract requirements. All work shall be done at CDTFA’s direction, and the contractor must correct “critical issues” to preserve compliance with cloud computing special provisions vis a vis SaaS. If the solution proposed needs “any customization and/or configuration” to meet CDTFA requirements, this customization and the solution itself “shall not be impacted by, nor prevent the installation of” any future updates or upgrades to the solution during the contract’s term — or result in any additional cost to the department.
• The contractor’s servers must have 99 percent guaranteed uptime, including all scheduled maintenance — and provide 48 hours notice to the department of any scheduled downtime. Servers must also be free of “any software code with the ability to damage, interfere with, or adversely affect computer programs, data files or hardware without the consent or intent of the CDTFA and/or Filers.” That includes viruses, Trojan horses and worms, and the contractor must implement “reasonable procedures” to prevent “any software, link or code provided to CDTFA and/or filers” from being contaminated by this code.
• All data “created as described” by this contract remains the property of CDTFA, and all source code the contractor creates “is the property of the contractor if clearly marked as ‘intellectual property.’” The contractor must provide “backup servers and telecommunications connections” and do weekly backups of FPPC form filings on them; and the contractor’s disaster recovery and contingency planning, equipment, software and connections must provide the department access via the backup servers within 48 hours of any service disruption. Security, confidentiality and integrity of content must be accomplished via such items and processes as firewall protection, “maintenance of independent archival and backup copies” of content, and protection from “any network attack and other harmful, malicious, or disabling data, work, code or program.”
• The contract’s term is three years beginning on or about Dec. 1; however, its value is not specified. Written questions are due by 10 a.m. Monday, with responses coming Thursday. Responses to the RFQ are due by 10 a.m. Nov. 13 and will be evaluated Nov. 16, with demonstrations scheduled Nov. 17-18 and a contract awarded slated for Nov. 27.
