Central Finance and Contracting Unit

CENTRAL FINANCE AND CONTRACTING UNIT

MINUTES OF PRE BIDDING MEETING

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Project Name: Capacity Building and Support to Implement the Integrated Planning System (IPS 2) in Albania

Procurement Package:Supply and Installation of Albanian Financial Management Information System (AFMIS) – LOT 1;Ref No AL-IPS2-P129332-ICB-15-03.02

Date :28December 2015

Time: 12:00

Venue: Ministry of Finance premises

Introduction

On 28 December 2015, 12:00 took place at the Ministry of Finance premises, the Pre-bid meeting for the Bidding procedure ” Supply and Installation of Albanian Financial Management Information System (AFMIS) – LOT 1; Ref No AL-IPS2-P129332-ICB-15-03.02.

The CFCU representative opened the meeting explaining to the participants (the list is attached to the minutes) the objective of the pre- bidding meeting as indicated in the Bidding Documents, ITB 10.2 The prospective bidders had the possibility to submit in writing the CFCU the list of questions, but only 1 prospective bidder had done so. It was clarified the Minutes will be dispatched to all bidders who have been registered (and will be registered up to the deadline for submission of bids).

After the above clarification took place the introduction of participants and institution/company they represent.

CFCU passed the floor the prospective Bidders to provide their questions, which are listed below along with the respective answer of the Purchaser.

Questions and Answers

Q. 1. Is it required to submit CVs for alternate candidates for both Lot1 and Lot2? There is tables where is the primary candidate and alternate candidate. Did they require the alternate or not?
A.1. Lot 1 and Lot 2 are separate bids, so each bid should be treated separately and therefore CVs of primary and alternate candidate are required for each bid. The same person can be included in each bid.
Q. 2. Is it possible to submit a joint Technical Proposal for both Lot1 and Lot2? Or is it necessary to submit two separate Technical Proposals?
A.2.The bidders must submit two different technical proposals in this first stage. The technical proposal for Lot 1 should be separate from the technical proposal for Lot 2. This is in the light of the fact that there may not necessarily be one winner for both lots at the end of this process. We might have the case where there are two different winners, one winner for Lot 1 and one winner for Lot 2. We need to have a clear view for each lot, which is the proposal for each lot.
Q. 3.Please clarify if at this stage the Supplier is required to fill in the System Inventory Table forms for the Proposal?
A. 3. Yes, it is a requirement. Whatever template is attached to the bidding document should be filled in and submitted in the technical proposal.
Q. 4. What is the number of users and trainers (in the scope of training of trainers) that need to be trained for AFMIS?
A. 4. Regarding AFMIS there will be 250 concurrent users. Also AFMIS should have scalability for up to 1000 concurrent users, but these are concurrent users, not the total number of users. We cannot estimate exactly the number of users, but for estimation we can give an approximate number of the users that will need to be trained.There will be approximately 200 end users for the first go live phase, which include Ministry of Finance users, Treasury district office users and also Budget institutions users for all AFMIS modules. Regarding the training of trainers there will be around 50 trainers including all AFMIS modules.
Q. 5. What is the envisaged scope of the Post-Warranty Services (3 years) for AFMIS
A. 5. There must be one year of warranty included in the bid. The bidders must submit the cost of the other three years of post-warranty that will start after the first year of warranty but this is just for information purposes for the purchaser and not for evaluation of financial bid. Attached is the English version of the standard post warranty services required provided by National Agency for Information Society.
Q. 6. Please provide details on the Systems, which need to interface with AFMIS(what type of DBMS is used for the Systems, what are their capacities, what software solutions are they based on, etc.?):
A. 6. Human resources management information system (HRMIS) – this system is built on Microsoft platform and is developed by a local company in Albania.
Integrated Planning Systems information system (IPSIS) –Unknown since is part of this Bidding procedure.
External Assistance management information system (EAMIS)-Unknown since is under the evaluation process.
Public procurement system interface to exchange data on public procurement processes and contractual information – This system is based on Microsoft platform, developed by a local company.
Debt management financial analytical system (DMFAS) – This system is based on oracle.RDBMS Oracle Database 12c Standard Edition. Application server software
- Apache Tomcat V 6 or later (Open source, free to use)
Operating system: Microsoft windows server. The system is developed by UNCTAD
Q. 7. Please clarify which other systems have existing AGFIS interfaces? What are those existing AGFIS interfaces with other systems? What is expected of the Supplier for this requirement?
A. 7. The requirement is for an interface and not integration and therefore please refers to the details under interfaces provided in the bid documents. There is not any non-standard industry interfaces required.
Q. 8. Please describe in more detail what are your expectation for the “interface” between AFMIS and the HRMIS,IPSIS,EAMIS,DMFAS and Public Procurement Systems?
A. 8. The communication between systems will be both ways, AFMIS will send data and also will receive data from these systems. The exact information about exchange between systems will be specified during the other phases of project implementation. Basically, it is not important at this stage what the real data that will be exchanged is. It is important to highlight that there will be an exchange of data between systems. The requirement is for an interface and not integration and therefore please refer to the details under interfaces provided in the bid documents. There is not any non-standard industry interfaces required.
Q. 9. Please specify which other subsystems will be integrated with the Web Portal of AFMIS besides MTBP, BPM,BPPM,AGFIS, PIM and IPSIS?
A. 9. There are no other subsystems besides the ones specified in the bidding documents.
Q. 10. In both AFMIS and IPSIS Design Constraints,it is mentioned that for integration within AFMIS ,as well as for integration with IPSIS it is preferred to use the existing and implemented Albanian Government Gateway Enterprise Service Bus(ESB)basedon Microsoft BizTalk technology installed and maintained in NAIS/AKSHI in2012. Does this mean that for all the aforementioned integration (incl. AGFIS. HRMIS ,IPSIS, EAMIS, DMFAS, procurement systems,etc.)the Supplier will have to use the Albanian Government Gateway Enterprise Service Bus (ESB)?
Q.10. The communication between the AFMIS system and the systems that are not in Ministry of Finance will be done through the National Agency of Information Society government gateway platform. The communication between AFMIS and the systems that are in Ministry of Finance (such as DMFAS) will be done directly, not through the ESB.
Q. 11. It is mentioned in the RFP that the integration for AFMIS, should be done through Government Gateway ESB. ESB is a mechanism that provides system connection through a connector, called DIS(Department Integration Server). Similarly, other public institutions are connected in ESB. It is also mentioned every institution will be connected to ESB through the DIS supporting infrastructure. Does this mean that the Supplier has to provide the DIS (acc. to the described specifications) in order to accommodate the integration for AFMIS and IPSIS?
A.11.It is not necessary to supply the DIS server, because Ministry of Finance has a DIS server that can be used.
Q. 12. It is mentioned that “the existing secured closed Government Network(GovNet) based on fiber-optic channels is capable to support additional users from BI, and can be used for AFMIS.”And that ““The secured closed Government Network (GovNet) on basis of fiber-optic channels can support additional IPSIS users and all planned traffic resulting from the implementation of IPSIS system.” Please specify the capacity of the Gov Net system.
A.12. The GovNet can handle this kind of additional traffic with no problems. Anyway, in the case of institutions accessing the system within Govnet, the capacity is 1Gbps. If the system will be accessed through the internet this depends on the actual capacity of the upstream links (3 internet provides) that actually are 500 Mbps in total, but in 2016 will go to 1Gbps total
Q. 13. It is mentioned that the AFMIS WEB platform MUST be additionally secured with SSL and user certificates if needed, required infrastructure can be provided by NAIS, but the bidder must provide cryptographic USB tokens. Please clarify the quantity and specifications of the cryptographic USBs that are needed.
A.13. It is estimated that the number of users that would need to have cryptographic USB tokens is approximately 200 users. This quantity should be part of the items listed at the schedule of prices- Supply and Installation Cost Summary Table- of the Bidding Document The specifications of the cryptographic USBs are attached (word document “Cryptographic USB tokens technical specifications”)
Q. 14. It is mentioned that the Security for the Web Portal must be on the same level as the e-Albania portal. Please specify those security levels.
A.14. For the security of the web-panels, the web server/panel must have TLS (Transport Layer Security) certificate (v1.1 and v1.2). Regarding the network, the protection should be provided even through an application firewall (level L7 protection). Web Application Firewall can be a dedicated firewall or as a feature of NG-firewall.
Q. 15.It is mentioned that the Documents related to the data entry have necessary metadata and those data from DMS should be replicated into Web-Portal database. Due to licensing, data that originates from Oracle DB are marked and can be shown only to the users that have Oracle license. DoesthismeanthatthedocumentsgeneratedbyAGFISwillonlybeavailabletouserswithOraclelicense? Please mention which other Systems generate Oracle DB documents.
A.15.AGFIS does not generate documents. Documents will be generated by the Document Management System or the users will scan the documents and upload and store them to the DMS system. These documents should be accessible from the other systems such as AGFIS or AFMIS modules.
Q. 16. For AFMIS the NAIS SharePoint Document Management System (EDRMS) is mentioned as a possible DMS solution. Please specify the details related to this already existing DMS: what version of Microsoft SharePoint is being used, what are the numbers of licenses for this solution? What is the potential scalability of the existing System?
A.16.The Document Management System is not a critical part of the AFMIS requirements and existing NAIS DMS is the preferred option. Details about the existing DMS are as follows: SharePoint version is 2010 Enterprise (it is being upgraded to 2013). NAIS provides Client Access License (CAL) licenses for all GOV domain users.
Q.17. The RFP mentions that the bidder must use the existing single sign-on infrastructure available at NAIS for both the AFMIS Web Portal and the IPSIS. Can you please describe the Single Sign-On infrastructure available at NAIS?
A.17. The interoperability government platform (Government Gateway) serves as the Federation Provider (currently for e-albania.al portal). Different Identity Providers are configured and "Trusted" by the Federation Point. For the Public Administration employees the login is done using the same credentials they use to access other services of the GOV domain. Access for non GOV users will be done through VPN, enabled by NAIS.
Q.18. Does existing Document Management system satisfy all the requirements or this should be checked by vendors?
A.18. The bidder must submit a technical proposal covering all technical and functional requirements, but since the proposal will be provided by the bidders, they should check if the DMS system of NAIS satisfies all the requirements.
Q.19. There is no need to include hardware/servers/infrastructure proposal at this stage?
A.19. The proposal must include everything that is specified in the technical specifications, including hardware/servers/infrastructure. We are asking for a full Technical proposal.
Q. 20 Does “for information” mean that there is no need to respond to these points at this stage?
Page 252 – Logical Design
Ref. 1.27, 1.28, 1.29 – Main and Backup Computer Center Locations
Page 256 – Performance and Reliability Requirements
Ref P.19 – Reliability
Page 257 – Physical Design Requirements
Ref. T22 Hardware components – for information (capability to be provided by NAIS data center) Ref. T26 Clients
Ref. T27 Visualization platform
A.20. This question regards Lot 2, so it should be addressed in the other pre-bid meeting.
Q. 21. Should vendors propose workstations for this stage? If yes, what is the number of workstations required?
A.21. No, the bidder should not propose workstations.
Q.22. In page 49 of the bidding documents, referring to the technical/quality evaluation parameters and scoring scheme, Desirable Requirements Category, and Open Source Software Category can you explain the scoring mechanism?
A.22. The scoring mechanism rewards bidders who provide “Desirable” functions in addition to “Mandatory” functions. The more “Desirable” functions that are provided the higher the factor applied. If you have none you score 0, if you have 1 or 2 you score 2 and so on.
In general, the scoring mechanism is designed to differentiate between bidders with similar products by adding extra scoring for additional functionality or for reducing project risks
In the Open Source software category, there are two separate evaluation areas. The 1st criterion looks at whether any LDSW uses Open Source software and rewards the bidder for using Open Source as opposed to using Non-Open Source or proprietary software (it is accepted and assumed by the purchaser that there will be a need for some LDSW)
The 2nd criterion concerns the additional risks to successful completion of the project by using LDSW as opposed to COTS software. The purchaser’s preference is for a COTS solution and the scoring system rewards bidders who use more COTS and less LDSW. For example if the solution to meet our requirements is greater than 50% developed locally, the bidder scores 0 . If however the solution proposed is less than 25% LDSW of the overall design, the bidder will score 4.
Q.23. We know that the Albanian government has an agreement with Microsoft so if there are components in the solution that require licensing from Microsoft, should we consider it in our financial proposal, or these licenses can be provided by NAIS, therefore not be part of the financial proposal?
A. 23.NAIS can offer Microsoft licenses, but since we do not have any information on the specific product, NAIS cannot confirm if the licenses can be offered by them and the necessary quantity. Therefore, the technical and financial proposal must include the necessary licenses for the solution.
Q. 24. Is this the first that this tender is published?
A.24. Yes, it is the first time.
Q. 25. Can the deadline for submitting the technical proposal be extended?
A.25. The deadline for submission of bids has been extended to February 9th 2016, 14:00. (as per the addendum to the BD issued on January 5th 2016).

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