Deadline Date:
Friday 28 February 2025
Requirement:
IKM Tools and RECCEN L2 Support
Location:
Braine-l’Alleud, BELGIUM
Full Time On-Site:
Yes
Time On-Site:
100%
Not to Exceed:
106,785 EUR
Required Start Date:
7 April 2025
Required Security Clearance:
NATO SECRET
Bidding Instruction:
Technical Proposal
Bidders shall submit a proposal clearly providing the following information:
- The proposed approach to address the required scope of work and the defined deliverables (maximum 10 pages, A4 size) with sufficient details to allow assessment for feasibility of the proposal.
- CV of the assigned resource for the project.
Purpose:
The purpose of this Statement of Work (SOW) is to provide an outline of deliverables and performance expectations for the services to be rendered by the Contractor(s). This document will serve as the basis for Contractor bidding and selection. Contractors are expected to submit proposals based on their ability to meet the outlined deliverables within the specified timelines.
Introduction:
Within the NATO Digital Workplace Centre (NDWC), the Content Platforms Services (CPS) Group provides a range of content centric services enabling secure collaboration. Core functionalities include creating, sharing, managing, organizing and preserving digital content to deliver enterprise-wide content lifecycle management, information access and governance. Common services available include document and records management, content publishing, business process management, data capture and indexing, categorization, content search, version control, analytics and artificial intelligence applied to content collaboration. Content Platform Services also provides Subject Matter Expertise for advice, guidance, business analysis, design, configuration, development and implementation of new and existing Content Platform Solutions and for a broad range of Content Management activities.
Through various projects new capabilities are released in the form of SharePoint customizations (farm solutions, add-ins and client side solutions on versions 2013, 2019 through to online). After release we often find that improvements are required to make those customizations fully fit-for-purpose. This can relate to code quality, code vulnerabilities, feature stability, feature usage and documentation.
These capabilities include EDMS, PITT, NIP ,TT+ (collectively referred to as IKM tools), additionally the RECCEN and include customizations to SharePoint which follow common development practices combining page elements, lists and SharePoint services (such as metadata, search and profile services)
Objectives:
The deliverables from the Statement of Work refer to tangible or intangible outputs of the service delivery strategy.
- Provisioning of technical assessment and guidance on the creation of a backlog of user stories and their respective acceptance criteria which will address the gap between the current and desired state of the mentioned capabilities.
- Refactoring of code, and thus functionality, of existing SharePoint customizations following quality, vulnerability, stability, usability and security testing of currently deployed capabilities.
- Creation of test cases against new introduced or improved features
- Updated documentation related to newly introduced or improved features
- The improvement and bug fixing work of the CPS team is done in Agile Scrum sprints of three weeks.
- The contractor shall ensure participation in a total of 15 sprint cycles annually for the duration of the contract, considering proration for partial calendar years.
- As part of the sprint cycle, preparation of, and participation in sprint planning and refinement, sprint reviews and sprint retrospectives with the wider team is expected. The contractor is expected to reflect work done on respective Kanban Boards and within respective Agile Scrum templates in support of the respective Product Goals and Agile approach. It is assumed that these duties are fulfilled within 16 hours per sprint cycle.
- Each planning session the contractor is expected to contribute, prioritize and refine user stories, with respective acceptance criteria, within the respective backlogs of the mentioned capabilities.
- Every sprint cycle the contactor should be a part of the Sprint team and contribute to the completion of the effort of 30 story points, according the Fibonacci scoring.
- The contractor should maintain the IKM Tools and RECCEN instances and troubleshoot issues of the IKM Tools and RECCEN instances as Level 2 support incumbent, across the NATO networks on regularly basis and showcase if required the work achieved. It is expected that the contractor is be an active part of the L2 support, with the goal of rectifying issues, documenting guidelines, or improving the service with the amount of 20 improvements, or incident / change request resolution monthly within the ITSM ticketing system.
- The contractor will be a part of migration and on setting up of the demanded IKM Tools and RECCEN applications. It is expected that the contractor is creating PowerShell scripts autonomously and on demand.
- As part of the team the contractor will be allocated for designing medium and large enterprise SharePoint environments, in conjunction of the related Operating System and SQL databases to accommodate the IKM Tools and RECCEN instances within training, or production networks.
- For tracking and tracing purposes the contractor is requested to create technical and user guides and documentations and doing Quality assurance with the related staff.
- For troubleshooting purposes the contractor should have knowledge to support Active Directory Federation Services and Claims provider, related to the IKM Tools and RECCEN.
- It is expected to receive technical support in the replication activities of the IKM Tools.
- The contractor should be a part in improving and supporting the search engine of the IKM Tools by providing technical guidance.
- It is expected that the contractor participates in meetings to present technical solutions to the Section Head, Service Delivery Manager and Group head of the CPS section.
- The incumbent should assist the Section Head/Service Delivery Managers/Group head to prepare presentations and demonstrations, related to the CPS sections tasks if demanded.
- The contractor should assist the Change Coordinator during the Approved Service Interruptions process on IKM Tools related interruptions.
All the documentation delivered under this statement of work shall be based on NCI Agency templates or templates agreed with the NDWC Chief
All project work package material shall be stored on the NCI Agency SharePoint Portals CPS Library.
Each final deliverable will be subject to two rounds of review and revision by a NATO assigned person.
For the deliverables, the CPS Infrastructure as Code and Developer contractor will need:
- Network access to NU PAN, NR, MS, NS
- Microsoft Office platform
- IKM Tools to work on
- NSF Azure DevOps
- Hardware, such as Reach Laptop, NS VDI Client and NU PAN Laptop
- The IKM Tools and RECCEN L2 Contractor is required to hold a valid NATO SECRET security clearance provided by national security organization valid at the time of submission of the bid and covering the period of contract, will be required.
- English Language Proficiency is required to conduct the given tasks.
- The duty location will be Braine-l'Alleud, Belgium
- The contractor will be required to work normally on site. Working from Home can be allowed, based on the requirements and duties.
- Working Hours: Working hours are 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, from 8.30 AM to 12.30 PM and from 13.30 PM to 17.30 PM
- Due to the nature of this work, working hours may vary and therefore, flexibility is required.
- Under some circumstances travel to other locations are required and therefore the contractor can be sent out for short term missions. The travel and per diem costs will be compensated by the NCIA.
- Travel: Under certain circumstances, travel to other locations may be required, and the contractor could be sent on short-term assignments. Travel arrangements will be the responsibility of the contractor and the expenses will be reimbursed in accordance with Article 5.5 of AAS Framework Contract and within the limits of the NCIA Travel Directive
The contractor shall work under NCI Agency AAS contract for the NCI Agency in Braine l’Alleud, Belgium. The incumbent will work under the direction and guidance of the NDWC CPS Section Head or their designated representative.
Requirements:
Constraints:
- The IKM Tools and RECCEN L2 Contractor is required to hold a valid NATO SECRET security clearance provided by national security organization valid at the time of submission of the bid and covering the period of contract, will be required.
- A higher secondary education and completed higher vocational training leading to a formal or professional certification with a three-year function related experience OR a secondary education and completed advanced vocational training leading to a professional qualification or professional accreditation with five years of post-related experience.
- Microsoft SharePoint 2013, SharePoint 2016, SharePoint 2019, SharePoint SE deep experience
- Excellent Troubleshooting skills in SharePoint applications and SQL
- Azure DevOps experiences for Agile methodologies
- Strong written and verbal communication skills with the ability to document and communicate across the teams.
- Ability to work in a team and share knowledge
- Ability to work effectively under pressure.
- Knowledge in SQL servers and Network technologies
- Basic knowledge on Virtual machines technologies.
- Knowledge in ADFS Domain and SharePoint wise.