Data Warehouse and Business Intelligence Tools RFP # 2013DWBI
Request for Proposals Issued: November 12, 2013
Deadline for Submittal of Proposals: December 3, 2013 5:00pm
REQUIREMENTS:
1. Complete application for RFP 2013DWBI as described in this document
2. Bidders may attach additional pertinent information they deem important to the selection, implementation, and overall success of the project.
3. Project schedule
4. Background information about bidder including:
a. Length of time business has provided this type of service b. Three references using your service 3 years or more c. Service Level Agreement (SLA) for your proposal d. Description of past projects of similar scope
5. Total project cost including indication of how charges will be incurred as services are implemented
SPECIAL CONDITIONS:
1. Prices to remain firm through approval, execution, and duration of the proposed contract. In the event of a price decrease for service or from the manufacturer, said decrease shall be passed on to the Natomas Unified School District and documented with new price sheet sent to Natomas Unified School District Office.
2. All equipment/services costs must be new and included and identified separately. 3. Any prospective bidder, who contacts any School District Board Member during the RFP
process, will be disqualified from consideration for the RFP award.
4. The Board of Trustees reserves the right to reject any and all bids/proposals, or any or all items of any bid/proposal.
5. This RFP will be posted to the Natomas Unified website (http://www.natomasunified.org). Any additions or corrections will be addressed in the form of addenda posted to the same location on the website.
6. All questions regarding this RFP should be directed to jrabin@natomas.k12.ca.us, with the subject of “RFP 2013DWBI.”
7. The Deadline for questions will be 11/27/2013 at 5:00 pm PST.
8. Responses to all questions will be made by 12/2/2013 at 5pm and will be posted on the district website.
9. It is the responsibility of the prospective bidder to check the website for updates or addenda.
10. You must provide one original and two copies of your proposal (3 total). 11. Manufacturer must warrant all parts and equipment.
VENDOR REQUIREMENTS
The vendor must meet or exceed all minimum qualification requirements. All submitted quotes must provide at a minimum, all requested information in this quote document. Any portion not included will be cause for elimination from the quote process.
Each response will be reviewed to determine if it is complete prior to actual evaluation. The information should be organized as indicated in the quote requirements. Any portions of the submitted quote, which are to be treated by the District as proprietary and confidential information, must be clearly marked as such.
The District reserves the right to eliminate from further consideration any response, which is deemed to be substantially or materially unresponsive to the request for information, contained in this section.
Vendors must include a reference for a project of equal size and scope that has been completed within the past three (3) years. References from school districts, county offices of education, or colleges in California are preferred. Please include the following information in your references:
• Job location
• Contact name and telephone number • Date of contract
• Project description • Equipment/service installed QUOTE EVALUATION
Each response will be reviewed prior to the selection process for completeness and adherence to format. A response will be considered complete if all requested sections are included in the proper order and properly completed. Vendors may also provide any and all recommendations for
consideration such as installation, maintenance, support and design that is relevant to the total solution of the District’s technology needs.
Evaluation Criteria
• Experience completing similar work
• Costs, including unit prices, labor rates, travel/trip charges, etc. • Client references and/or citations from prior installations
• Quote preparation, thoroughness, and responsiveness to the RFP requirement
RFP SCHEDULE
Milestone Date
RFP Released November 12, 2013
Deadline for questions/inquiries November 27, 2013 5:00 p.m.
Response to questions/inquiries December 2, 2013 5:00 p.m.
Deadline for submission of sealed proposals December 3, 2013 5:00 p.m.
Proposal review December 4, 2013
Demonstrations, interviews, and reference checks December 6, 2013
SPECIFIC INSTRUCTIONS & INFORMATION TO BIDDERS
1. PROPOSALS: Each proposal shall conform and be responsive to District specifications. Bidder shall furnish complete specifications and rates for all services requested. Additional pricing schedules detailing items listed on the proposal shall be attached to the proposal.
2. DEADLINE FOR RECEIPT OF PROPOSAL: One original and two copies (for a total of three) must be submitted in sealed envelopes and should be properly identified with the proposal number and Proposal Submittal Deadline. Proposals must arrive in the DISTIRCT OFFICE, 1901 Arena Blvd., Sacramento, CA 95834 before 5:00 p.m., December 3, 2013, local time. Telephone, telegraphic, facsimile, emailed, and late proposals will not be accepted or considered.
3. PROPOSAL SUBMISSION REQUIREMENT: Proposals shall be submitted to the address above and labeled as follows:
Attention: Joel Rabin Data Warehouse RFP
OBJECTIVES AND SCOPE OF PROPOSAL
The primary objective of this project is the construction of an Operational Data Store (“ODS”), or “Data Warehouse.” The ODS should aggregate “of interest” business data from a variety of line of business (“LOB”) applications into a single repository for consolidated reporting/analysis. The ODS should align with the new California State Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF) and Local Control and Accountability Plan (LCAP) laws.
NUSD requests proposals for an ODS that includes data extraction, data cleansing, data storage,
and business intelligence tools. The District desires all requirements specified to be provided as a
single solution or integrated solution. The purpose of this solution is to provide improved access to information, foster more informed decision-‐making, and support the District’s Strategic Plan. This tool will provide the infrastructure that allows district leaders to access, query, analyze, and use data to inform policies, practice, and decision-‐making at all levels of the organization.
The scope of this project includes the development of a versatile, dynamic, rapidly deployable solution for data warehousing, analytics and reporting. The selected solution will need to be able to readily connect with a variety of commonly used system database formats, and will need to have flexible, intuitive solutions for common reporting needs. The successful proposal will provide functionality “off the shelf.” It will create an environment that does not require a great deal of customization “from the ground up” to add value and functionality to the organization. It will provide a very intuitive, useful environment to the end users for finding data they need, analyzing that data, and easily creating useful reports from it. The vendor providing the solution will need to make a serious commitment to ensuring the success of the project, and should have experience helping other K-‐12 organizations who have succeeded with similar projects.
NUSD wants to transform from a data rich district to one that is both data and information rich. Features in the proposed solution should include but not be limited to the following:
1. Data Warehouse: The warehouse should include a centralized database to collect and store student and school data from a number of sources and from multiple years as well as NUSD operational data.
2. Business Intelligence (BI) tools: The solution will include functionality for analysis,
reporting, and dashboarding within a centralized portal. Security should be configurable so that users are restricted where appropriate.
3. Project Management Professional Services: There should be a clearly laid-‐out plan in place for how the service provider will provide project implementation, deployment support, and hand-‐off services to the District.
TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS/REQUIREMENTS
1. Data Warehouse
a. Data warehousing of the following sources of data: student information, student achievement, human resources, financial data, asset tracking, special education, food services, and professional development.
b. Ability to integrate other data sources into the ODS in the future in place of current LOB data systems or in addition to current LOB systems.
c. Scheduled tasks (within SQL, or within Windows OS, as appropriate) to accomplish the imports on the desired schedules.
d. A set of database tables and a methodology for logging messages or error conditions during imports.
e. A proposed backup methodology to protect data stored in the ODS against accidental loss; a method for doing point-‐in-‐time restores.
f. Procedures for obtaining student data and for safeguarding that data during movement and storage.
g. A set of scripts or methods for automating Active Directory (AD)account
provisioning for both staff and students, and for importing AD account information into the ODS.
h. A basic Active Directory RBAC (“role based access control”) i.e., a groups-‐based methodology for securing access to databases, reports, and dashboards.
i. A set of sample views, stored procedures, and/or table valued functions that can be used to ‘flatten’ or ‘join’ databases created within the ODS for facilitating
integrated reporting or analysis across data domains.
j. A set of sample HTML5-‐based web pages to facilitate data entry and editing of information captured in the ODS (limited in sophistication to simple ‘grid editor’ kinds of User Interfaces).
2. Business Intelligence (BI) Tools:
a. A set of sample ODBC connected Excel / PowerPivot spreadsheets that can be used to illustrate Ad-‐Hoc analysis techniques using the ODS.
b. A set of sample SSRS (SQL Reporting Services) reports that use the ODS data with drill-‐down features from aggregated district reports to school level and group reports, to individual student reports with filter options and student selection options.
c. Reporting options should be available on both personal computers and mobile devices, independent of operating systems used.
d. Following are critical reports of necessary development as part of this project: i. Individual student profile
ii. Class, teacher, school, program and district summary reports with built in historic data
iv. Tabular and graphic displays of student data
v. Graduation status reports for individual students, groups of students, and schools
vi. District dashboard reports for quick views of student data
e. Ability for NUSD staff to prepare and deploy additional reports indefinitely as needed to meet the BI needs of the district.
f. A version control system suitable for managing changes to the above.
3. Project Management Professional Services:
a. The project plan proposed by the vendor, including the proposed solution,
implementation methodology and recommended scope/statement of work shall be reviewed and approved by NUSD. Reviews will be performed at pre-‐defined
checkpoints during the course of the project to monitor progress. Feedback from this monitoring system shall be used to make changes in the implementation strategy by the vendor.
a. Systems Integration advice and consulting related to the selection and building of physical and virtual servers necessary for the construction of ODS (i.e. hardware and software necessary to instantiate a sufficient number of Microsoft SQL Server instances and web servers for production, reporting, and test/QA purposes.) b. A set of database schemas (databases/tables/columns) suitable for housing
imported data extracts from each of the major line of business applications. c. A design methodology to facilitate future integration with third party frameworks
or tools, e.g. EdFi or Clever.com (specifying how such integration could work and designing compatible schema is within scope; actually building frameworks for third party integration is not.)
d. A set of data import/import methods and scripts (SQL Server SSIS or PowerShell in combination with secure FTP or other similar secure file transfer protocol) suitable for securely importing, transforming, and “cleansing” data from these sources on an appropriately recurring basis
e. Suitable documentation, including data dictionaries and video tutorials, for the above deliverables.
f. Systems and procedures to backup and restore data to include retention policy, storage environment and medium used.
g. Support agreement terms and conditions (SLA) and associated costs (per annum, response levels, training – on site and/or remote, design and programming rates for BSD contracted enhancements, etc.).
IMPLEMENTATION PLAN REQUIREMENTS:
1. Schedule for work
2. High level goals of project
3. Roles and responsibilities of NUSD technical team
4. Communication protocols between vendor and NUSD technical team 5. Remote desktop framework for remote access (Microsoft Server 2012) 6. SQL, reporting, and web server architecture
a. What servers and storage needs will be required? b. Which servers can be virtualized and which cannot? c. What database replications will be needed and why? d. What backup methodologies will be used?
7. Dedicated virtual machine for data imports/exports (SFTP) 8. Web-‐based collaborative system for hosting and editing reports 9. Role based access control methodology
10. General data security model, make selections (row, table, database, report, application) 11. Auditing tools
12. Database schemas and high-‐level data “partitioning” 13. Data dictionary tools
14. Data sources and evaluate synchronization scheduling needs 15. Reporting and Ad Hoc analytics tools that will be used 16. Training plan for Natomas Data and Technology team
a. Change process management rules
b. Basic version control system implementation and training c. Basic database structures we will be implementing and why d. Primary keys, indexing, referential integrity
e. Naming conventions f. Security conventions g. Report creation 17. User support mechanisms 18. Export options (CSV, XML, other) 19. Potential data cleanliness issues
20. Data transformation methods (SSIS, Powershell, other) 21. Data warehouse documentation
NUSD WILL PROVIDE
• Necessary server hardware
• Necessary software licenses for ongoing ODS operation.
• Necessary logins and permissions to facilitate ability to access and extract the intended
data from the specified LOB systems.
