INVITATION TO PROPONENTS:
South Riverdale Community Health Centre is a non-profit, multi-service organization that provides primary healthcare, social and community outreach services with an emphasis on health promotion and disease prevention primarily to people of East Toronto. Our mission is to improve the lives of people that face barriers to physical, mental, spiritual and social well-being. We do so by meaningfully engaging our clients and communities, ensuring equitable access to primary health care and delivering quality care through a range of evidence informed programs, services and approaches. As a leader in community health, our locally and internationally recognized community services include cutting-edge primary health services, health promotion, harm reduction, environmental health, community food centre and population-based community programs for marginalized peoples. We value health equity and inclusion and respect in our work and in the delivery of our services.
South Riverdale Community Health Centre provides a variety of clinical and health promotion services and relies heavily on IM/IT. The organization wants to ensure that it has a strong strategy in place, by which to make future procurement and implementation decisions, to ensure that its IM/IT continues to support the delivery of integrated services across the continuum of care, meets funders reporting requirements, meets privacy and security standards and supports performance management at the operational level.
The purpose of this Request for Proposal (RFP) is to contract a qualified vendor to develop an IM/IT Strategy for South Riverdale Community Health Centre. Our goal is to have an external party review our IT/IM infrastructure, and recommend a road map that supports growth, remote work, information integration, off-site service expansion and enhanced privacy/security.
PROJECT DATES:
Start Date: June 15, 2024 (approx.)
Completion Date: August 31, 2024
DEADLINE FOR SUBMITTING PROPOSAL:
12:00 noon on May 10, 2024
NOTIFICATION OF OUTCOME RFP PROCESS:
Interviews of selected proposals will take place on:
May 23, 2024, from 9:30 am-12:30 pm
SRCHC CONTACT:
Please submit your proposal and direct any communications to:
The Hiring Committee – RFP – IT Assessment and Infrastructure Plan
South Riverdale Community Health Centre
955 Queen Street East
Toronto, ON M4M 3P3
Email: [email protected]
Please ensure to state “RFP – IT Assessment and Infrastructure Plan”in the subject line of your email.
Please submit any questions by 5:00 pm on Wednesday, May 1, 2024.
Please email [email protected] if you would like to receive answers to submitted questions.
BACKGROUND: During the last four years, South Riverdale Community Health Centre has seen a number of issues that have impacted our IT/IM systems:
• Since the pandemic, the organization has shifted to a more flexible model of work, where staff are able to move between remote and onsite work environments. Due to the increase of staff working remotely, it was quickly realized that our current infrastructure was not set up in a way that would be able to support the large number of staff having to remote into our network from offsite.
• Increase use of virtual meetings resulting in learning and adapting to a new way of work as well as the increase stress on our internet speed/usage.
• More inter-program work that needs to be more user friendly and streamlined.
• Increased privacy and security risks due to the complexity of the tech landscape.
• Increasing complexity of the IT/IM system has been challenging. An onsite IT administrator handles daily maintenance, installation and troubleshooting of the IT system infrastructure, with an external IT vendor handling the more complex IT system infrastructure planning, maintenance and monitoring. Given the increased staff and the complexity of requests by end-users for support with troubleshooting and with greater interconnectivity the route to problem solving is increasingly complex.
• Growth in staffing and diversification of program with different encountering/reporting systems.
• Expansion of off-site programs with the need to support seamless communication, IT and meet enhanced cyber security/privacy requirements.
SCOPE OF WORK:
1.Develop 3-5 year IT/IM plan that addresses the following:
a. Current state analysis of IT /IM systems
b. Required technology support model
c. Recommendations for efficiencies and future state
d. Infrastructure investment priorities
INFORMATION REQUESTED FROM PROPONENTS:
A brief proposal no more than five (5) pages including the following:
1)Profile and resumes of the consultant(s): qualifications, description of relevant experience and style of those who will be doing the actual work, research, facilitation, writing, etc.
2) Description of approach and general plan with key milestones and timelines
3) A firm cost indicating per diem for each member of the team and the number of days necessary to complete the work as per expectations
4) Out of the pocket expenses, if any expected
5) References [minimum of three (3)] for similar work
6) Samples of evaluation reports from previous engagements
TIME AND COST DETAILS REQUIRED IN THE PROPOSAL:
Proposals should provide a breakdown of costs and time (and other resources) needed for the following components:
1) Determination of outcome measures
2) Process Evaluation
3) Outcome Evaluation
4) Generation of all reports and presentations including the final evaluation document and any appendices
EVALUATION CRITERIA AND SELECTION PROCESS:
• Experience in the non-profit and Community Health sector
• Experience with Microsoft 365 products
• Demonstrated experience and utilization of cloud-based servers and services
• Demonstrated experience and utilization of Cyber Security best practices
• Certification with CyberSecure Canada an asset
CONDITIONS:
Cost of preparation
SRCHC will not be liable for any costs incurred by the applicants in the preparation of their response to this proposal.
Maximum Value of Proposals:
SRCHC will not consider proposals exceeding $20,000, including HST
Submission of Proposals
Proposal in electronic format must be submitted and be received by SRCHC by 12:00 noon on May 10, 2024.
Respondents are encouraged to request confirmation of receipt of their proposal by email to the SRCHC Contact (listed above).
Communications
Proponents may direct questions in writing or by email to the SRCHC Contact. SRCHC is under no obligation to provide additional information but may do so at its sole discretion. SRCHC reserves the right to distribute the questions and responses to all proponents.
Intellectual Property
If selected, the proponent agrees that SRCHC will have exclusive right to the unique intellectual property of the outcomes of this project and the proponent will waive in favour of SRCHC their
Copyright Act rights to all concepts, techniques, ideas, information and materials, however recorded, (including images and data) of such intellectual property.
Insurance
If selected, the proponent will be required to carry organizational liability insurance that covers their work.
Confidentiality
If selected, the proponent will keep all information received to complete this project in strict confidence and use solely to perform the obligations for the purpose of the project. Upon completion of the project all information collected from SRCHC will be returned to SRCHC or destroyed in a manner designated by SRCHC.
Privacy
If selected, the proponent will not have any contact with patients or patient health information for any purpose whatsoever unless expressly authorized by SRCHC.
No Incorporation by Reference by Proponent
The entire content of the proponent’s proposal should be submitted in a fixed form and not be dependent on any external links or documents. The content of web sites or other external documents referred to in the proponent’s proposal will not be considered to form part of its proposal.
Proposal to be Retained by SRCHC
SRCHC will not return the Proposal or any accompanying documentation submitted by the Proponent.
Reserved Rights of SRCHC
SRCHC may, at its sole and absolute discretion, carry out the RFP process as it determines to be in the best interest of SRCHC and to be the most beneficial to SRCHC. Without prejudice to any other right or remedy available to SRCHC, SRCHC may, make public the names of any or all proponents, do nothing, cancel the RFP, reject any or all proposals, accept any proposal in whole or in part and under no circumstances shall SRCHC be liable for any indirect or consequential damages.