Requirement
The NEB requires two (2) connected, high availability co-location data centre facilities to house and operate NEB owned IT equipment. The NEB Main Office site, located at 517- 10th Avenue, SW will require high-speed low latency connectivity to the facilities. Regional Office sites located in Vancouver and Montreal will require Government of Canada (GoC) Shared Services Canada (SSC) Departmental WAN (DWAN) connectivity (as provisioned by AllStream) to both facilities as well.
The two data centres must be located at least 5 km apart, while remaining in the Calgary area, within a one hour drive. This allows the NEB to physically separate production infrastructure from disaster recovery and back-up systems.
In this RFP, the requirement is for one (1) data centre to house production infrastructure. NEB intends to run a separate process for a colocated data centre facilities to house disaster recovery and back-up systems, once the location of the first data centre is known.
Security Requirements
The Contractor must, at all times during the performance of the Contract hold a valid Designated Organization Screening (DOS) with approved Document Safeguarding at the level of PROTECTED B, issued by the Canadian Industrial Security Directorate, Public Works and Government Services Canada.
The Contractor personnel requiring access to PROTECTED information, assets or work site(s) must EACH hold a valid RELIABILITY STATUS, granted or approved by the Canadian Industrial Security Directorate (CISD), Public Works and Government Services Canada (PWGSC), or other Canadian government department.
The Contractor MUST NOT utilize its Information Technology systems to electronically process, produce or store PROTECTED information until the CISD/PWGSC or the NEB has issued written approval. After approval has been granted or approved, these tasks may be performed up to the level of PROTECTED B.
Subcontracts which contain security requirements are NOT to be awarded without the prior written permission of CISD/PWGSC or the NEB.
Location
The NEB anticipates the majority of work to occur at the Contractor’s location, with some nominal networking installation requirements at the NEB’s Main Office location.
For work from its own premises, the Contractor is required to provide all facilities, equipment, software licenses and tools to provide the required Services.
Given the requirement to safeguard the integrity of the NEB’s systems, all work, data and technology used by the Contractor in the delivery of Services to the NEB must remain in Canada.
