CITY COUNCIL AGENDA ITEM
ACTION REQUESTED:
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Approve the award of RFP 21-096, Information Technology Support Services, to Sentinel Technologies, Inc. and Mindsight for an amount not to exceed $600,000 and for a three-year term with two, one-year options to extend
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DEPARTMENT: Information Technology
SUBMITTED BY: Jacqueline Nguyen, Director
BOARD/COMMISSION REVIEW:
N/A
BACKGROUND:
Technology dominates the workplace, and requires knowledgeable and often specialized or certified staff to build, optimize, maintain, secure systems, correct issues and offer support to City staff. There are times when staff and/or expertise is unavailable or not certified on certain software. As a result, there is a need to augment the capacity of the City’s Information Technology (IT) staff to address needs such as technology deployment, trouble diagnosis and correction, upgrade, and special projects.
Currently, third-party vendors are requested to provide various IT related services to the City’s IT Department on an as-needed basis related to its Cisco network and telephone products such as:
1. Microsoft software for end-users
2. Servers
3. Various technologies and additional other servers
4. Networking technologies such as virtualization, storage area networks, etc.
Additionally, work across the technologies could cover any of the following:
1. trouble resolution
2. Moves/adds/changes
3. Maintenance and upgrades
4. Architecture planning
The work could also include supplementing staff resources on various technologies on an as-needed basis and all-day emergency on-call support.
IT leadership regularly evaluates the optimal mix of full-time staff and outside consultants to meet its mission and objectives while minimizing costs.
For efficiency, IT determined it would be in the best interest of the City to contract with a pool of qualified vendors to streamline quote requests and establish a pool of specialized expertise available for prompt engagement with a minimal learning curve.
By selecting a few consultants and working with them over the years, a shared understanding of the City’s environment and approach can be built, bringing about higher quality, improved responsiveness and cost-efficiency.
In April 2021, IT issued RFP 21-096, Information Technology Support Services, to select a shortlist of qualified and experienced vendors to perform IT services for various systems and technologies as needed.
DISCUSSION:
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Advertisement Date: |
04/29/2021 |
Notices Sent: |
122 |
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Opening Date: |
05/27/2021 |
Planholders: |
47 |
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Proposals Received: |
8 |
Proposals were received from the following vendors:
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Netrix |
Scientel |
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DeKind |
Zion |
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ExcelTech |
Sentinel Technologies, Inc. |
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Orbis |
Mindsight |
A selection team comprised of staff from the IT Department and Electric Utility evaluated proposals, which were scored on the criteria set forth in the RFP:
1. Capability, Capacity and Qualifications of the Firm (50%)
2. Suitability and Quality of the Approach/Methodology (40%)
3. Outcomes to be Achieved (10%)
After review and scoring of proposals, the selection committee decided not to conduct interviews with the top-scoring firms as Mindsight and Sentinel were the only two qualified vendors that presented proposals that addressed all the City’s needs, except for Office 365 support. They are therefore being recommended for award. The awardees will be solicited for future engagements on a per-project basis by issuing a detailed scope of work and requesting associated quotes. The table below provides a summary of the final proposal scores:
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Vendor |
Proposal Score |
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Mindsight |
83.6 |
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Sentinel Technologies |
75 |
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Zion |
57.8 |
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Scientel |
56.5 |
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Netrix |
43 |
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DeKind |
21.5 |
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ExcelTech |
18 |
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Orbis |
17.6 |
The City will seek a qualified and experienced Office 365 support team to provide additional services outside the scope of this award.
The term of the contract is three years from the execution of a consultant services agreement with two, one-year options to extend.
FISCAL IMPACT:
CIP: N/A
Consulting services for IT are expensed to the other professional services account listed below. A total of $200,000 is budgeted for strategic partnership consultants in 2021. The remainder of this award will be budgeted appropriately in subsequent years.
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Account Number |
Fund Description |
Total Budget Amount |
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16101100-531309 |
General Fund |
$488,600 |