State of Washington s7

STATE OF WASHINGTON ADMINISTRATIVE OFFICE OF THE COURTS

REQUEST FOR QUALIFICATIONS AND QUOTES (RFQQ) RFQQ 2004-01

Consulting and Mentoring on User Interface Design Strategies AOC Response to Questions Posed by Vendors

This document includes AOC responses to all vendor questions sent to the RFQQ Coordinator by the deadline of August 13, 2003. This document was posted on August 15, 2003, at 5:15 p.m. PT. There will be no additional responses posted on August 18, 2003.

VENDOR A (Questions 1 – 5)

Question 1: Who are (what is the range of) the ultimate hands-on users of the Judicial Information System (JIS)?

Answer 1: The principal JIS clients are judicial officers, court managers, and other court staff of the Washington State court system. Other clients include users from the state’s Departments of Corrections and Licensing, the Washington State Patrol and other law enforcement agencies, prosecutors, public defenders, the media, and law firms. The total number of principal JIS court clients is approximately 3,000. The total number of other JIS clients is approximately 7,000.

Question 2: Are you looking for or interested in improvements to the User Interface Design Process in Appendix C or are you just looking to integrate that process with the Rational Unified Process (RUP)?

Answer 2: The User Interface Design Process in Appendix C is a DRAFT process developed by current AOC staff based on participation in user interface design workshops and review of the literature. The AOC is interested in suggested improvements to the draft User Interface Design Process in Appendix C. Deliverable (c) requires integration of a user interface design process with the AOC’s current software development process (SDP), which is a custom instantiation of the RUP. The AOC is not interested in suggested improvements to its SDP at this time.

Question 3: Where is the priority for this effort – efficient integration of the draft User Interface Design Process with RUP or improved overall user-centered design methodology?

Answer 3: The priority for Deliverable (c) is efficient integration of a user interface design process based on industry best practices with the AOC’s SDP without significantly protracting the SDP. Question 4: Are you willing to diverge from strict adherence to the standard RUP if doing so will improve the usability and user value provided by the final user interface(s)?

Answer 4: The AOC recognizes the limitations of the standard RUP in the area of user interface design. Deliverable (c) of RFQQ 2004-01 attempts to address the need to supplement the AOC’s custom instantiation of RUP with a viable user interface design process that is based on industry best practices and yet does not substantially protract the AOC’s SDP.

Question 5: Our company has limited resources and, although we believe we are qualified for all five of the user interface design strategy areas, we may not be able to staff all five deliverables in the time available. Should we place a bid for all five areas, noting our limits and indicating priority of interest, or should we only bid on a subset of the five that can be staffed with current resources?

Answer 5: The AOC can provide no specific guidance to individual vendors as to how to bid on RFQQ 2004-01 or any other procurement. Based on the current timeline for the elaboration phase of the AOC’s JIS migration plan, all five deliverables in RFQQ 2004-01 must be in place by the end of October 2003. The AOC is interested in vendor responses as to how best to accomplish one or more of the deliverables. The AOC is not opposed to vendors submitting alternative proposals based on vendor resources and interest.

VENDOR B (Questions 6 – 12)

Question 6: You indicate that AOC is in the elaboration phase of this project. Have other contracts been awarded for other aspects of the elaboration phase, and if so, who were the successful bidders for those contracts?

Answer 6: The AOC has issued several other procurements during the elaboration phase of the JIS migration project. The successful vendor for a use case project was CIBER. The successful vendor for a boot camp implementation was NetObjectives. Additionally, AOC has awarded contracts to EpicEdge, Templar, Logical, and CIBER for various software development projects during the JIS migration project.

Question 7: Has AOC contracted with any firm to perform similar services (User Interface Design) for this or any other development effort? If so, who was the successful bidder on that contract?

Answer 7: The AOC has not contracted with any firm to perform similar user interface design services such as those identified in RFQQ 2004-01. AOC staff have attended numerous user interface design workshops and seminars conducted by national providers whose expertise is in user interface design/usability engineering. Question 8: If the above mentioned work has completed, are the deliverables available for review in order to gauge the level of documentation sought?

Answer 8: Not applicable. The AOC assumes the “above mentioned work” in Question 8 refers to similar user interface design services in Question 7. There are no deliverables available for review since no similar user interface design services have been performed by external vendors.

Question 9: You mentioned in your RFQQ that current application architectural standards and user interface extensions would be available at www.courts.wa.gov/procure. As of today’s deadline for questions, that document did not appear to be available. Can you give us some indication of when it will be available and will we be able to ask questions arising from it subsequent to this deadline?

Answer 9: Current AOC application architectural standards and user interface extensions are continually available under the second major heading of Vendor Information at www.courts.wa.gov/procure. Since the information under the Vendor Information heading (including current AOC application architectural standards and user interface extensions) resides on the public Web site continually and is not tied to any specific procurement, AOC does not plan to extend the deadline for questions past August 13, 2003, for the purpose of responding to questions about the application architectural standards and user interface extensions. The AOC recognizes the graphical user interface extensions are mostly obsolete given the direction of the AOC to move from browser-based user interfaces to rich Java Swing user interfaces.

Question 10: The RFQQ supplies some estimated timeframes for major phases of work. Did AOC develop these estimates by themselves or did consultants assist them?

Answer 10: The AOC staff developed the estimated timeframes themselves for the user interface design strategies without any assistance from external consultants.

Question 11: If consultants assisted, could you tell us who they are and from what firm?

Answer 11: Not applicable. The AOC received no outside assistance to develop the timeframes for the user interface design strategies.

Question 12: Does AOC consider the above estimates to be “Not to Exceed” timeframes or just Rough Order of Magnitude (ROM) guidelines for bidders?

Answer 12: The AOC labeled the timeframes as estimates or guidelines. The AOC’s current timeline requires all deliverables to be completed by the end of October 2003. VENDOR C (Questions 13 – 17)

Question 13: Will it be up to the AOC project manager to set up meetings, training, and mentoring sessions?

Answer 13: The AOC project managers/coordinators will coordinate establishment of meetings, training, and mentoring sessions with the successful vendor(s).

Question 14: Deliverable (c), page 6 – is it the responsibility of the vendor to mentor on the existing AOC software development process?

Answer 14: No.

Question 15: As part of the deliverable, is the vendor required to refine it while integrating the user interface design process?

Answer 15: The AOC assumes the “it” in Question 15 refers back to the “it” of the SDP in Question 14. The AOC is interested in suggested improvements to the draft user interface design process that will allow integration of a user interface design process with the AOC’s SDP without significantly protracting the SDP. The AOC is not currently interested in refinements to the AOC’s SDP.

Question 16: According to the RFQQ, AOC had identified some risks with the JIS user interface design. What are those risks?

Answer 16: The AOC has identified the following risks in the area of user interface design: (a) the current user interface design team is strong in the area of usability testing but recognizes skill shortages in the areas of user interface prototyping, customer interaction and interviewing, and user assistance architecture development; (b) there is no overall JIS user interface design strategy in place; (c) current user interface standards are focused on a browser-based user interface and standards for rich Java Swing user interfaces are immature or non-existent; (d) there is no plan for baselining an architecture in the area of user assistance; (e) the user interface design team has identified a process for conducting user interface design, but this process has not been reconciled with and integrated into the AOC software development process; and (f) user interface design RUP artifacts are missing or immature. The user interface design strategies identified in RFQQ 2004-01 are the AOC’s proposed strategies to mitigate most of the identified user interface design risks.

Question 17: Regarding the user assistance architecture, is there a desire to integrate htmlHelp, WebHelp, and JavaHelp with a single toolset? Answer 17: The AOC is currently using RoboHelp to create WebHelp for the JIS and the agency is researching JavaHelp. Part of the intent of Deliverable (e) is for the successful vendor to assist the AOC in determining the appropriate use of WebHelp, JavaHelp, htmlHelp, knowledge management, other user assistance methods identified in Section 2 of RFQQ 2004- 01, and other ideas from the vendor.

VENDOR D (Questions 18 – 36)

Question 18: Is there a predetermined budget for this portion of the project, and if so, what?

Answer 18: There is no predetermined budget for any or all of the deliverables.

Question 19: Is it budgeted per deliverable or for all five categories as a whole?

Answer 19: Not applicable. There is no predetermined budget for one or all of the deliverables.

Question 20: Is AOC looking for a fixed price per deliverable or for time and materials per resource?

Answer 20: Ultimately, the AOC must contract with the successful vendor(s) for a fixed price per deliverable.

Question 21: At what level is AOC interested in the vendor being involved in project management?

Answer 21: The AOC will assign staff to serve as project managers/coordinators for one or more deliverables. For RFQQ 2004-01, the AOC does not require project managers as part of the staffing model for vendors. Vendors should propose the approach (including recommended staffing), schedules or project plans, and pricing for each of the five user interface design strategy areas that is being addressed.

Question 22: At what level will AOC project manage the resources?

Answer 22: The AOC will assign staff to serve as project managers/coordinators to exercise oversight of the schedule and expenditure of funds for one or more deliverables.

Question 23: Will the awarded vendor be responsible for providing project updates, maintain a project plan, reporting, etc.? Answer 23: The AOC will negotiate these details with the apparently successful vendor(s). As noted previously, AOC project managers/coordinators will exercise oversight of the schedule. The AOC anticipates successful vendor(s) will provide input to the overall project plan and provide some level of regular reporting. Vendors should propose the preferred approach for each of the five areas that is being addressed.

Question 24: It is our understanding that AOC has engaged other vendors for analysis and consulting services for the JIS. Are any of those potential vendors potential candidates for this work?

Answer 24: All interested and qualified vendors are eligible to bid on the procurement issued as RFQQ 2004-01.

Question 25: AOC provided estimates per each deliverable. How were these estimates derived? Are we to respond to this bid based on those estimates or is AOC open to our experts’ opinion of estimated level of effort?

Answer 25: The AOC staff developed the estimates for each deliverable based on limited experience. The AOC is interested in vendors’ recommended approaches for each deliverable including time estimates to complete the deliverables. Based on the current timeline for the elaboration phase of the AOC’s JIS migration plan, all five deliverables in RFQQ 2004-01 must be in place by the end of October 2003.

Question 26: Is it required that all deliverables be completed by October 31 or are there other dates per deliverable that must be completed sooner or later than the end of October?

Answer 26: Based on the current timeline for the elaboration phase of the AOC’s JIS migration plan, all five deliverables in RFQQ 2004-01 must be in place by the end of October 2003. The AOC thinks that it is conceivable that Deliverables (a), (c), and (e) can be developed simultaneously using one or more vendors. Deliverable (b) is somewhat dependent on Deliverable (a), so Deliverable (b) could be completed after Deliverable (a). Deliverable (d) is somewhat dependent on Deliverable (c), so Deliverable (d) could be completed after Deliverable (c). The AOC is interested in vendor responses as to how best to accomplish one or more of the deliverables. The AOC can provide no specific guidance to individual vendors as to how to bid on RFQQ 2004-01 or any other procurement. The AOC is not opposed to vendors submitting alternative proposals.

Question 27: Will AOC be providing all equipment required for the vendor to complete the work on site?

Answer 27: The AOC will provide vendor work space, access to appropriate AOC staff, and access to background materials. The AOC expects vendors to provide laptops or other computer equipment, software tools proposed, etc. The AOC will negotiate additional logistical details with the apparently successful vendor(s).

Question 28: How many workstations or how much space will be available for the vendor resources at AOC?

Answer 28: The AOC can provide up to five workstations or one meeting space with space for up to five people at any one time. Depending on the number of vendor staff and schedules proposed, the AOC may be able to arrange for additional work space. The AOC is interested in bids based on the vendors’ recommended approach including staffing rather than on work space currently available on-site.

Question 29: Is there an option for a vendor to perform any work off-site or is 100% on-site preferred?

Answer 29: The AOC does not require 100% of the work for one or more of the deliverables to be done on-site. The successful vendor(s) will be responsible for being on-site at the AOC in Olympia, Washington, for initial planning sessions on dates to be negotiated with the successful vendor(s) and for additional times as negotiated between the AOC and the successful vendor(s).

Question 30: Deliverable (b) – Refine and develop user interface design standards – what currently exists for standards and how were they developed?

Answer 30: Current AOC application architectural standards and user interface extensions are continually available under the second major heading of Vendor Information at www.courts.wa.gov/procure. Both the AOC application architectural and user interface extensions were developed by an internal AOC work group comprised of representatives from the Applications Development, Webmaster, Infrastructure, JIS Education Services, and Judicial Services groups. The AOC recognizes the graphical user interface extensions are mostly obsolete given the direction of the AOC to move from browser-based user interfaces to rich Java Swing user interfaces.

Question 31: Deliverable (d) – Review and refine user interface design artifacts – what currently exist for artifacts, and how were they developed?

Answer 31: The AOC has drafted user interface RUP artifacts that are owned by the user interface designer. These artifacts include a user interface prototype template, usability test plan, usability testing evaluation summary, and training plan. Additionally, the user interface designer contributes to other RUP artifacts such as the supplementary specification document and iteration plan. All these artifacts, except for the user interface prototype template, were drawn directly from RUP and modified to add the AOC’s specificity to the artifacts. The refinement of the RUP artifacts was done by staff in the AOC’s JIS Education Services, which includes the user interface design staff.

Question 32: Would AOC be open to receiving one proposal addressing all deliverables and the staff to complete in one response versus separating by each deliverable as long as the approach to each deliverable is included?

Answer 32: The AOC can provide no specific guidance to individual vendors as to how to bid on RFQQ 2004-01 or any other procurement. Responses to RFQQ 2004-01 should clearly separate proposed approaches, schedules or project plans, pricing for each of the five user interface design strategy areas that is being addressed, and other information per Appendix A of the RFQQ. Each of the five areas will be evaluated separately on a 50 point scale as indicated in RFQQ 2004-01.

Question 33: Are AOC resources selected for the SDP roles and who will we be responsible for mentoring?

Answer 33: The AOC has identified most of the current staff to fill SDP roles for several JIS migration teams. The AOC is still recruiting for some of the SDP positions including one user interface designer position. Successful vendor(s) will primarily be mentoring no more than 10 AOC staff for each deliverable including the two current user interface designers.

Question 34: How do you plan to manage these deliverables that are running concurrently?

Answer 34: The AOC will assign the requisite project managers/coordinators.

Question 35: What is your expected number of people? Three?

Answer 35: If the question refers to the number of people to be mentored, the answer is that successful vendor(s) will primarily be mentoring no more than 10 AOC staff for each deliverable including the two current user interface designers. If the question refers to vendor staff, the AOC can provide no specific guidance to individual vendors as to how to bid on RFQQ 2004-01 or any other procurement.

Question 36: Are all the required tools and licenses going to be provided?

Answer 36: The AOC will provide vendor work space, access to appropriate AOC staff, and access to background materials. The AOC expects vendors to provide laptops or other computer equipment, software tools proposed, etc. The AOC will negotiate additional logistical details with the apparently successful vendor(s). VENDOR E (Questions 37 – 44)

Question 37: Regarding Sections 1 (Purpose) and 2 (Background) of the RFQQ, will you please elaborate on the multi-year project to migrate existing court case management functionality from legacy mainframe applications and Web applications into a unified, service- oriented, Java 2 Platform Enterprise Edition (J2EE) based architecture? What will the final Judicial Information System (JIS) look like? What is its functionality, who are its stakeholders, how does it support the mission of the Washington Courts’ system? In other words, will you please provide more detail on the overall plan of which this elaboration phase is a part?

Answer 37: Additional information on the JIS and an overview of the JIS migration plan (July 2001) is available at the Washington courts public Web site at http://www.courts.wa.gov/jis.

Question 38: Is the Administrative Office of the Courts planning to bid out (issue RFPs or RFQQs) subsequent phases of the multi-year migration project that is to result in JIS? Or, is the Administrative Office of the Courts planning to complete subsequent phases in-house? Which phases will be bid out and which completed in-house?

Answer 38: The current plan is to use AOC staff as much as possible to do software development work on the new JIS. However, the AOC will likely consider additional procurements as necessary to complete the JIS migration project, but the RFQQ 2004-01 coordinator does not have knowledge of such details as to which phases and packages will be developed internally versus outsourced. The scope of RFQQ 2004-01 is limited to user interface design strategies and there are no further procurements in the user interface design arena scheduled within calendar year 2003.

Question 39: If the next phase of the multi-year project is to be bid out (via RFPs or RFQQs), what is the goal for the procurement timeline? (When will an RFP/RFQQ be issued? What is the expectation in terms of when delivery is to begin?)

Answer 39: The AOC will likely consider additional procurements as necessary to complete the JIS migration project, but the RFQQ 2004-01 coordinator does not have knowledge of such details as to which phases and packages will be developed internally versus outsourced. The scope of RFQQ 2004-01 is limited to user interface design strategies and there are no further procurements in the user interface design arena scheduled within calendar year 2003.

Question 40: What will the next phase of the multi-year project cover? That is, what will be the goal of the phase (scope of the effort)?

Answer 40: The next phase of the multi-year JIS migration project will cover the construction phase. Question 41: Are there any technology preferences for this multi-year project (in terms of EDI or technology platforms)?

Answer 41: The AOC platform is Java in WebSphere with a rich browser-based client. WebSphere sits on a clustered NT server environment as well as an OS/390 mainframe. For electronic data exchanges, the AOC has adopted Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) and Extensible Markup Language (XML) standards.

Question 42: What is the budget for this phase of the multi-year project? For subsequent phases? For the entire project?

Answer 42: The total cost of the multi-year JIS migration project is estimated to be $38 million over three biennial budget cycles (2001-2003 is approximately $8 million, 2003-2005 is approximately $15 million, and 2005-2007 is approximately $15 million) subject to continued funding.

Question 43: What is the timeline for the multi-year project – plans for when subsequent phases will begin and end and when the final JIS will be released and in service to the courts system?

Answer 43: Continuing with the JIS migration project is anticipated to take the remainder of the current biennium (July 1, 2003 – June 30, 2005) and one additional biennium (July 1, 2005 – June 30, 2007) with completion of the new JIS near the end of June 2007 subject to continued funding and successful completion of the project plan.

Question 44: What vendor(s) worked on previous phases of this multi-year project? What vendor(s), if any, are currently working on the multi-year project?

Answer 44: The AOC has issued several other procurements during the elaboration phase of the JIS migration project. The successful vendor for a use case project was CIBER. The successful vendor for a boot camp implementation was NetObjectives. Additionally, the AOC has awarded contracts to EpicEdge, Templar, Logical, and CIBER for various software development projects during the JIS migration project.

VENDOR F (Questions 45 – 53)

Question 45: How many users will access the proposed JIS application?

Answer 45: The principal JIS clients are judicial officers, court managers, and other court staff of the Washington State court system. Other clients include users from the state’s Departments of Corrections and Licensing, the Washington State Patrol and other law enforcement agencies, prosecutors, public defenders, the media, and law firms. The total number of principal JIS court clients is approximately 3,000. The total number of other JIS clients is approximately 7,000.

Question 46: What level of security is required for this application?

Answer 46: Court staff, judicial officers, and AOC staff currently have user identifications and passwords using a Resource Access Control Facility (RACF) that allow them to access the statewide JIS. JIS-Link clients (law enforcement agencies, prosecutors, public defenders, other criminal justice partners, and private organizations) have user identifications and passwords to allow varying levels of access to parts of the JIS. The AOC has recently begun a project to develop a court Web portal that will use Blockade single sign-on to give each user seamless access to applications based on the user’s security.

Question 47: What are the alternative ways for clients to access the JIS application?

Answer 47: Clients primarily access the JIS using desktop personal computers and secondarily using laptops.

Question 48: Will clients be connected through dial-up or lease-line or VPN? What are the various alternative connection mechanisms that the application is expected to support?

Answer 48: Clients will connect to AOC applications via Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) connections. This includes frame relay circuits, Virtual Private Network (VPN), and dial-up.

Question 49: Does the application need to be designed for a specific browser? For example, will the application need to run on IE 6.0 and above? Is the vendor expected to test the application on non-IE browsers as well?

Answer 49: The current AOC application architectural standard is Microsoft Internet Explorer (IE) 4.0 or greater and Netscape Navigator 4.0 or greater. This standard is subject to change after further review by the AOC.

Question 50: Performance vs. Presentation. What is the priority?

Answer 50: Functionality and performance are the highest priorities. Usability, however, is highly valued by the AOC and JIS client users.

Question 51: Will there be a functional knowledge transfer session by the AOC team? Answer 51: The AOC will provide vendor team members the appropriate access to AOC staff persons during the project(s) and access to additional requisite information pertaining to the various deliverables subject to JIS data dissemination, confidentiality, and security parameters.

Question 52: Can we be provided with documentation regarding the functional domain?

Answer 52: Basic information on the JIS and an overview of the JIS migration plan (July 2001) is available at the Washington courts public Web site at http://www.courts.wa.gov/jis. Successful vendor(s) will receive access to additional documentation on the functional domain subject to JIS data dissemination, confidentiality, and security parameters.

Question 53: Can we get access to existing legacy applications? Are there documents to support the legacy application that the vendor can refer to get a better understanding of the system?

Answer 53: Basic information on the JIS and an overview of the JIS migration plan (July 2001) is available at the Washington courts public Web site at http://www.courts.wa.gov/jis. Successful vendor(s) will receive access to existing legacy applications and documentation subject to JIS data dissemination, confidentiality, and security parameters.