RFP Overview
The City and County of San Francisco’s technology vision is to become a responsive, transparent digital city with easy to use and accessible services for every resident, visitor, business, and employee. To support this vision, the City funds a variety of new technology projects every year. Projects vary in size and scope and are led by project teams throughout the City agencies.
The Committee on Information Technology (COIT) is soliciting proposals to provide professional guidance and support to technology projects funded for the next two fiscal years. The contractor will act as a “coach” to help project teams adopt modern technology development practices and succeed in project objectives. Ultimately, coaching is intended to help departments learn best practices, minimize risks, and adopt a human-centered approach towards service design.
Time and Place for Submission of Proposals
Proposals (including the Quote Form) should be submitted no later than 5:00 pm PST on May 3, 2019 and must be in an electronic format and sent by email to lily.liang@sfgov.org.
Anticipated Contract Term
Based on this RFP’s schedule, the anticipated contract term will be June 1, 2019 – June 30, 2020, with the option to extend the term. Actual contract term may vary, depending upon service and project needs at the City’s sole, absolute discretion.
COIT may extend the contract for up to an additional two years in order to provide additional training to future COIT funded projects.
Questions and Communications
All questions should be sent by e-mail to lily.liang@sfgov.org. Questions must be in writing and received by the Deadline, April 22, 2019. All questions received by the deadline, as well as COIT's responses, will be posted below.
- What’s the difference between coaching and training mentioned in the RFP?
In July 2019, COIT will be sponsoring a series of trainings for technology projects across the City. The trainings will be divided into five separate modules to address variety of technology issues of particular interest. Please see the attached document which was intended to be “Appendix A” to give more detail on the trainings. More information on the full project list is available on the COIT website here: https://sfcoit.org/node/100001459
Coaching is a supplement to the trainings to provide ongoing advice and support to a select number of technology projects. We would like to evaluate proposals on what coaching services would look like to make sure all projects are successful in their goals.
- Would you be looking for intensive training across City and County of San Francisco in a class room setting? Like workshops, lectures and courses on design thinking, agile, lean-startup, service design, cloud transformation, digital transformation, principles of human centered design, etc.
We are open to all sorts of proposals. Please see 1.0 Statement of Need for more details.
- What is the tentative number of select technology projects you wish to get coaching on at any given time?
- How many teams would be coached at any time?
- How big are those teams?
- How X-functional are those teams?
In total, COIT will review and approve 115 different technology projects from various City departments for FY 2019-20 all of which are eligible for coaching services. However, we do face resources constraints to provide coaching services and anticipate being only able to support a select number. We are in the process of identifying projects that would particularly benefit from coaching services but we expect only 3-8 projects will be part of this initial year of coaching services.
Due to the large variability in project size and scope, we encourage all proposals to provide details on their approach to coaching services and provide past examples. We are unable to provide exact details on the potential project teams as discussions are still ongoing.
- There are many forms of human of centered design - are you looking for digital applications like UX/UI or are you also seeking industrial design, marketing, urban planning, system design, architecture, change management, operating model, business case development etc. as well?
We are very eager to hear more about different approaches. In the context of COIT, projects vary from infrastructure to web based residential services. Our intention is to promote design tactics that emphasize user testing and iterative development.
- Do you want the contractor to source the research participants as well?
We would appreciate if contractors would make clear if this option is available. Demonstrating experience sourcing and conducting user research/testing will be incorporating in the overall evaluation of each proposal.
- Is the contractor responsible for adoption of best human centered and technology practices within the teams?
The contractor is responsible for providing coaching services and advice throughout the initial stages of each project. Ultimate adoption of human centered design practices is a long-term goal of COIT generally.
- Are you looking to for certifications for your employees to get after going through this coaching program?
Contractors that can provide educational materials and help guide departments to certification programs would be helpful. However it will be up to the individual departments if they want further certification.
- Are you looking for tiered and customized training for various levels from executives, leadership, managers and individual contributors?
We are open to all sorts of proposals. For projects to be successful, various levels of the project team will need to be involved.
- Do you wish the contractor to measure change in the outcome of the product due to adoption of human centered design practices? Like – time to service completion, reduction in calls/support-tickets, self-service task completion, sign-ups, engagement, etc.?
The contractor should expect to work closely with COIT staff and the project teams on developing evaluative criteria. The primary purpose of the coach is to provide support and advice to help achieve project goals.