Review Proposal Format

[mheadd]

In Section 4.01, we need to review the proposal format.

Per Susan: "This is the section where I suggest we consider evaluation priorities first. We want to be sure we request the correct/necessary info from vendors so that OCS can evaluate effectively to meet their chosen criteria."

Should the number of pages be expanded to 14? 20?

[randyhart]

Let's figure out what issue from the DPA procurement we are trying to solve by adding pages. Might be worth having a half hour discussion with Jon G., @susanjabal, @waldoj, @mheadd, @sztaylorakgov and me to figure out what we should do differently. I totally agree we need to focus our eval priorities, but I'm not sure we'd need to add pages.

[susanjabal]

The concept behind increasing the page limit would be to increase the information received in a written proposal, so that we can effectively make decisions about which firms will advance to the interview phase; rather than interviewing every firm that submits a proposal. For this solicitation, we still intend to interview everyone; but eventually, for solicitations down the road, we may decide to conduct a 2-step eval; and decide who advances to interviews. By allowing a bit more in written proposals, we can do this. Increasing the page count for this one will allow the State the opportunity to see what the proposals look like, and decide how to proceed in the next rounds. Maybe 14 pages?

Again - we still intend to interview everyone for this solicitation.

[DanaPenner]

finalize eval criteria to drive this decision, need further discussion on # of pages....but no more than 14 :)

[sztaylorakgov]

For what it is worth, I was skeptical about the DPA proposal limit of 7 pages. What I experienced in the solicitation evaluation was that "7 (ish) pages" plus the interview was sufficient to assess the proposals. It was actually nice to eliminate the tendency for respondents to stuff their proposals with a combination of marketing guck and/or information that doesn't relate strongly to our needs and strengths/weaknesses. I would advocate for 7 pages. If we want to experiment with a slightly longer proposal then keep it under 10 :smile:

[susanjabal]

Ok - lets try 10 pages.

For the sake of translating this into 'real life', this is what it might look like in a proposal: 3 pages -Technical Understanding & Approach - 15% 1 page - Project Management & Approach - 5% 2 pages - User Interface/Experience Design - 10% 1 page - Staffing Plan - 10% 3 pages - Similar Experience - 10%

I am not suggesting we prescribe this for vendors, just giving an idea of what we might get (allocated based on scoring weights).

[randyhart]

Let's do it. I'll make the updates in a PR that you can merge, @susanjabal