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Contents
1.0 Introduction ... 3
2.0 About the project “Digital examination” ... 3
2.1 The parties to the project ... 4
3.0 More information about the needs and required functionality ... 4
3.1 General Requirements ... 5
4.0 National pilot under the supplier development program ... 5
4.1 About the procurement process ... 6
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1.0 Introduction
UNINETT is owned by the Ministry of Education and develops and operates the Norwegian research network that connects more than 200 Norwegian educational and research institutions with over 300.000 users, and linking them to international research networks. In addition to the supply of network infrastructure the company also provides production services and own experimental test network services. UNINETT also organize joint agreements and procurement for the Norwegian universities and colleges of higher education (HE sector). The company collaborates with institutions in the higher education sector to provide the best possible infrastructure and public services,
providing both access for large and small institutions to the same tools for managing their business. Examples of such services are within the finance and administration (payroll, accounting, purchase etc.), research and teaching (lecture recording, plagiarism, etc.), FEIDE and preparation of framework agreements in the ICT area. The company is the parent company of the UNINETT group consisting of daughters UNINETT Sigma, which administers the national infrastructure for computational science in Norway (supercomputing and data storage) and UNINETT Norid which is the national registry for the ".no"- domain.
Several universities and colleges are active and conducting various testing and deployment for digital examination. Both the magnitude and where they are in the process varies widely. Some institutions are in the initial phase while other institutions are conducting pilots for digital examination in larger scale. Common for the institutions is that they face many of the same challenges and needs of software for further testing. The institutions want increased cooperation and coordination, so UNINETT, organized by the eCampus program, is given the responsibility as the national coordinator of technical solutions related to the digitization of the examination process.
2.0 About the project “Digital examination”
UNINETT has established a national project to ensure that students in the long run will get access to digital examination, and that the whole workflow for digital examinations will be digitized. The project is operated in close collaboration with the educational institutions in the Norwegian higher education sector.
The experiences made in development will form the basis for the specification of a procurement process.
The two-year project aims to start a public procurement process for new solution(s) by Q1 2016. We seek solutions that can handle the examination/assessment process in its entirety. The institutions’ awareness and knowledge about what should be included in a digital examination process is not yet fully formed. It is therefore difficult to accurately describe the needs and scope.
To acquire sufficient experience the institutions need access to software for further testing /piloting. Of the solutions identified and/or tested thus far, none satisfy the overall needs to perform a
continuous digital workflow.
On the basis of an HE sector that is unfamiliar with a young and emerging market, we want to
implement an innovative public procurement where supplier development and dialogue ahead of the competition will represent the main activities. There will be development agreements with suppliers in the requirement, dialogue/development stages to clarify the needs ahead of the competition. This can give us better and even more solutions to choose from, and allow the HE sector to better
4 Some vendors have run pilots in HE institutions already. In the cases where one vendor has run pilots with more than one Norwegian institution, we have signed a letter of intent to enter into a
development agreement before the summer. We now want to get in touch with more suppliers interested in forming developing agreements with HE participants to develop new/different aspects of the digital exam solution.
2.1 The parties to the project
The project is led by UNINETT with project participants from several universities and university colleges, some of which will host pilots in the development process. The project is funded, for the most part in terms of working hours, by UNINETTs eCampus-program. Beyond this, the project is funded by the HE sector’s own funds. The project has received information from a number of other projects and activities where solutions for digital examination have been tested. There are several national working groups related to the project. The suppliers choosen to enter into development agreements are expected to closely cooperate with the selected pilot institutions.
3.0 More information about the needs and required functionality
Based on the HE sector's experiences there are systems that cover parts of the digital examination process, but none that cover the entire digital workflow associated with it.
We seek more comprehensive solutions with necessary integrations so the process of designing and preparing examination, in the purpose to conduct and facilitate examination, could be handled in one integrated digital workflow.
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3.1 General Requirements
The solution should facilitate a continuous process and support the working processes by making relevant information available for students, lecturers, examiners, invigilators and administrative personnel. We envisage that the system must be able to handle different types of exams, both current and future assessment methods. The sector is in the process of developing and restructuring new forms of assessment of knowledge and a solution for digital examination and assessment must accommodate for this.
- The provided solution must have something to build on as it is today, i.e. it already covers parts of the examination process. The supplier must be able to adapt and change the solutions in accordance with the input.
- The solution must be able to integrate with other solutions such as study administrative systems, learning management systems (LMS), archive and CRM-systems, task libraries, authentication solutions, video, communication solutions, telephony etc.
- The solution may include existing operational tools in combination with new or custom features and modules
We seek a solution that supports : - The pre-examination phase - The examination phase - The post-examination phase
- Archiving rules
It is desirable to limit the pilot scope and participants. The pilots should be able to identify benefits, obstacles, legal and safety issues, and also prepare the ground for integration with FS (common student system) and other relevant systems.
The pilots may be pure development agreements with one or more participants, trial agreements that test different parts of the solution (e.g. stress testing and testing on a large scale), and OFU- contracts where one or more vendors together employ Innovation Norway’s instrument for development contracts with public actors (for Norwegian vendors only).
4.0 National pilot under the supplier development program
The Confederation of Norwegian Enterprise (NHO) and the Local Governments Organization (KS) are the initiators of the National Program of Supplier Development . The program is conducted as a partnership between national innovation stakeholders, ministries, government agencies, municipalities and businesses. The program is conducted in the period 2010-2014.
The program's vision is to leverage public procurement in a more active way which promotes competition, business development and innovation in business, so as to facilitate more needs-oriented products and services to better conditions for public sector clients. Key goals are to increase awareness of innovative public procurement and increase the performance of such procurement.
6 An important tool is the implementation of pilot projects; procurement and supplier dialogue and perhaps development projects ahead of the competition. UNINETT is, on behalf of the higher education sector, with its project Digital examination, a pilot in the National Programme for supplier development. The program assists the principal methodological knowledge on innovative public procurement, facilitation of implementation and mobilization of relevant corporate and business networks. It is particularly interesting in this project to see the possibility of interaction and
coordination of multiple actors in a joint procurement process. This enables the institutions in the HE sector to communicate a common need in the market.
UNINETT and the participating higher education stakeholders want to achieve greater understanding, skills and knowledge of how to implement innovative public procurement and to see the benefit and achieve positive effects for the entire procurement process and outcome.
4.1 About the procurement process
In a needs and dialogue stage prior to the final competition, UNINETT will employ the development projects and supplier dialogue in order to more clearly establish own requirements and to mature the market.
UNINETT seeks a solution that is currently not on the market, hence the need for both development and dialogue in advance of the announcement. The dialogue, which will consist of a Dialogue Conference and subsequent one-to-one meetings, intends to:
• Get in touch with several suppliers that will collaborate with higher education stakeholders in different development projects that could form the basis of a competition specification when the need and development phase is completed
• Receive input and take part in the knowledge held by providers and specialists of ICT solutions and related solutions
• Start a dialogue with as many vendors as possible at an early stage so as to get more perspectives to the solution
• Seek knowledge and input from vendors to specify own needs
• Stimulate innovation among suppliers since the solution required does not exist at present • Get more vendors involved, expand the market and facilitate more stimulation and increased competition by providing venues where vendors can meet for possible cooperation
• Get in touch with and get input from academic and research communities in ICT • Coordinate and communicate the higher education sector’s common needs
4.1.1 Dialogue Conference
A Dialogue Conference will be held on June 23, 10:30 am – 3:45 pm in Trondheim, NTNU
Registration to: [email protected]
within June 20
Please provide company name, and names and email addresses of all persons that will be attending the conference.
7 The conference aims to present the overall strategies in the area of collaboration, convey challenges and share with the suppliers the identified provisional needs and specific functional requirements for the solutions. It is important for UNINETT to get an immediate response to the needs as well as to learn more about the scope of opportunities and alternative solutions.
The conference provides an opportunity to network and potentially make alliances in the following processes. We will use the conference to seek inspiration and ideas pertaining to collaboration on development projects
Following the conference (after the summer), we will invite vendors (or groups of vendors) to one-to-one meetings. Here, the providers get a chance to make specific proposals for their solutions and ideas of digital examination. The form, time and content of the one-to-one meetings will be presented further at the Dialogue Conference.
Tentative schedule up to the announcement of the final competition:
Dialogue Conference 23th of June 2014
One-to-one meetings Week 34
Concretize the needs, Developments projects – period
Autumn 2014 – end of 2015
Specification Phase End of 2015 – beginning of 2016
Announcement of Competition Digital exam Q1 2016
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Program - Dialogue conference
23th of June, 10:30 am – 03:45 pm
Place: Trondheim, NTNU
10:30 am Registration, refreshments, mingling
11:00 am Welcome and presenting the background to Digital examination and dialogue conference, Project Manager Freddy Barstad , UNINETT
11.30 am About innovative public procurement and supplier dialogue. What do we expect of suppliers? Hilde Sætertrø , project NHO National Program for supplier development
11:45 am About challenges in ICT procurement and the value of early supplier dialogue. 00:05 pm Experiences from Pilot , University of Agder
00:30 pm Lunch
01:00 pm Experiences from Pilot , Høgskolen i Sør-Trøndelag 01:30 pm Experiences from Pilot , NTNU
02:00 pm Integrations etc., UNINETT
02:30 pm Break
02:45 pm About the OFU instrument and OFU contracts, Innovation Norway 03:00 pm Questions, comments and discussions
03:30 pm The way forward and invitation to one-to-one meetings
