EMS Cooperative systems support, maintenance, hosting and ad hoc development

Questions

Answers

Please confirm if the bidder needs to follow any standard pricing template for responding to the EMS Cooperative System RFP. If yes, kindly share the pricing template.

There is no template. Please see point 3.6 Pricing structure in the Call for tenders’ document.

As mentioned in RFP, the bidder needs to either to take over the existing hosting or move to our own DC. Please confirm if UPU will share the asset and license details for us to prepare a quote

The hosting is done on AwS managed by the current provider. No license details are planned to be shared.

– Price for each of the five tasks, with an annual price for tasks 1 and 2;

Should there be a price for task 3? for the foreseen 80 days? or is it covered by the "daily rates" below?

It will be covered by the daily rate

– Daily rate for ad hoc development work (one unique rate only should be provided);

Does it mean that there should be only one daily rate independently of the activity (project lead, architecture, specification, testing, ..) and seniority level?

Yes, this is the requirement

"System maintenance should include regular software updates."

It is unclear what is meant by that. (Is it about e.g. applying security patches, or e.g. deploying applications from Task 3.)

When the software used changes versions as well as other minor updates, security patches, etc.

Can you precise what kind of support (level 1-2-3) is to be provided?

Technical support that can be escalated. Please see the statement of work.

Is there a ticketing system foreseen for support? Can we use Atlassian ServiceDesk?

It is preferred not to have a ticketing system

"Maintenance of EMS SMART includes monitoring system stability, fixing bugs and implementing minor improvements to functionalities, such as adding and removing new designated operators if needed, and mak- ing label adjustments"

* does this activity include fixing bugs in the current software? i.e. bugs introduced by the current software provider?
* does this activity involve meetings with the customer? how many hours per year should be included in meetings?
 * is there a ceiling to the number of hours that should be offered for this activity (fixing bugs, minor improvements, meetings)? or is it open-ended?

This includes fixing bugs in the current and future sofware, however there no known bugs at the moment.
This activity involves meetings with the customer, on the average we need one hour per week. When developments are not taking place no meetings are needed.
 It is open ended

The systems are required to operate with an availability rate of 99.4%.

Does this mean that all EMS systems from now on have the same SLAs? (OpGuide, Public T&T etc.)?

It will be under the same contract of which the statement of work is an Annex

No maintenance tasks defined for Public T&T and i-Care interface

what should they be? 

The vendor should provide the most suitable solution given the details provided in the statement of work and its Annexes.

Maintenance of the EMS Operational Guide and single sign-on includes monitoring, troubleshooting, adding new user roles or changing the privileges assigned to current user roles

It is unclear for what systems roles and privileges should be assigned to in the operational guide. (Current implementation only allows to assign privileges to Operational Guide roles, but allows to assign roles for all systems.) Does this requirement imply a change in the software?

No, this requirement does not imply changes in the software. The privileges will be assigned within each system as it is now.

Performance requirements

* do these requirements apply to all parts of the software (EMS SMART (www.emssmart.post) and the EMS Operational Guide (www.emsog.post), and for both production and integration platforms, development testing environments, single sign-on, public tracking on www.ems.post and the tracking function in i-Care (www.icare.post))?
 * including displaying the query execution time in the header section of the web page?

It applies only to production platforms. The performance is expected to remain at least at the current level.  

Database query execution: database queries shall be performed independently of the technology used

* it is unclear what is meant by that (queries being performed independently of the database technology)?
 * especially "independently"

It is meant that it should work regardless of the type of technology that is used

"...and within approximately 500 milliseconds." 

* is this meant, independently of the query logic and the amount of data used by the query?
 * does the current system already satisfy these performance requirements? how were they measured?

Yes, but this can vary depending on the amount of data. Yes, the current system already satisfies these requirement. The measurement was done by the online tool.

"The value of the query execution time is also displayed in a header section of the webpage."

* is this already done by the current applications (EMS SMART, EMS Operational Guide, single sign-on, public tracking, tracking function in iCare, ...)? if not, should the development of this requirement be part of the offer?
 * how is this supposed to happen for the tracking function in i-Care? or for queries the results of which are not part of the UIs of the system to support?

New developments are not required. The current implementation covers this.

Pages for operators with the largest volumes of data may take a bit longer.

What is a definition of a "large volume operator"?

Pages of the operators of the top 10 volumes. 

"EMS SMART is required to respond to requests from end users within two seconds", "The maximum admitted page rendering latency shall be no more than 1,000 milliseconds" and "database queries shall be performed independently of the technology used and within approximately 500 milliseconds" 

Need clarification what is the difference between these three metrics

These are the specifications based on which the current development was done. 

1998 tender precise a number of EMS events and items to take into consideration for the offer? what are the 2022-2026 requirements?

The requirements remain the same.

what are the expected performances and data volumes expected for the contract duration for the interfaces (public T&T, iCare, ...)?

The expected performance and volumes should remain as in the current tools however regarding the public T&T the trend shows that the tracked volumes are slowly growing. The solution should be adaptable to growth.

"production and integration platforms, development testing environments"

How many environments should be provided? should they all have the same configuration (size, performance, ....)

The vendor should provide the most suitable solution given the details provided in the statement of work and its Annexes.

What is the desired schedule for the implementation of annex 1?

To be agreed between both parties after the signature of the contract.

What is the current EDI platform

ClauderaData Platform - CDP

What are the current Hosting Solutions

AwS currently

Where is the Hosting Location for this service?

The vendor should offer the solution

What is the specification of the Hosting Environment?

The vendor should offer the solution

"The Vendor must also ensure that the setup of the connection with the EMS Bubble, the secure EDI data platform and the PTC systems is extremely secure and reliable" Can we get the current architecture. 

Please see section 4 of the statement of work and the schema describing the architechure.

Please share details on support coverage (24X7, 8X5, 16X5 etc), number of tickets, ticketing tools and current ticket flow process. 

Please see the requirement in Task 1 in the statement of work.

Please share the existing networking infrastructure
- No. of routers & switches
 - Network monitoring tools (if any)

 The vendor should provide the most suitable solution given the details provided in the statement of work and its Annexes.

Please share the current snapshot of infrastructure
- No. of instances
- No. of servers
- Backup frequency
 - Backup tools (If any)

 The vendor should provide the most suitable solution given the details provided in the statement of work and its Annexes.

RFP has mentioned 'Full service quotation (all-inclusive, with the exception of ad hoc developments);' and 'Price for each of the five tasks, with an annual price for tasks 1 and 2;'.
 Can UPU provide split of services required for each - Business Analysis, Software Development & Quality Assurance, project management for above mentioned tasks?

Please see the statement of work and a Pricinf structure 3.6 in the call for tenders document

Please share details on existing ITSM tool

 The vendor should provide the most suitable solution given the details provided in the statement of work and its Annexes.

Please share details on patching tools

 The vendor should provide the most suitable solution given the details provided in the statement of work and its Annexes.

Please share details around compliance requirements. Since it’s a public facing entity and deals with sensitive data, provider would like to know about compliance requirements.

Please see General Terms and Conditions Annex

Please share current deployment architecture diagram.

Please see the statement of work

Provider would like to know challenges around current hosting method.

No known challenges

Kindly share technology stack of ESM tool.

 The vendor should provide the most suitable solution given the details provided in the statement of work and its Annexes.

Please share details if you have configuration management tools like Chef or Ansible. 

 The vendor should provide the most suitable solution given the details provided in the statement of work and its Annexes.

Kindly share details around HA and DR.

 The vendor should provide the most suitable solution given the details provided in the statement of work and its Annexes.

Do we need to provide flat files for any of the indicators in any of the dashboards? If yes, which indicators, and what columns in the flatfiles?

No

Do we need to provide "day of week" view (6 weeks) for any dashboard? if yes, for which dashboard, and for which indicator of that dashboard?

No

When calculating regional statistics, are the calculations based on all operators of a region, or only the EMS cooperative members?

All operators

Do we need cockpits for the regional/global indicators? for regions ? globally?

Yes. The same cockpits as for the individual operators. Global and for each region.

Do we need the Awards Cockpit indicators? for regions ? globally?

Yes. The same as for the individual operators. Global and for each region.

How quick shall the system show the daily/monhly dashboards? what are the performance expectations to load a regional or global dashboard? 

This can be slower than the individual operators pages. It is understandable due to the amount of data.

Calculate once per day, or twice per day as we currently do?

Once a day is sufficient. It is important that the regular daily jobs are not slowed down. If it is a matter of performance even less often calculations could be acceptable. The vendor should propose the most suitable solution.

There will be 8 options to access the statistics (Africa, Arab, Asia/Pacific, Caribbean, Europe, LatinAmerica, North America, World-wide). All regional coordinators, super users, and technical administrators can access these dashboard, without restriction. No provision must be taken for the Smart testers (e.g. that they can only see their own region.) Correct? 

Correct

How do you calculate the global and regional statistics for the "Full Track & Trace" indicator? (has the region sent all 12 events during the period? have all operators sent all 12 events during the period? has at least one operator sent all 12 events? ...)

Aggregate the region and treat it like an operator. 

The "Partners" in Own scanning / Partners will include the partners traffic of all operators in a region, even if the partners are in the region?

Aggregate the region and treat it like an operator. 

Cardit sent & Resdit received yes/no indicator?

Aggregate the region and treat it like an operator.

How do you calculate the global and regional statistics for the "M40 compliance" indicator? (see above "Full Track & Trace" indicator calculation)

Aggregate the region/globe and treat it like an operator.

Number of links - if both operators in same region, is link counted only once?  i.e., it is just an aggregation, or does it represent pairs if in region? Number of links to other regions?

It is an aggregation, just total number of links

Do we need an elapsed time calculator for a whole region (or global) origin and destination? 

Yes. Considering the amount of data the calculation is not expected to be fast. 

How shall the outliers be calculated for the "Average elapsed days" indicator for a region/global?

The vendor can propose the most suitable solution. 

How do you calculate the global and regional statistics for the "Inbound/Outbound PfP traffic" indicator? if an Operator A is a partner of B but not C and both B and C are in the same region, what should the value be for the B/C region or global? (see above "Full Track & Trace" indicator calculation)

Aggregate the region and treat it like an operator. How many items in the region were delivered under PFP agreements vs all volume delivered in the region

How do you calculate the global and regional statistics for the "ITTMAT send and receive" indicator? (see above "Full Track & Trace" indicator calculation)

It will always be yes if it least one is sending and receiving. 

How do you calculate the global and regional statistics for the "Validation leg 1" indicator? (see above "Full Track & Trace" indicator calculation)

This indicator calculation method is to be defined at a later stage. The simplest solutioin will be found between the vendor and the UPU. 

How do you calculate the global and regional statistics for the "Validation leg 2" indicator? (see above "Full Track & Trace" indicator calculation)

This indicator calculation method is to be defined at a later stage. The simplest solutioin will be found between the vendor and the UPU. 

How do you calculate the global and regional statistics for the "Validation leg 3" indicator? (see above "Full Track & Trace" indicator calculation)

This indicator calculation method is to be defined at a later stage. The simplest solutioin will be found between the vendor and the UPU. 

How do you calculate the global and regional statistics for the "Participation in PFP Plan" indicator? (see above "Full Track & Trace" indicator calculation)

This indicator calculation method is to be defined at a later stage. The simplest solutioin will be found between the vendor and the UPU. 

How shall the outliers be calculated for the "Average time in customs" indicator for a region/global?

The vendor can propose the most suitable solution.