Page 238 - Automated Fingerprint Identification Systems (AFIS)

CONTRACTUAL ISSUES REGARDING THE PURCHASE OF AN AFIS 223

depending on the complexity of the upgrade. For complex upgrades, it may be
important to have additional vendor staff on the premises, or at least available
to assist with the upgrade and any required troubleshooting. This is especially
important in those AFIS applications that can tolerate only minimal downtimes.
Thought should also be given to whether it is acceptable to lose functional-
ity with an upgrade. It is not unheard of for a software upgrade to eliminate or
significantly modify prior functionality. In a highly interrelated AFIS applica-
tion, a loss of functionality could be very problematic. Consideration should be
given to how the government might best address these concerns. One way is to
require the vendor to identify any functionality to be lost and give the govern-
ment an “approval” right to determine if such loss is acceptable. If the loss is
not acceptable, this requirement should be coupled with a vendor commitment
to restore such functionality, at no cost to the government.
Consideration should be given to whether the government wishes to acquire
other kinds of maintenance services. Depending on the AFIS, it may be bene-
ficial to obtain pricing or develop a mechanism (such as the consulting services
option discussed above) to obtain disk or file maintenance. Equipment relo-
cation is another kind of maintenance or extra service that may be desirable.

9.7.4 EVALUATION CRITERIA AND RELATIVE WEIGHTS OF THE CRITERIA
In theory, the concept of evaluation criteria and their relative weights is simple.
The evaluation criteria represent factors reviewed to determine how closely a
vendor’s proposal matches what the government seeks and how important each
factor is relative to the others. Commonly included in the evaluation criteria
are administrative requirements (e.g., was the bid submitted on time and com-
plete?), technical requirements, functional requirements, and costs. Identify-
ing the elements for inclusion is fairly straightforward. The challenge lies in
quantifying each factor’s importance. It is extremely difficult to do and diffi-
cult to test, since the government cannot know how a vendor bids until the pro-
posals are opened, and the evaluation methodology must be completed prior
to that time.
Development of the evaluation criteria and the relative weights is done on a
case-by-case basis because the elements that go into each criterion can differ,
as can the relative weight. For example, suppose that the government entity
seeks an AFIS to determine eligibility for certain public benefits and requests
pricing to operate the entire AFIS from enrollment through eligibility deter-
mination. In this instance, the technical requirements may have a lesser degree
of importance while cost has a greater degree of importance. So while there
may be a definable range of possible evaluation criteria, the components