Bidding for e-learning services opens

By Jason Miller

By Jason Miller

|

The Office of Personnel Management released a request for proposals to buy online training, products and services to support its GoLearn Web site.

OPM will reserve awards in five of these categories for small businesses: 50 percent of the awards in the Web collaboration, integration, Web hosting and customization and implementation services, consulting and transformation change management and licensing, credentials and online academic degrees niches; and 20 percent of all awards in the training content niche.The vendors system should meet the requirements of the Federal Enterprise Architecture, and consist of component based n-Tier architectures, such as Java 2 Enterprise Edition, or scalable versions of ColdFusion MX Server from Macromedia Inc. of San Francisco, capable of running on J2EE platforms, and which have demonstrated scalability, fault tolerance and are fully distributable, the solicitation said. The systems also should scale to 100,000 concurrent users.

The Office of Personnel Management yesterday released a long-awaited request for proposals to buy online training, products and services to support its GoLearn Web site.

The RFP to expand the vendors who can provide online learning services on the GoLearn.gov site has been in the works since early 2003.

OPM finally released the presolicitation notice in January, and at one time planned to award the contract in December 2003.

Responses to the RFP are due July 13.

When OPM developed the portal, it hired Geolearning Inc. of West Des Moines, Iowa, to redesign the National Learning Center's site. Geolearning, along with Karta Technologies Inc. of San Antonio, NetG of Naperville, Ill., and Skillsoft Corp. of Nashua, N.H., also provide online courses.

GoLearn is one of five e-government projects OPM manages.

OPM plans to award multiple indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity contracts in seven areas:

  • Learning management or content management systems


  • Training content


  • Web collaboration software


  • Integration, Web hosting and customization and implementation services


  • Licensing, credentials and online academic degrees


  • Consulting, transformational change management


  • GoLearn site support






    • NEXT STORY: SI International wins defense next-gen Internet deal