Collaborative Interface and Prototyping Design Tool

Notice of Amendment 001

1. The document “RFP-No.-1000439295-AMD-001-EN” has been published.

2. The solicitation closing date and time is amended to October 18, 2024 at 2:00 PM EST.

All other terms and conditions of the solicitation remain the same.

Notice of Proposed Procurement

Description and quantity of the Goods or Services to be procured: The Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) has an annual requirement for 80 user licenses for a Licensed Software Subscription Service for a cloud-based interface design and prototyping tool to create, and collaborate on, new and updated designs for internal and external CRA digital content, both static and interactive. This includes intranet, secure portal, and Canada.ca pages.

Currently, the CRA uses various software design tools that are sufficient for prototyping, but they do not seamlessly collaborate among project team members. With the current tools, for designs to be shared with a project team, they must usually be downloaded to a format that is shareable among team members (e.g., PowerPoint, PDF) who do not have access to the design tool. This is both time consuming and inefficient because the designer needs to work with 2 different files – the alternate format and the actual design file. There is a risk that the designer may inadvertently miss applying feedback collected from the alternate format to the design file. With the potential for multiple different versions in different formats, this can potentially
lead to version control issues. The CRA is seeking a design and prototyping tool to assign, view, and edit roles to project team members so they can comment and provide feedback directly in the design files of the tool itself, without the need for an individual tool license. This will result in easier sharing, more efficient collaboration and greater version control.

Contract term: the CRA intends to award one contract for a firm two-year contract period.

Option to Extend the Contract: The Contractor grants to Canada the irrevocable option to extend the term of the Contract by up to 3 additional 1-year periods.

Option to Purchase Additional Quantities of the Goods, Services or Both: The Contractor grants to Canada the irrevocable option to acquire the additional quantities of the goods, services or both described at Annex B (see Table 3).

Basis of Selection: A bid must comply with the requirements of the bid solicitation and meet all mandatory technical evaluation criteria to be declared responsive. The responsive bid with the lowest evaluated price will then be evaluated in accordance with the Proof of Proposal (POP) testing.

Languages in which bids may be submitted: Proposal documents and supporting information must be submitted in either English or French.

Conditional Set-Aside Under the Procurement Strategy for Indigenous Business:
• This procurement may be conditionally set aside under the federal government Procurement Strategy for Indigenous Business.
• In order to be considered for the set-aside, the Bidder must certify that it qualifies as an Indigenous business as defined under PSIB and that it will comply with all requirements of PSIB. If bids from two (2) or more Indigenous businesses are compliant with the terms of the Request for Proposal, the contracting authority will limit the competition to those Indigenous businesses and will not consider bids from any non-Indigenous businesses that may have been submitted.
• For more information on Indigenous business requirements of the Set-aside Program for Indigenous Business, refer to Eligibility for Indigenous procurement set aside and Procurement information for Indigenous business owners

Questions must be directed in writing to the contracting authority via email: ryan.orr@cra-arc.gc.ca

Bids must be submitted by using the Connect service provided by the Canada Post Corporation. When responding, the proposal MUST be delivered to:

Canada Revenue Agency
Bid Receiving Unit
BRUg@cra-arc.gc.ca

Bids will not be accepted if emailed directly to this email address. This email address must be used to request that CRA open a Connect conversation, as detailed in Appendix 3: Standard Instructions - Goods or Services - Competitive Requirements of the Request for Proposal. Bidders must not use their own licensing agreement for Connect to initiate a Connect conversation with CRA.

Negotiations: This is an open procurement and the CRA reserves the right to negotiate with suppliers on any Procurement