SPECIAL NOTICE
D -- Request for Information - HHS Consolidated E-Mail
- Notice Date
- 5/23/2003
- Notice Type
- Special Notice
- Contracting Office
- Department of Health and Human Services, Program Support Center, Division of Acquisition Management, Parklawn Building Room 5-101 5600 Fishers Lane, Rockville, MD, 20857
- ZIP Code
- 20857
- Solicitation Number
- Reference-Number-03RFI0001
- Response Due
- 6/16/2003
- Archive Date
- 7/1/2003
- Point of Contact
- Marie Sunday, Contracting Officer, Phone 301-443-7081, Fax 301-443-2761,
- E-Mail Address
-
msunday@psc.gov
- Description
- The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is issuing this Request for Information (RFI) for research and planning purposes to verify the feasibility of converting all of the HHS E-mail systems to a single centrally managed unified E-mail system. The current HHS environment consists of 65,000 federal employees and 5,000 contractors. The current E-mail system consists of 96,000 mailboxes averaging 50 MB in size distributed over 150 servers worldwide. Approximately 50% of users are located in the Washington/Baltimore Metropolitan area. WAN connectivity between locations varies from 256K frame relay to gigabit Ethernet. 90% of the installed base consists of Microsoft Exchange, mostly 5.5 but some 2000. The other 10% are Novell Groupwise. There is a mixed implementation of Windows NT domains and Windows 2000 with Active Directory. Client access via thick client with browser based client for remote access. The purpose of this RFI is to gather industry best practices for the design of a unified E-mail system that will lower the cost of messaging services to HHS and its sub organizations while improving functionality and features, provide a uniform and intuitive interface for E-mail and calendar functions across HHS, and provide a standard E-mail address naming convention for all of HHS. HHS is expecting to reduce costs by reducing the number of E-mail servers and the staff to manage them. HHS is considering both in-sourced and out-sourced alternatives. (NOTE: For the purposes of this RFI, in-sourcing shall be defined as vendor built and implemented and maintained by Government or contractor personnel in a HHS facility. Out-sourcing shall be defined as vendor built, implemented and maintained in a vendor owned facility. HHS shall provide oversight and management through SLAs.) This information will not be used to award a contract. In responding to this request, vendors should respond as completely as possible to the best of their ability and address the information below in their design. If the requested information is outside of the vendors area of experience, please note that and provide answers to those areas that the vendor can respond to with confidence. (1) Technical and financial considerations: (a) Number of servers, configuration (CPU quantity, memory, disk storage) and cost. Include UPS, backup system, load balancing equipment, network equipment, fiber channel switches, cabling, and failover servers; (b) Operating system and version licensing cost, initial purchase and recurring; (c) E-mail system configuration ? clustered using a SAN or NAS and cost; (d) Server licensing costs for E-mail software, initial purchase and recurring; (e) Solution must support secure messaging as it pertains to encryption/decryption and digital signature validation. It must also support either a single or distributed repository for storing digital certificates; (f) Solution must support E-mail enabled applications using both MAPI and SMTP; (g) Users must have access to an intuitive calendar interface that allows them to schedule meetings across OPDIVS as well as view available meeting times for users across OPDIVS; (h) Solution must provide integrated wireless support (RIM Blackberry, Palm, PocketPC); (i) Solution must provide or be capable of providing via third-party software anti-virus scanning of inbound and outbound E-mail before it arrives in users mailbox; (j) Solution must provide or be capable of providing via third-party software anti-spamming functionality; (k) Solution must provide web access for E-mail and calendar; (l) Solution must provide for unlimited mailbox storage; and (m) Annual hardware cost assuming a 3 year refresh cycle for Intel and 5 years for Unix platform. (2) The E-mail directory must be able to integrate with current HHS directory structure without requiring additional user logon. Current HHS structure consists of multiple domains, both NT and Windows 2000. There is no single forest root for HHS although Active Directory implementation is planned for the future. (3) For all in-sourced solutions, include recommended staffing levels as follows: (a) E-mail administrators ? what is the recommended administrator to user ratio? (b) Desktop support staff ? what is the recommended support staff to user ratio? (c) What factors determine whether E-mail servers are geographically centralized or distributed? (Some DHHS locations are on different continents.) (4) For all out-sourced solutions, include the following staffing levels. The out-sourcing vendor will be expected to provide a call center helpdesk to resolve E-mail and calendar issues after they have been triaged by the OPDIV operational helpdesks. (a) E-mail administrators ? what is the recommended administrator to user ratio (outside of vendor provided helpdesk)? (b) Desktop support staff - what is the recommended support staff to user ratio (outside of vendor provided helpdesk)? (5) All solutions must provide 99.9% uptime with a target of 0% unplanned downtime. (6) For all solutions, include Transition/Migration costs. For the purposes of this document, transition time refers to standing up the new E-mail system, creating accounts, configuring gateways and enabling users to access their new mailbox. Migration refers to moving the entire legacy E-mail, distribution lists etc. to the new system. (a) What is the time frame for transitioning to the new system? (b) What would be the method used for transition? (c) Would the HHS be required to maintain parallel environments? (d) How would special issues be addressed such as E-mail enabled applications and secure E-mail? (e) How would the need to maintain legacy SMTP addresses for users be addressed along with issuing new SMTP addresses, i.e doej@cber.fda.gov and john.doe@hhs.gov. (f) What would be the process for resolving duplicate names? The current structure consists of multiple directories. There may be a John Doe in FDA and a John Doe in CDC. (7) In a project of this scope, there is an element of risk that users may lose archived E-mail or functionality that they currently have. What steps would be taken to minimize interruption, i.e. (a) In your experience, what is the best practice for mitigating disruption of mail enabled applications. (b) In your experience, what is the best practice for mitigating the interruption of secure E-mail including encryption/decryption and digital certificate repositories. (c) In your experience, what is the best practice for mitigating the loss of wireless access to E-mail i.e. Blackberry Enterprise Server. Responses may be submitted by e-mail to msunday@psc.gov or in hardcopy to the Contracting Office Address published in this notice no later than Monday, June 16, 2003 and shall reference RFI Number: 03RFI0001.
- Record
- SN00331582-W 20030525/030523213349 (fbodaily.com)
- Source
-
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