DATE: October 24, 2023
TO: Board of Supervisors
SUBMITTED BY: Kirk Haynes, Chief Probation Officer
SUBJECT: Agreement with Spire Soft LLC
RECOMMENDED ACTION(S):
TITLE
1. Under Administrative Policy No. 34 for competitive bids or requests for proposals (AP 34) determine that an exception to the competitive bidding requirement under AP 34 is satisfied and a suspension of competition is warranted due to unusual or extraordinary circumstances, and that the best interests of the County would be served by entering into an agreement with Spire Soft LLC, as the founder was the lead developer in creating the primary enterprise management system used by the Probation Department and justice partners; and
2. Approve and authorize the Chairman to execute an Agreement with Spire Soft LLC to provide software maintenance for Department-specific applications, software development, software integration, and reporting data requests for the Probation Department, effective October 24, 2023, not to exceed five consecutive years, which includes a three-year base contract and two optional one-year extensions, total not to exceed $1,264,265.
REPORT
There is no increase in Net County Cost associated with the recommended actions. Approval would allow the Probation Department to utilize Spire Soft LLC for the software maintenance for Department-specific applications, software development, software integration, and reporting data requests. The founder of Spire Soft LLC developed the Department’s primary and core enterprise management system while working as the lead developer for Agreeya Solutions, Inc. pursuant to County Agreement No. 22-085, and has since left that company and started his own company. These systems are currently integrated with other justice partners. This item is countywide.
ALTERNATIVE ACTION(S):
Should your Board not approve the recommended actions, the County may have to complete a request for proposal, which will hinder the Probation Department’s ability to maintain operations due to the complexity of Probation’s vast and specific systems, which would result in a disruption of services to the Fresno County Superior Court and justice partners.
SUSPENSION OF COMPETITION/SOLE SOURCE CONTRACT:
The request to determine that an exception to the competitive bidding process consistent with Administrative Policy No. 34 is warranted due to the unusual and extraordinary circumstances results from the unique services that the lead developer provided in creating the primary enterprise management system used by the Probation Department and justice partners. The Contractor has the expertise and necessary familiarity with Probation systems and the applications: PRIMS (Internal Management System), PERS (Defendant Portal), JPA (Justice Partner Portal), Sharenet (Law Enforcement Portal); batch jobs for e-filing, next hearing import/notification, booking/release import, court orders/CPO imports, and SRQ import/export; Application Programming Interface for Laserfiche, booking, and drug testing import/export; and miscellaneous services including PRIMS Service, Laserfiche Host Service, and Notification Host Service, which will allow for efficient and fast service that the Department requires and needs. The Purchasing Division of the Internal Services Department concurs with the Department’s request to suspend the competitive bidding process.
FISCAL IMPACT:
There is no increase in Net County Cost associated with the approval of the recommended actions. The maximum compensation for year one (1) amount paid under the recommended agreement shall not exceed $228,800, year two (2) not to exceed $240,240, year three (3) not to exceed $252,252, year four (4) not to exceed $264,865, year five (5) not to exceed $278,108, with a maximum five-year agreement total not to exceed $1,264,265. Sufficient appropriations and estimated revenues are included within the FY 2023-24 Adopted Budgets for Probation Org 3430 and Org 3440. Cost for additional years will be included in future budget requests.
DISCUSSION:
The founder of Spire Soft LLC, Meghraj Rawat, was previously an employee of Agreeya Solutions, Inc. (Agreeya), which contracts with the County for temporary information technology services pursuant to County agreement No. 22-085, dated March 8, 2022. He was the lead developer creating the primary enterprise management system used by the Department and justice partners, and has expertise and necessary familiarity with Department systems and applications.
Mr. Rawat no longer works for Agreeya, and has established his own company, Spire Soft LLC, which has provided these services to the County during August 2023 pursuant to County Purchase Order M02-0000022669. The County desires Spire Soft to continue providing its specific knowledge to the database structure of Department PRIMS and various data interfaces with Department justice partners, which is vital to continue daily Department operations without delay.
The recommended agreement provides that Spire Soft LLC shall use office space, consisting of one office, approximately 96 square feet in size, at JJC Building 702, as well as supplies and equipment, for Spire Soft LLC to utilize under the terms and conditions of the recommended agreement, at no charge.
If the recommended agreement is approved, Spire Soft LLC will provide the following services:
1. Software maintenance to Department-specific applications: PRIMS (Probation Information Management System), PERS (Defendant Portal), JPA (Justice Partner Portal), Sharenet (Law Enforcement Portal), which includes responding to issue/ticket within 24 hours; identifying and resolving issues, and avoiding re-occurrences; updating legacy applications, ensuring Department applications remain compatible with evolving technologies and platforms; providing applications enhancements by adding and customizing new features, functions, and improvements; and auditing and verifying existing codebase and adding or improving code for enhanced performance.
2. Software development, which includes creating new systems and enhancements to existing Department applications, testing projects to verify the process works properly when deployed, identifying all dependencies required to deploy and configure into production, monitoring the system closely to find ongoing issues or changes and make adjustments to ensure optimum performance, creating ad hoc reports and queries required for reporting, and working with County IT Security to ensure system configuration meets County standards.
3. Software integration, which includes data processes between Department systems, implementing County security standards to ensure data transmitted between systems are safe and accurate, creating Department processes to send or receive data to meet standard and format of partnering entities, configuring batch into production system per requirements and ensure proper operation, monitoring batch and API endpoint and resolving any identified issues, and provide integration updates.
4. Reporting and data requests, which includes gathering report requirements and validating output, developing and providing queries to generate reports as requested by the Department, validation of data results and optimization of queries to increase performance and efficiency, providing backup copies of queries, providing assistance for database migrations and analysis, and optimization of date to main data integrity and efficiency, development of data and table structures to normalize data as per County standards, and supporting data in various formats.
Approval of the recommended actions would allow the Probation Department to continue operations without delay. ISD Purchasing concurs with the Department’s recommended actions.
ATTACHMENTS INCLUDED AND/OR ON FILE:
Suspension of Competition
On file with Clerk - Agreement with Spire Soft LLC
CAO ANALYST:
Fine Nai