Information for vendors

All Requests for Proposal (RFP) for province-wide software licenses are posted for a two week period on the government electronic bidding system at: www.merx.com.

 

Guidelines to Educational Software Producers
Interested in Provincial Licences for Software

Background
The Ontario Software Acquisition Program Advisory Committee (OSAPAC) is made up of regional representatives of the school boards of Ontario. These representatives are elected biannually by the Regional Computer Advisory Committees. The Ontario Ministry of Education (EDU) also appoints a few school board members when required to ensure an equitable mix of representatives (gender, language etc.). The monies for the OSAPAC program are budgeted year to year.

Vendors should clearly understand the respective roles of OSAPAC and EDU in the priority setting, ranking, negotiating and contractual process. OSAPAC surveys the teachers and computer consultants to establish OSAPAC priorities for software licenses. EDU reviews these priorities to determine that they meet EDU curriculum criteria for the given year. OSAPAC members conduct all software reviews and ranking. EDU is not involved in this part of the process except to facilitate the delivery of software and to ensure that the ranking is carried out in a fair, effective and orderly process.

Once priorities are established in any given year, Requests for Qualification are posted on
www.merx.com. Qualified respondents to individual RFQs are then invited to submit pricing for the deliverables through a Request for Tender (RFT). If only one respondent qualifies, then EDU can negotiate directly for terms, conditions and price.
 

Criteria for Negotiating Provincial Licenses
Throughout the year, OSAPAC surveys the province to determine their priorities for software licences for the current year. A web survey is used to collect this information on the OSAPAC web site www.osapac.org . The priorities identified through the survey are confirmed with the Curriculum and Assessment Policy Branch of EDU and RFQs are posted on the government=s bidding web site www.merx.com.

Some general features that are looked for are:

  • Software must be commercially released
  • Software is no more than three years old
  • Software is networkable
  • Available in Windows 2000, XP, Vista and/or Macintosh OS X
  • Available in English and French
  • Canadian made, or at least an exclusive Canadian distributor
  • Company capable of providing regional training and support

All products acquired for provincial licensing are obtained through the RFQ/RFT process. RFQs are published on www.merx.com. OSAPAC does not give vendors opportunities to do presentations of their products. This is not their role. If, at any time, OSAPAC wishes to learn more about a particular software area, EDU could post a Request for Information (RFI) on the bidding site.
The Ontario Software Acquisition Program is funded for 2009/2010, and priorities have been
announced. RFQs are posted on www.merx.com and the site should be monitored for new RFQs.