DRAFT) Statement of Requirements (Part B

(DRAFT) Statement of Requirements (Part B)

Request for Quotation (RFQ)

For the provision of

Whole-of-Government Enterprise File Sharing and Collaboration Solution

Part B: Statement of Requirements - Request for Quotation for Whole-of-Government Enterprise File Sharing and Collaboration Solution 2

Statement of Requirements (Part B)

Whole-of-Government File Sharing and Collaboration Solution

44  CONDITIONS FOR PARTICIPATION

The following Conditions for Participation are mandatory requirements that Interested Parties must meet:

44.1  The solution must be available through the Department of Finance’s Cloud Services Panel.

44.2  The solution must be available as a “software as a service (SaaS)” product hosted on public cloud infrastructure, defined as:

“A public cloud provides services to users over the internet. Infrastructure is shared, and data can be located in different locations across the globe.”

National Cloud Computing Strategy https://www.communications.gov.au/sites/g/files/net301/f/National_Cloud_Computing_Strategy.PDF

45  Purpose and Background

45.1  Purpose

The Department of Finance is seeking a cloud services provider to establish and manage a file sharing and collaboration solution.

The file sharing and collaboration solution is intended to replace Finance’s existing govdex whole-of-government collaboration platform. This pre-existing platform was established in 2006, and while the service continues to offer value for a large number of active users, shortfalls in performance, feature set and usability mean that the solution no longer meets user expectations.

Finance conducted a feasibility study in October 2015 to determine the viability of enhancing or possibly replacing govdex with a more robust and modern platform. To that end, Finance has initiated this request for quotation (RFQ) to ascertain the availability of services and solutions within the market place and invite cloud services providers to demonstrate their ability to provide the department and its participating agencies with a modern replacement solution for govdex.

45.2  Background

In 2006, Finance established govdex with an emphasis on the ability to easily and efficiently share and synchronise files. Over the intervening years the service has amassed more than 90,000 registered users; 18,000 of these users are currently active across more than 6000 govdex communities. Users span almost 2000 organisations including all levels of government, educational institutions, not-for-profit organisations and the private sector.

govdex supports community based file sharing, blogs, discussion groups and task management. Since its launch in 2006, technology has evolved significantly, with next generation tools offering capabilities such as social networking, group conferencing, instant messaging, crowdsourcing, file syncing, and real time co-authoring of documents. The need for collaboration in various forms has also evolved, to the point where the current govdex platform is no longer considered fit for purpose.

45.3  Analysis of Current Solution

The current govdex solution includes the following functionality to support private, secure cross-agency and cross-jurisdictional customers:

·  Collaborative spaces for group work

·  Document sharing

·  Discussion forums

·  Email notifications

·  Task and issue tracking

The current usage of govdex provides an indicator of likely initial usage patterns of the replacement solution and should be used by respondents to inform their thinking about the solution. Relevant information is included below. Please note, Finance expects usage to rapidly scale upwards from this starting point over time, and such growth should be factored into the respondent’s proposed solution.

·  Usage. govdex has approximately 18,000 active users, with 50% of users being federal government employees and another 25% from state government. The remainder represent private sector organisations, not-for-profits, educational institutions, the public, local government and international government.

·  Number of communities. Communities are collaboration groups formed on the govdex platform through which people communicate and share files and information. Over 6000 communities have been started since the formation of govdex, with more than 2000 of those communities containing 10 or more members.

·  Community size. Communities contain 18 members on average with the median number being six. Though there are significant numbers of groups with only two members (the most common group size), such a large average and median is indicative of the scale to which govdex is being leveraged.

·  Community demographics. On average each community involves six organisations (as estimated by the number of email domains in a community), reflecting its use as a cross-organisational collaboration service. Indeed, over 1100 communities contain 10 or more organisations.

·  Federal government vs external use. While govdex is targeted towards federal government employees, it is significant that a high proportion (26%) of communities do not contain any federal government members. 50% of communities involve federal government agencies collaborating with organisations outside of federal government (23% with a private organisation, and 27% with state government entity, not for profit, educational institution, local government or international government entity).

46  Objectives of the govdex replacement solution

The new solution will provide a file sharing and community collaboration platform for federal government employees to interact and work with people from across the public, private and not-for-profit sectors. The new solution will be provided as a cloud-based Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solution, delivered by a service provider under contract to the Department of Finance through the Cloud Services Panel.

The Department may seek to enhance the new solution over time, adding new features to drive greater benefits across the user community. This may be achieved through the addition or enablement of additional modules to the solution, or via integration with other collaboration software products.

Through the establishment and operation of the new solution, Finance aims to achieve the following key objectives:

Enable greater interconnectivity, file sharing and collaboration between federal government agencies and organisations across the public, private and not-for-profit sectors

·  Increase the volume and quality of file sharing and collaboration activity by reducing the barriers to information sharing across organisations.

·  Improve employee satisfaction resulting from the provision of efficient and contemporary technological platforms that enable greater productivity, interconnection and engagement.

·  Improve mobility and productivity of federal government employees through the delivery of services via smartphones, tablet computers, and employee-owned devices.

·  Establish a scalable and extensible platform, where user numbers can grow and new capabilities can be added to enhance value and productivity benefits over time.

Deliver cost savings to participating agencies through coordinating Government activity and economies of scale

·  Provide a cost effective solution to agencies by leveraging the scale of government to establish pricing agreements that may not be achievable by small agencies acting individually.

·  Leverage existing public cloud infrastructure and services to reduce the establishment cost, time and risk of implementing a collaboration solution.

Provide a trusted environment for federal government to collaborate with internal and external parties

·  Support agency compliance with government policies and standards in areas such as security, accessibility and privacy by assuring that service providers can meet these standards.

·  Reduce the use of information sharing solutions that may not be compliant with agency and government ICT policies and standards.

·  Support the government’s requirement to store and process information and data that is defined as both Unclassified as well as Sensitive. For Australian government agencies and for the purposes of this document, Sensitive data is defined as data that is unclassified with a dissemination limiting marker (DLM) such as For Official Use Only (FOUO) or Sensitive: Personal (which aligns with the definition of sensitive information in the Privacy Act 1988);

47  Scope of Requirements

The scope of this RFQ covers the provision of a Software-as-a-Service solution for file sharing and community collaboration. The requirements in this section cover three categories:

1.  Functional requirements. Covering the software features and functionality needed to support business objectives.

2.  Non-functional requirements. Covering the non-functional capabilities that underpin the effective operation of the service.

3.  Service requirements. Covering the supporting services that Finance needs in order to enable the delivery of the new solution as a whole-of-government service.

The following table provides an overview of the scope of requirements contained in this RFQ.

Table 1 Scope of Requirements

The requirements outlined above are detailed further in sections 48 – 50. These sections should be used as a guide when responding to this RFQ. Requirements are deliberately open-ended to enable respondents to showcase their capabilities above and beyond the specified functional and non-functional requirements outlined in the document.

48  Functional Requirements

This section identifies the key features that the Department of Finance expects from the proposed govdex replacement solution. It covers requirements for:

·  File Sharing & Sync

·  File Tracking

·  File Storage

·  Communications

·  Communities & Co-Creation

·  Task Management

48.1  File Sharing and Sync

The respondent should describe the enterprise file sharing and sync features of the proposed solution, taking into consideration the following requirements.

Table 2 File Sharing and Sync Requirements

48.2  File Tracking

The respondent should describe the file tracking and version control aspects of the proposed solution, taking into consideration the following requirements.

Table 3 File Tracking Control

48.3  File Storage

The respondent should describe the file storage aspects of the proposed solution, taking into consideration the following requirements when drafting your response.

Table 4 File Storage