Home Procurement Local eCase Maintenance and Support Service Provider for the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine

Local eCase Maintenance and Support Service Provider for the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine

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Terms of Reference

Local eCase Maintenance and Support Service Provider for the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine

Background and context

The European Union Anti-Corruption Initiative in Ukraine (EUACI) Phase II is the biggest European Union (EU) support programme in the area of anti-corruption in Ukraine, co-funded and implemented by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark on behalf of the EU.

The overall objective of EUACI Phase II is reduction of corruption in Ukraine at the national and local levels. One of its beneficiaries is the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU). The NABU is a state law enforcement agency of Ukraine with the key objective of preventing, exposing, stopping, investigating and solving corruption-related offences committed by high officials. The EUACI provides its long-term support in the increasing NABU’s capacity building.

Within the framework of this assignment, further development of an electronic system enabling the full-fledged paperless exchange of data at the stage of pre-trial investigation (eCase management system) is envisaged.

The contracting authority is the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark, EUACI, hereinafter referred as the Customer. The Beneficiary is the National Anti-corruption Bureau of Ukraine.

The EUACI supported the development of eCase management system, provided maintenance and support of the system, as well the development of additional modules on eCase integration with other state information systems.

In August 2023 EUACI extended the contract with the eCase system developer to provide a limited scope of remote maintenance and support services until June 2024. The challenge is that some maintenance and support services require physical presence at Beneficiary’s facilities and therefore cannot be delivered remotely by the eCase system developer due to security reasons.

Since the Beneficiary unable to take full responsibility for the maintenance and support of the eCase at this stage, the EUACI is looking for a local supplier to provide maintenance and support services which cannot be delivered remotely by the eCase system developer.

Objective

The overall objective of this assignment is to procure maintenance and support services of the of eCase management system from a local service provider.

Scope of Work

The Contractor shall provide eCase maintenance and technical support services in line with the requirements set out under the "Scope of work" and “Deliverables” sections of this TOR for the following:

1.     Support of eCase MS system components (operating systems, databases, monitoring subsystems, virtualization subsystems (VMware), orchestration subsystems (Tanzu/Kubernetes), Rabbit MQ messaging platform, backup subsystem):

  • Management of DEV and TEST environments of the eCase MS system

  • Installing updates to the virtualization platform (VMware vSphere), operating systems, databases and system components of the eCase MS system when the relevant updates are released by the eCase system developer;

  • Monitoring the status of software components of the solution;

  • Control of the backup process;

  • Control of the relevance of backup recovery procedures;

2.     Infrastructure support (servers, data storage systems, network equipment):

  • Interaction with the hardware vendor in support of technical support cases;

  • Updating the firmware of hardware components of the equipment upon the release of relevant updates;

  • Interaction with the vendor of the virtualization platform in support of technical support cases;

  • Monitoring the status of hardware components of the solution;

  • Keeping technical documentation up to date.

  • Control of the relevance of backup recovery procedures;

  • Support of application systems maintenance processes: support of Tanzu/Kubernetes clusters, installation of updates, migration of payloads (containerized components of the e-Case IS) between clusters in case of Kubernetes version update (dev, stage, production environment);

  • Analysis of monitoring logs, configuration and performance optimization of the eCase components;

  • Monitoring and updating certificates and licenses of the eCase environment;

  • Keeping DEV, TEST, PROD environment configurations in a synchronized state.

3.     Support of the eCase MS and its software components[1]:

  • Installation of patches and new versions of eCase MS software components (in DEV and TEST environments) upon their provision by the eCase system developer;

  • Ensuring the process of transferring changes and updates between environments, installing updates in the PROD environment shall be carried out by the Contractor's specialists exclusively on-site at the Beneficiary’s facilities and under the supervision of responsible Beneficiary’s employees;

  • Maintaining a knowledge base on the configuration of the eCase, a list of typical problems and solutions, documenting the changes made (change management);

  • Troubleshooting, collection, analysis and escalation of problems/incidents that cannot be resolved by the Contractor to the technical support of the eCase system developer, communication with the eCase system developer in the process of resolving problems/incidents.

4.   Development of Templates to procedural documents.

The general requirements of quality of service delivered are described in Annex A of this TOR.

Deliverables

The deliverables under the assignment covers the implementation of all activities required for the achievement of its objective and should include the following actions on eCase management system:

  1. Scheduled maintenance;

  2. Resolution of incidents;

  3. Execution of operational tasks;

  4. Information and technical support;

  5. Operational risk management;

  6. Reporting on the provision of Services;

  7. Templates to procedural documents.

The detailed description of maintenance and support service is provided in Annex B of this TOR.

Timing

The intended commencement date of the eCase maintenance and support by the local Service Provider is from 1 December 2023 until 30 June 2024 in Kyiv.

Methodology

It is envisaged that the assignment will be implemented by a team of experts familiar with the context and experienced with similar assignments.

By putting forward a team of experts, the Contractor shall ensure that the task will be developed with as much straightforwardness as possible, the proposed approach and the methodology shall be fine-tuned and a detailed work plan shall be elaborated. The bidders are requested to indicate their suggested division between the experts.

Team Composition and Qualifications

The Contractor’s team is expected to comprise the following profiles:

  • Project Manager/Team Leader

  • Operator of the 1st line

  • Infrastructure engineer

  • Engineer of implementation application software (DevOps)

  • Business Analyst (BA)

  • Developer

The contractor can propose a composition of an experts’ team, which, in his opinion, is most appropriate for the assignment.

All members of the project team and the contractor company should execute non-disclosure agreements.

The project team should be delegated for the entire duration of the project. The composition of the project team may only be modified as a matter of exception, subject to agreement of the parties; the contractor should provide a qualified replacement in a short time.

Qualifications and Competence of Key Staff

Key qualifications of the Project Manager/Team Leader include:

General qualifications:

  • At least a bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Computer Programming, or any other relevant field;

  • Minimum of 5 years of professional experience working with planning, management and implementation of IT-related projects.

Adequacy for the assignment:

  • At least 3 years of team management in web-based software development;

  • Successful implementation of IT projects of a similar nature;

  • Managerial experience in a foreign donor-funded project related to the development/management/assessment of ICT solutions for a government agency would be an advantage.

Experience with the region and languages:

  • Relevant working experience from the region;

  • Fluency in Ukrainian and/or Russian;

    • Good knowledge of English.

Key qualifications of the Operator of the 1st line include:

General qualifications:

  • At least a bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Computer Programming, or any other relevant field;

Adequacy for the assignment:

  • At least one year of experience in IT projects.

Experience with the region and languages:

  • Relevant working experience from the region;

  • Fluency in Ukrainian;

    • Knowledge of English.

Key qualifications of the Infrastructure Engineer include:

General qualifications:

  • At least a bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Computer Programming, or any other relevant technical field;

Adequacy for the assignment:

  • At least three years of experience in Linux like OS (RHEL, CentOS, Debian/Ubuntu).

  • At least three years of experience in Windows OS (AD, Group Policy, WSUS, PKI, NPS, etc.).

  • Experience in data protection software and backup/restore procedure strategies: D2D, D2D2T, backup consistency, backup validation, and disaster recovery.

  • Network Knowledge at CCNA or equivalent practical level (Base Network Troubleshooting, DNS, VLANs, Trunk/Access, Dynamic Routing).

  • At least three years of experience supporting and maintaining Industry Standard servers (x86_64) and disk storage equipment: firmware updates, monitoring, troubleshooting, etc.

  • Experience with Zabbix or equivalent open-source infrastructure monitoring tools: monitoring, alerting, notification integration with messengers/email/etc.

    • Experience with case processing and interaction with vendor’s support.

Experience with the region and languages:

  • Relevant working experience from the region;

  • Fluency in Ukrainian;

    • Good knowledge of English.

Key qualifications of an engineer of implementation application software (DevOps) include:

General qualifications:

  • At least a bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or any other related technical field;

  • Minimum of five years of professional experience in IT projects.

 Adequacy for the assignment:

  • Must be able to support developers, enforce optimal methodologies, and guarantee seamless deployment of code to production servers, maintenance and assistance;

  • At least three years of experience in Linux like OS (RHEL, CentOS, Debian/Ubuntu).

  • Familiar with automation tools like Ansible, Tower, GitLab CI/CD, OCI Images/Containers, Bash Scripting);

  • At least one year of experience in container orchestration like Kubernetes/OpenShift;

  • Network knowledge on CCNA or equivalent practical level (network troubleshooting, DNS, VLANs, Trunk/Access ports, Routing);

  • At least three years of experience in VMWare vSphere.

 Experience with the region and languages:

  • Relevant working experience from the region;

  • Fluency in Ukrainian;

  • Good knowledge of English.

Key qualifications of the Business Analyst include:

General qualifications:

  • At least a bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Computer Programming, or any other relevant technical field;

  • Minimum of three years of professional experience as a Business Analyst in IT projects of a similar nature.

Adequacy for the assignment:

  • At least three years of experience

  • At least one year of experience in IT projects related to the Criminal Procedure Code of Ukraine;

  • At least one year of experience in projects related to electronic document flow systems;

  • Experience with Business Process Models and Notation.

Experience with the region and languages:

  • Relevant working experience from the region;

  • Fluency in Ukrainian;

  • Good knowledge of English.

Key qualifications of the Developer include:

General qualifications:

  • At least a bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Computer Programming, or any other relevant technical field;

  • Minimum of three years of professional experience in IT projects.

Adequacy for the assignment:

  • Experience with Business Process Models and Notation;

  • Experience with tools such as Consul and Migration Designer;

  • Domain knowledge in the Criminal Procedure Code of Ukraine;

  • Domain knowledge in the electronic document flow systems.

Experience with the region and languages:

  • Relevant working experience from the region;

  • Fluency in Ukrainian;

  • Good knowledge of English.

Estimated budget and Payment

The maximum budget for this assignment all included may not exceed EUR 33,000 (approximately DKK 246,300[2]). The Tenderer’s financial proposal shall include all costs for a fee and project-related reimbursable expenses.

All the payments under the Contract shall be made in UAH according to the official NBU exchange rate published on the business day of the invoice issuance by the Supplier.

The Supplier may request 30% of the payment on signing the contract and the remaining 70% will be paid when the entire assignment will be completed. The EUACI has a VAT exemption as an international technical assistance program.

Reporting and management

The performance of the Contractor will be judged upon reaching the purpose of this contract as well as obtaining its results, as indicated in the section “Objective” and “Deliverables” herein respectively. Moreover, the performance of the Contractor will be judged upon the successful implementation of all the specific activities indicated in the section “Scope of work” of this TOR.

By signing the contract, the Contractor agrees to hold in trust and confidence any information or documents, disclosed to the Contractor or discovered by the Contractor or prepared by the Contractor in the course of or as a result of the implementation of the contract, and agrees that it shall be used only for the contract implementation and shall not be disclosed to any third party.

In the period until acceptance, the EUACI, Contractor, and Beneficiary will hold regular project group meetings to exchange information and seek to clarify any questions of whatsoever nature.

How to Apply

The deadline for submitting the proposals is 20 November 2023, 17:00 Kyiv time.

All interested companies or experts should submit:

  • Commercial offer (short description of the company, technical approach and service description, CV of key staff, Financial Offer)

The proposal shall include the aforementioned information and should be submitted within the above deadline to [email protected], CC: [email protected] indicating the subject line: NABU eCase Local MS.

Bidding language: English.

Any clarification questions regarding the bid request should be addressed to [email protected], CC: [email protected] not later than 10 November 2023, 17:00 Kyiv time.

Evaluation

Bids will be evaluated in accordance with the criteria provided below:

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Criteria

Weight

1

Core team members - relevant experience, skills and competencies

30%

2

Technical approach and methodology

30%

3

Financial Offer

40%

 

[1] Development of software components and updates for Synergy IDM Platform, eCase, Integration Services is carried out by the system developer, i.e. Synergy.