Project Update 05_17_2017

On Wednesday, May 17, 2017, we posted an RFI using Alaska’s Vendor Self Service system. We request responses from interested vendors by June 5, 2017 at 4:00 PM Alaska Prevailing Time - and ask for some very basic information and an indication of their interest. However, we see this wiki as an active environment in which vendors and others can continue to keep track of what’s going on as Alaska makes strategy decisions and releases future RFPs.

We are looking for firms that are excited about working in new ways with government:

• User-centered research and design
• Open source, test driven software development using modern approaches
• Agile methods where the State and the vendor work as a team to produce great products
• Delivery over documentation (although we still need the code to be well-documented, you’ll see that in our RFPs)
• OK with smaller dollar contracts - with an understanding that successful delivery will help in future module procurements
• Most important, knowing how to deliver great products over knowing how to sell. We want vendors that put their engineers, designers, and developers first, vs. their business development. Because the procurements will be smaller, we don’t intend to have 125 page RFP’s with 1000 “shall statements” that require enormous proposal efforts. We are going to experiment with ways to make the buying process easier for both Alaska and interested vendors.

We received responses from a number of firms that fit the bill. They also asked a ton of great questions that we responded to on as GitHub Issues. We attempted to categorize them with different labels to help vendors as they sort through our answers. If there are any other questions, we encourage you to post them as new issues.