PROCUREMENT NOTICE – Project for Strengthening Public Financial Management

SPECIFIC PROCUREMENT NOTICE

Federated States of Micronesia

Project for Strengthening Public Financial Management

Grant No.:          IDA / D324-FM

Contract title:    Supply and Installation of a Financial Management Information System (FMIS)

RFB No:             FM-DOFA-66242-GO-RFB

1. The Federated States of Micronesia (FSM) has received financing from the World Bank toward the cost of the Project for Strengthening Public Financial Management and intends to apply part of the proceeds toward payments under the contract for the Supply and Installation of a Financial Management Information System (FMIS) which will be a configurable, COTS (commercial off the shelf) financial management package, to be implemented based on a load-balancing technology using an underlying distributed database architecture supporting one national government and a clustered database for four state governments.
2. For this contract, the Borrower shall process the payments using the Direct Payment disbursement method, as defined in the World Bank’s Disbursement Guidelines for Investment Project Financing, except for those payments, which the contract provides to be made through a letter of credit.
3. The Department of Finance and Administration of the National Government, on behalf of the FSM now invites sealed Bids or encrypted and protected with a password or password-protected bids from eligible Bidders for the Supply, Installation, Integration, Testing and Commissioning of a Financial Management Information System (FMIS) and related Services.
4. The entire turnkey solution will comprise a commercially available configurable off-the-shelf (COTS) financial management information system (FMIS) deployed as a distributed database solution to be accessed discretely by the national and four state governments (Chuuk, Kosrae, Pohnpei, and Yap) that comprise the Federated States of Micronesia.
5. The National Government is based in the national capital Palikir (located on the island of Pohnpei). The State level governments are based in their on-island capitals. Distances between States and the National Capital are significant – Chuuk 740 km, Kosrae 550 km, and Yap 1700 km. All islands except Kosrae are linked inter-island and therefore internationally by reliable fiber optic cable. Kosrae is planned to be connected by fiber in early 2022.
6. For the National Government, a central server room with multiple servers will be located at the Department of Finance and Administration (DoFA) in Palikir which will provide a replicated/ mirrored or equivalent service for National applications such as FMIS, hereafter referred to as “DoFA Central Servers’ Room”.  This is a centralized managed facility providing oversight and management of all security, network, management, user access, and data management for National FMIS and other national applications, e.g. RMS. The service design of the DoFA Central Servers’ Room is such that it represents effectively a mostly generic Disaster Recovery Center (DRC) resource for any FSM National government application, wherever it may be located in FSM.
7. The FMIS solution is expected to provide each State government with control over on-site management such as data and security, combined with optional off-site highly encrypted data back-up to a physical device (USB stick), a separately provided cloud-based backup storage service either at the DoFA Central Servers’ Room or elsewhere.
8. The National Government and 4 States will each have exclusive ring-fenced access to their own data and be directly responsible to administer user privileges to their specific environment. Where relevant, data may be partitioned in shared infrastructure and according to their responsibilities.
9. The National Government and 4 States will have their own servers for daily in-country and in-State back-up of data.  For States, this data – as noted above – could also be transferred to external devices and stored at a secondary location locally based on a per State back-up policy.
10. For State level service delivery, the FMIS service is self-contained in each State Treasury and is intended to run independently of the National FMIS operations.  Additional services can be provided from the DoFA Central Servers’ Room by-election or upon request.
11. National Government data held at National Field Offices (NFO) will be replicated in real-time or close to real-time to DoFA Central Servers’ Room such that the data is part of a homogeneous distributed database or according to the Supplier’s solution partitioned by island.
12. State data will be replicated between clustered dual servers located within the State IT operations and will not participate in replication to DoFA Central Servers’ in the first implementation. There is nothing in the DoFA Central Servers’ Room or infrastructure design to stop DoFA providing such a State-isolated service if so requested.
13. The policy of the National and State governments is that cloud storage services are not to be used as a method of active FMIS delivery for live operations or disaster recovery. This policy is based upon retaining control of live sovereign data and operations only within the jurisdiction of FSM.
14. The solutions for National and State implementations will require necessary design, configuration and commissioning and testing of the required National and State FMIS application functionality; project management, training, integration support, and other services as described in the Bidding Documents, sufficient to ensure the full operational capacity of the supplied goods and services.
15. The FMIS Operational Acceptance is planned to achieve within eighteen (18) months from the Contract Effective Date.
16. The Bidders shall meet the following minimum qualification criteria to demonstrate their general and specific experience and capabilities to successfully complete the Contract:

(a) the Bidder’s net worth for the last three (3) years calculated as the difference between total assets and total liabilities should be positive. In the case of a Joint Venture, each Joint Venture member should meet this requirement;

(b) minimum average annual turnover of USD 3 million, calculated as total certified payments received for contracts in progress or completed, within the last three (3) years. In case of a Joint Venture each Joint Venture member should have not less than 25% and at least one JV member not less than50% of the minimum average annual turnover;

(c) access to, or availability of, financial resources such as liquid assets, unencumbered real assets, lines of credit, and other financial means in the amount of at least two hundred fifty-thousand US Dollars (USD250,000). In the case of a Joint Venture, each Joint Venture member should have not less than 25% and at least one JV member not less than 50% of the specified financial resources amount;

(d) experience under Information System contracts in the role of the prime supplier, management contractor, JV member, or subcontractor for at least the last three [3] years prior to the bid submission deadline. In the case of a Joint Venture, each Joint Venture member should meet this requirement;

(e) Within the last seven (7) years (2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014 and 2013), participation as a prime supplier, management contractor, Joint Venture member, sub-contractor, in at least two (2) contracts for the implementation of a treasury based core budget execution and accounting software FMIS system supporting fund accounting as follows:

(i) one (1) implementation of clustered solution within National/ Federated and/or State/ Sub-national governments;

(ii) at least one (1) implementation of a National/ Federated government or a commercial enterprise using a homogeneous distributed database;

(iii) each contract with a value of at least USD eight hundred thousand (USD 800,000).

The contracts should successfully and substantially be completed and should be similar to the proposed Information System, i.e. supply, implementation user training, and support of a commercially available configurable off-the-shelf (COTS) government FMIS involving distributed and clustered databases.

In case of a Joint Venture, at least one joint Venture member should meet this requirement;

17. The system modules (budget preparation, budget execution, accounting, and related financial modules) must be able to be installed in a multi-location government environment; and
18. The proposed solution must be implementable within the National and State Governments hosting arrangements, as specified further in the Bidding Documents.
19. Bidding will be conducted through international competitive procurement using Request for Bids (RFB) as specified in the World Bank’s “Procurement Regulations for IPF Borrowers – dated July 2016, and Revised November 2017 and August 2018” (“Procurement Regulations”), and is open to all eligible Bidders as defined in the Procurement Regulations.
20. Interested eligible Bidders may obtain further information from the Department of Finance and Administration of the National Government of the FSM, Mr. Arne Främk (arne.fraemk@dofa.gov.fm), and inspect the bidding document during office hours 09.00 to 17.00 hours (Pohnpei Standard Time) at the address given below or using the DoFA web-site (http://www.dofa.gov.fm/vacancies/) with free access.
21. A complete set of bidding documents in English may be downloaded by interested eligible bidders for free from the DoFA web-site (http://www.dofa.gov.fm/vacancies/) upon registration on the specified website or upon the submission of a written application to the below address quoting RFB No: FM-DOFA-66242-GO-RFB and include Bidder’s e-mail address and other contact details to ensure that a complete copy of the bidding document including any clarifications and amendments will be received by the Bidders.
22. If the Bidder prefers to submit the paper-based bids, it must be delivered to address (1) or if the Bidder prefers to submit the encrypted and protected with a password or password-protected bids by e-mail due to the COVID 19 situation, it must be emailed to address (2) below at or before 9 a.m. (Pohnpei Standard Time) on 29 July 2020.

Late Bids will be rejected. Bids will be publicly opened at 10 a.m. (Pohnpei Standard Time) on 29 July 2020 in the presence of the Bidders’ designated representatives and anyone who chooses to attend at address (1) below or using conferencing facilities (3) as specified below.

23. All Bids must be accompanied by a Bid Securing Declaration.
24. Attention is drawn to the Procurement Regulations requiring the Borrower to disclose information on the successful bidder’s beneficial ownership, as part of the Contract Award Notice, using the Beneficial Ownership Disclosure Form as included in the bidding document.
25. The addresses referred to above are:

(1)       For submission of paper-based bids and physical attending of bid opening:

The Secretary, Department of Finance and Administration

Attn: Mr. Arne Främk

Project Manager – Project for Strengthening Public Financial Management

Department of Finance and Administration

Ram Annim Building

1. O. Box PS158

Kolonia, Pohnpei FM 96941

Micronesia

arne.fraemk@dofa.gov.fm

(+691) 320-2640/ 320-5852

cc: ciu.pfm@gov.fm

(2)       For submission of bids through e-mail:

FMDOFA66242@dofa.gov.fm

(3)       For attending the bid opening using conferencing facilities:

The procedure of bid opening will be shown via “Zoom” Video Communication without screen sharing but reading out loud the information as in any normal bid opening. The Purchaser will send the “Zoom” meeting link to all bidders who received documents directly from the Purchaser.