ACAN - Publishing Court Decisions Online

ACAN

DEFINITION OF REQUIREMENTS

The Courts Administration Service (CAS) requires a commercial off- the- shelf software that allows the self-publishing of past and future reasons and judgments (herein referred to as “decisions”) of the four following courts (herein referred to as “the Courts”): the Federal Court of Appeal, the Federal Court, the Court Martial Appeal Court of Canada and the Tax Court of Canada. The supplier will also host said decisions on its servers. CAS is intending to award the contract to:

NAME AND ADDRESS OF THE PRE-IDENTIFIED SUPPLIER:

Vendor Name and Address:

Lexum informatique juridique inc.

910-4200 boul. Saint-Laurent

Montreal Quebec

Canada

H2W 2R2

CRITERIA FOR ASSESSMENT

Any interested supplier must demonstrate by way of a statement of capabilities that their product and services meet the following requirements:

ESSENTIAL SUPPLIER REQUIREMENTS:

M.1 Any software proposed must be "off-the-shelf", meaning that each component of the software is commercially available and requires no further research or development and is part of an existing product line with a field-proven operational history (that is, it has not simply been tested in a laboratory or in an experimental environment). If any of the proposed software is a fully compatible extension of a field-proven product line, it must have been publicly announced on or before the ACAN closing date.

M.2 The supplier must have at least 5 years of verifiable expertise in processing and publishing decisions from various Canadian courts in both English and French.

M.3 The software must work and interoperate with the existing websites of the Courts. Transition from each of the four Courts’ homepages to the decision portion of the website has to be seamless from a user's perspective.

M.4 The software must be capable of processing documents written in Canadian English and Canadian French and must recognize and post Canadian French characters properly.

M.5 The software must enable designated CAS staff to immediately self-publish Court decisions in both HTML and PDF (the two formats being identical in content) from original files available in Microsoft Word and WordPerfect.

M.6 The software must block the automatic indexing of legal decisions by web bots.

M.7 All the decisions, past and future, for each of the Courts will be hosted on a “Protected B” secure server located in Canada.

M.8 The supplier will create and host a “decision site” for each Court (see links at the end of the of this document). The look and feel of each Court must be reproduced in the new environment (logo, coat of arms, colours, etc.). Each of the four Courts already has a “main site”, hosted by CAS. Please refer to links at the end of this document.

M.9 All decisions, including revised decisions, translations, etc., will be available in both HTML and PDF; the supplier will be responsible for converting documents (created in .doc or .docx) uploaded by CAS through the Administrative Tool into these formats.

M.10 Decisions created by CAS will be uploaded to the supplier’s servers using the Administrative Tool. The software will use scripts to convert the MS Word coding into metadata, which will be used by each of the sites’ search engines to retrieve the decisions.

M.11 The software must automatically extract metadata for each decision published, including but not limited to

• Title of decision

• Neutral citation number
• Date of decision
• Docket number
• Related docket number
• Judge
• Counsel
• Parties
• Date of publishing
• Date of corrections and/or amendment of a previously published decision

M.12 The software will provide an administrative tool in both official languages, with both a USER and an ADMIN profile.

M.13 Training and reference material will be offered in both official languages.

M.14 A search engine, in both English and in French, will be included for each court. The software will index each court’s published decisions and offer a full-text search which will include, at minimum, boolean, wild card and proximity operator searches as well as the possibility of searching by relevance, by date or by any of the extracted metadata (listed in M.11).

M.15 The software will offer, for each of the Courts, the possibility for users to subscribe or unsubscribe to an email notification and a RSS. These notifications will announce the new decisions, translations and corrections that are published on the website. For each Court, CAS will be able to establish rules governing which type of decisions should be included in these lists.

M.16 The software is accessible and is compliant to the WCAG-2 standard as required by the Treasury Board of Canada which is available online.

M.17 The supplier must be able to provide technical support in both English and French by telephone and email, from Monday to Friday.

M.18 The supplier must guarantee an uptime of 99.5 % minimum with access to the servers via HTTP and SSL protocols and daily backups.

Definitions and links

The Courts

Federal Court of Appeal

http://cas-cdc-www02.cas-satj.gc.ca/portal/page/portal/fca-caf_eng

Federal Court

http://cas-cdc-www02.cas-satj.gc.ca/portal/page/portal/fc_cf_en/Index

Court Martial Appeal Court

http://www.cmac-cacm.ca/index-eng.shtml

Tax Court of Canada

http://cas-cdc-www02.cas-satj.gc.ca/portal/page/portal/tcc-cci_Eng/Index

Web Standards for the Government of Canada

http://www.tbs-sct.gc.ca/ws-nw/index-eng.asp

http://www.tbs-sct.gc.ca/pol/doc-eng.aspx?id=23601

Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0

http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG20/

JUSTIFICATION FOR THE PRE-IDENTIFIED SUPPLIER

Decisia is the only known online platform dedicated to automated

extraction of information from legal documents, meeting the

standards in the field in accordance with The Preparation,

Citation and Distribution of Canadian Decisions guide, which was

adopted by the Canadian Judicial Council, and this, in both official languages of Canada

GOVERNMENT CONTRACTS REGULATIONS EXCEPTION(S)

Section 6.d of the Government Contract Regulations is being

invoked in this procurement as only one person or firm is

capable of performing the contract.

EXCLUSION AND/OR LIMITED TENDERING REASONS

Annex 4.4 article 506.12(b) of the AIT is applicable on the

basis of limited tendering where there is an absence of

competition for technical reasons and the goods or services can

be supplied only by a particular supplier and no alternative or

substitute exists, respectively.

OWNERSHIP OF INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY

Ownership of any Foreground Intellectual Property arising out of

the proposed contract will vest in the Contractor.

PERIOD OF THE PROPOSED CONTRACT AND DELIVERY DATE.

The proposed contract is from April 1, 2016 to March 31, 2017.

SUPPLIER'S RIGHT TO SUBMIT A STATEMENT OF CAPABILITIES

Suppliers who consider themselves fully qualified and available

to provide the goods or services described in the ACAN, may submit a statement of capabilities in writing to the contact person identified in this notice on or

before the closing date of this notice. The statement of capabilities must clearly demonstrate how the supplier meets the advertised requirements. The conditions of the developer's shrink-wrap license are not acceptable to the Crown.

This software is proprietary, and the proposed Contractor must

have the authority to negotiate the terms and conditions of the

contract and the related software licensing terms including, but

not limited to; limitation of liability, indemnification,

transferability of license, termination/refund to the Crown.

Documents may be submitted in either official language of Canada

INQUIRIES AND SUBMISSION OF STATEMENT OF CAPABILITIES

Inquiries and statements of capabilities are to be directed to:

Pierre Rocan

Manager/Gestionnaire

Contracting and Materiel Management | Service contractuel et gestion du matériel

Courts Administration Service | Service administratif des tribunaux judiciaires

90 Sparks St./90 rue Sparks

Ottawa ON K1A 0H9

Tel. 613-995-5208

Pierre.Rocan@cas-satj.gc.ca