The Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Information Technology Division (ITD), held a Bidders' Teleconference yesterday for their Web Content Management project for Mass.gov (INPUT Opportunity 58875). The Commonwealth is looking to replace the legacy tools currently used to support the web content management and delivery environment currently hosted on mass.gov. The Commonwealth plans to approach the solution in two phases. The first phase consists of Proof of Concept (POC) demonstrations provided by up to three vendors, and the second phase will consist of the configuration and implementation of the new Content Management System.

The teleconference acted as an open forum for interested vendors to pose their questions to ITD. Many questions came up regarding the requirement for all vendors submitting bids to use the current software vehicles the Commonwealth has in place. The two contracts in question are ITS14 and ITS19 naming Dell, SHI and Oracle as the software providers for the Commonwealth. The Bidders conference clarified that vendors interested in submitting bids for a content management solution must treat vendors on these vehicles as resellers when submitting proposals. An additional question in regards to the current state software contracts concerned a request for an extended deadline for the web content management solution due to the fact that one of the current contracts was recently recompeted and suppliers may be subject to change (INPUT Opportunity 60768). However, the Commonwealth reiterated they must adhere to a strict time table with the content management project because funds must be expended by the end of the current fiscal year.

Additional questions raised concerned whether or not the Commonwealth would request implementation services off of their ITS33 contract (INPUT Opportunity 40795). The Commonwealth confirmed all migration and implementation services will be performed in-house. A question was asked whether or not the Commonwealth would prefer cloud installation and cloud hosting services, to which the reply was that there was no preference at this time. However, though plans are to currently host the solution within their own data center, the Commonwealth is interested in seeing what cloud options vendors may provide.

The Commonwealth plans to address any questions not answered during the teleconference via a solicitation amendment that will be posted to Comm-Pass. Proposals for the Web Content Management solution are due March 18, 2010.