The Department of State’s Foreign Service Institute (FSI) is looking for a cloud-based platform to deliver foreign service training.
FSI is responsible for providing training opportunities in support of the State Department’s mission. While FSI supplies much of its training through classroom settings, the institute said it is “impossible to meet the training needs of a worldwide population on-demand.” Therefore, FSI is looking to augment its classroom training with general online content and supplemental learning resources delivered via the internet.
In a sources sought notice, FSI said the eventual awardee’s primary objective will be to provide contractor services and deliverables through the provision of general online content courseware, an external cloud-based portal with supplemental learning materials, and a set of virtual texts delivered via FSI’s in-house learning management systems.
FSI said it is looking to provide training and study opportunities to State Department employees who, for financial and logistical reasons, may not be able to use residential training at FSI. Additionally, FSI said the new training infrastructure and materials will support the provision of both industry-standard IT certifications as well as professional certifications. To that end, the vendor will be expected to provide off-the-shelf online training content, a cloud-based external portal with supplemental learning materials, and a library of virtual texts.
In the sources sought notice, FSI provided more detail on what the off-the-shelf online training content must provide:
- An extensive course collection of 5,000 or more courses;
- Interactive components such as eknowledge-checks and quizzes;
- Content covering a breadth of topics, including accounting, administrative skills, communication, customer service, economics, environmental, finance, health, information technology, leadership, management, and safety.
The cloud-based external portal must include a wide array of learning materials, including videos, audio clips, and books. The portal must give FSI administrative control to manage users and content. FSI also said that the portal must run seamlessly on its existing learning management system, be more ready, and compatible with all of the popular operating systems. Finally, the online catalog content must be delivered seamlessly through cloud-based synchronization, and provide the ability to customize preferred uploads to FSI’s current learning platform.
The portal must be FedRAMP certified with the authorization for impact level medium, at a minimum. Responses are due by July 5, 2021.
