Deadline for submission - 1st of September 2024, 13:00 CEST
This Request for Information (RFI) is published by the Norwegian Agency for Public and Financial Management (DFØ), an executive agency, which is operating the Norwegian Public Sector Cloud Marketplace (MPS). MPS is tasked with improving the accessibility of cloud services to the Norwegian public sector by providing highly secure, cost-efficient and future-proof cloud solutions, as well as guidance and digital services to help the public sector navigate the cloud market.
Information regarding the RFI
Within the scope of this RFI, the Norwegian public civil sector consists of approximately 190 government entities, 16 regional municipalities and 356 local municipalities, ranging from small municipalities to mid-market and enterprise entities with an estimated total of an estimated 650.000 employees.
MPS is acting and operating as a Central Purchasing Body (CPB) according to the EU Directive 2014/24 on public procurement, Article 37.
We are seeking Retrieval-Augmented Generation Artificial Intelligence (RAG AI) solutions (loosely described as solutions with the functionality and ability to seamlessly integrate information retrieval with generative artificial intelligence) that can be applied to a wide range of use-cases and domains in the Norwegian public sector. We are interested in talking to providers of SaaS/PaaS based RAG solutions and/or providers of AI models (LLMs or others) that can be applied in a RAG based framework. The goal is to find suitable areas and negotiate framework agreements that enables the Norwegian public sector to adopt and utilize AI going forward. At this point we are interested in all solutions that can help public entities become more efficient or in other ways support their business operations.
We are interested in all types of SaaS/PaaS-solutions whether open source or closed source and we are first and foremost looking for products/services/tools which aren’t dominated by Managed Services. Offered services should have flexibility in deployment (i.e., Cloud-based, hybrid or on-premises deployment).
We will reach out and arrange follow-up meetings on a rolling basis with vendors we consider interesting prior to the potential initiation of a procurement procedure.
For this early stage RFI we have very little information regarding volumes, assets, number of endpoints, assets in scope, number of users, numbers of entities, etc. and refer to the Norwegian public sector as the scope in general.
We will likely aim for multiple contract/agreement awards for each announcement (or divide into lots), and this is one of the areas of interest to us that we seek to clarify through this process.
The information you provide to MPS will be processed in accordance with applicable Norwegian laws regarding both confidentiality and GDPR. The RFI process and potential following announcements are governed by the Norwegian law on Public Procurement (which complies with the EU Directive on public procurement).
The announcements of the procurement procedures for the services/tools we select to move forward with is planned to take place in Q2 2025 and will be published on the European Commission website Tenders Electronic Daily (TED) and Doffin.
Information received from this RFI is intended to be used to prepare and plan possible procurement processes by MPS.
The market dialogue starts after the summer vacation, participation will be accepted on a rolling basis, and no announcement of a procurement procedure will take place until after the deadline for this RFI.
If we consider it relevant, we may contact participants after the deadline for submission is completed to set up a meeting to further discuss these services.
For questions contact David Behrens at David.behrens@dfo.no or +47 415 46 531.