Welcome to week #6 of the state-wide shelter in place. The end of this complete state-wide shelter in place will be coming to a phased end next month. For the week of April 20, the following items of general interest are worth commenting on:
News
New
The System Offices will be staffed with only essential personnel through the end of April
The following report is available on the Texas State Auditor’s Office website:
A Report on Contract Monitoring Assessment at Certain State Agencies, SAO Report No. 20-028
Overall Conclusion
In accordance with Texas Government Code, Section 2261.258, the State Auditor’s Office (SAO) has assigned contract monitoring ratings of additional monitoring warranted, no additional monitoring warranted, or reduced monitoring warranted to each of the 25 largest state agencies. Those agencies were determined by the Legislative Budget Board. That statute requires a report on those ratings to be submitted to the Office of the Comptroller of Public Accounts (Comptroller’s Office) and the Department of Information Resources (Department) by September 1 of each year. The Comptroller’s Office and the Department are responsible for developing guidelines for the additional and reduced monitoring.
For the purposes of this project, the SAO reviewed and analyzed relevant information from multiple sources specified in Texas Government Code, Section 2261.258. No single source was used to assign a rating of additional monitoring warranted or reduced monitoring warranted.
Agencies were rated as follows:
- Five (20 percent) were rated additional monitoring warranted for at least one contracting period.
- Eight (32 percent) were rated reduced monitoring warranted for at least one contracting period.
- Twelve (48 percent) were rated no additional monitoring warranted for any contracting period.
For each agency assigned a rating of additional monitoring warranted or reduced monitoring warranted, the SAO specifies the contracting period(s) to which that rating applies (contract solicitation development, contract formation and award, or contract management and termination).
Pluralsight has provided us with the following system-wide proposal. Please speak with your staff to gauge the level of interest. Pluralsight is telling us that members of the A&M System have about 500 licenses today (I am validating this statement).
I want to know who and how many licenses each of you would like to purchase (note that there is a “rip and replace” option. Please read your email and respond directly to me
In Process
RELLIS contracts
- Contract negotiations for network services at RELLIS with AT&T/ Cisco (RELLIS NaaS) and for data center services at RELLIS with RCDRC continue
Captioning, transcription, streaming and experience management contracts
- A captioning RFP has been released: Solicitation Description: The Texas A&M University System (“A&M System”) Office of Information Technology (“IT”) has a need to acquire captioning products and services (“Captioning”) to ensure we have the best available tools and services for our faculty and students to improve their teaching and learning processes. In addition, A&M System IT wishes to insure the solution is robust enough to meet the Captioning needs of the A&M System and its members(“Member” as listed in Section 1.2) with a sustainable and economically viable process. A&M System is seeking proposals to select RESPONDENTS to provide the Captioning solution as described in Section 3.It is the intent of this RFP to establish Master Agreements with more than one qualified RESPONDENT for the requirements listed. These Master Agreements will allow each Member the discretion to adopt the Captioning solution according to its needs
System-Wide Contracting News
In Process
A&M System-wide Contracts Under Development
- Interfolio is a self-service web database program that allows faculty (or staff) to use the Internet to maintain their teaching, research, and service records; the System Offices received a proposal for a system-wide agreement based on current use by TAMU and PVAMU, but is waiting for the HCM Academic Management Discovery project to make a recommendation on a system-wide tool
- Qualtrics provides feedback from customers, employees and students; the System Offices has agreed to a system-wide agreement beginning September 1; details to come
Repeats
Current A&M System-wide Contracts
- Access Data provides members with preservation hold software (in annual assessment)
- Adobe provides members full Creative Cloud suite and Adobe Pro software tools (discretionary)
- Banner COE provides members with Banner-related services (discretionary)
- Blackboard provides a cloud-based learning management system option to members (discretionary)
- Canvas provides a cloud-based learning management system option to members (discretionary)
- Class Climate (Scantron) provides members with tools that allows students to evaluate academic courses and instructors (discretionary)
- D2L provides a cloud-based learning management system option to members (discretionary)
- Diligent provides board portal functionality for all members (discretionary)
- DocuSign provides members with electronic signature and related workflow capabilities (discretionary)
- Duo provides two-factor authentication for all members (discretionary)
- Examity provides members with on-line proctoring services under a one-year master contract (discretionary contract)
- eXplorance provides members with tools that allows students to evaluate academic courses and instructors (discretionary)
- GovQA (WebQA) is the TAMUS approved Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) solution for all members (in annual assessment)
- Guardian I-9 (LawLogix) provides members with electronic I-9 compliance verification (discretionary).
- Hootsuite enables members to manage social networks, schedule messages and measure social media from a dashboard (discretionary)
- IOTA Solutions provides members with tools that allows students to evaluate academic courses and instructors (discretionary)
- Laserfiche provides members with the digitization of documents, the automation of records processing, storage retrieval, security and archiving (discretionary)
- Modo Labs provides mobile application development support (discretionary)
- Navex provides members with a ethics and compliance management (discretionary)
- Oracle provides members with a shared hardware/software platform to host Oracle-based applications (discretionary)
- Portfolium provides students and recent graduates with the ability to connect with businesses and employers using previous academic work and projects to supplement their communication (discretionary)
- ProctorU provides members with on-line proctoring services under a one-year master contract (discretionary)
- Proofpoint email filtering and data loss prevention tools (in annual assessment)
- Siteimprove checks web pages, every five days, for spelling, grammar, broken links and accessibility for 54 cents per web page per year (discretionary)
- Smart Net (Cisco) offers members equipment maintenance (discretionary)
- SmartEvals (Gap Technologies) provides members with tools that allows students to evaluate academic courses and instructors (discretionary)
- Syncplicity licensing is available for all members (in annual assessment)
- WebEx online collaboration and meeting software is available to all members at the low cost of $1.44 per month per license (discretionary)
- Zoom online collaboration and meeting software provides members with an alternative to WebEx, GoToMeeting and Adobe Connect
SCIO Trips/Visits
- No trips scheduled this week (or for the foreseeable future)