Federal Grant Programs

Notice of Intent to Post an RFQ for a Regulatory Compliance Monitoring Solution

The Executive Office of Education (EOE) and the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) intend to post a Request for Quote (RFQ) for the procurement of a Consolidated Program Compliance and Monitoring Solution. The solution will be the primary application for DESE to monitor districts, collaboratives, agencies, schools, and programs as well as other regulated entities on a variety of compliance criteria. This solution will initially be used by the Office of Approved Special Education Schools (OASES) for approving, reviewing, monitoring, administering and ensuring corrective action, issuing and updating program approval status, and supporting and following up with the programs the group regulates. Additionally, this system will be used by the Resource Allocation Strategy and Planning (RASP) Office for monitoring compliance with federal entitlement grant programs.

DESE hopes to roll this monitoring solution out to other internal offices within DESE and with other state agencies to improve data collection from external stakeholders, streamline monitoring activities across the department, and to build a better understanding of the programs it serves and regulates.

The high-level processes to be included in this future-state solution include the ability to:

• Leverage real time monitoring data to inform monitoring processes
• Establish and Communicate Monitoring Criteria to stakeholders
• Set up programs for review
• Conduct program reviews and evaluate compliance with established criteria
• Draft reports of findings and build final reports
• View Approval status and follow up with programs
• Request, Review and Approve Corrective Action Plans
• Request, Review and Approve Progress Reports
• Monitor Grant Programs at districts
• Publish and publicly post reports

This solution must be able to initially support internal use by 21 DESE staff members (across OASES and RASP), and external use by users across 400 public-school districts, 24 collaboratives, 80 approved special education residential programs, and 160 day schools. The solution will need to be highly integrated into a number of EOE systems to build a holistic view of the programs being monitored, including shared data from other state agencies. Wherever possible, DESE is looking to minimize the manual workarounds required to gather and review data, and instead expect the future system is capable of automating this work, allowing staff members to focus on conducting high quality and more efficient reviews and monitoring interactions with program and district staff.

The estimated Posting date is within 2–4 weeks. There will be a Q&A opportunity at a later date. No further information is available at this time.

Any vendor with a potential solution that did not receive this notification, but would like to receive a copy of the RFQ posting notification, can register for a COMMBUYS account that includes the commodity code(s) for software. Instructions can be found here: Job Aid: COMMBUYS Vendor Registration .

Any market vendor that is not already on the ITS75 Vendor List must submit a bid in cooperation with a current ITS75 Reseller. This is achieved by (1) registering for a Commbuys account as set forth above, and (2) including a Reseller Letter and Reseller quote with the market vendor's proposal. Further instructions will be provided in the RFQ when posted.

EOE strongly encourages market vendors with potential solutions to begin discussions and establish contractual relationships with ITS75 Resellers as soon as possible. The list of ITS75 Resellers is below, in alphabetical order. Market vendors can reach out to more than one Reseller to explore potential relationships, and Resellers can support the bid proposals of more than one market vendor. This process takes time and starting the process now will improve any Bidders' ability to meet the RFQ response deadline.

The estimated RFQ posting date is within 2–4 weeks. No further information is available at this time and EOE will not respond to vendor questions. There will be a Q&A opportunity at a later date. EOE will respond to questions at that time.

Please feel free to share this information and thank you for your interest!