October 31, 2025
REQUEST FOR PROPOSAL
Knowledge Management Solution
Eugenia Der, Senior Staff Counsel
eder@lacera.gov
300 NORTH LAKE AVENUE, SUITE 650
PASADENA, CA 91101
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
1.
INTRODUCTION
3
2.
SCOPE OF SERVICES
4
3.
MINIMUM QUALIFICATIONS
35
4.
INSTRUCTIONS TO RESPONDENTS
36
5.
NOTICE TO RESPONDENTS REGARDING THE
PUBLIC RECORDS ACT AND RALPH M. BROWN ACT
39
6.
DIVERSITY, EQUITY, AND INCLUSION
40
7.
NOTICE TO RESPONDENTS REGARDING LACERA
DATA PROTECTION
41
8.
CONTRACT NEGOTIATIONS
41
9.
RESERVATIONS BY LACERA
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EXHIBITS LIST
EXHIBIT A – PROPOSAL COVER PAGE AND CHECKLIST
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EXHIBIT B - MINIMUM QUALIFICATIONS CERTIFICATION
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EXHIBIT C – QUESTIONNAIRE
46
EXHIBIT D –AGREEMENT FOR SERVICES
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EXHIBIT E – IT SECURITY CONTROLS
62
EXHIBIT F – INTENT TO RESPOND
68
EXHIBIT G –SELECTION CRITERIA
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EXHIBIT H – DIVERSITY, EQUITY, AND INCLUSION
QUESTIONNAIRE
70
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LOS ANGELES COUNTY EMPLOYEES RETIREMENT ASSOCIATION
REQUEST FOR PROPOSAL (RFP)
KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT SOLUTION
OCTOBER 17, 2025
1. INTRODUCTION
1.1. Purpose of Request
The Los Angeles County Employees Retirement Association (LACERA), an over $90 billion
public pension fund, is seeking proposals from qualified firms to provide an enterprise-wide
knowledge management solution to digitally capture, document, organize, and access critical
business knowledge and information. LACERA invites qualified firms to respond to this RFP
(Respondent).
1.2. Background Information
LACERA is a tax-qualified defined benefit public pension fund established to administer
retirement, disability, and death benefits for the employees of the County of Los Angeles and
other participating agencies pursuant to the County Employees Retirement Law of 1937
(CERL) (California Government Code Section 31450, et seq.), the California Public Employees’
Pension Reform Act of 2013 (PEPRA) (California Government Code Section 7522, et seq.),
the Internal Revenue Code, LACERA’s Regulations and Board Policies, and other applicable
California law. LACERA also administers the County’s medical and dental retiree health
benefits program.
LACERA operates as an independent governmental entity separate and distinct from Los
Angeles County and the other participating agencies. LACERA has approximately 199,000
members, including approximately 100,000 active members and 66,000 retired members.
Additionally, retired members and survivors take part in the medical and dental retiree
healthcare programs. In addition to benefits administration, the fund invests in assets to support
payment of the promised pension benefits as well as additional sums to support the retiree
healthcare program.
The Respondent(s) selected through this RFP process may be recommended to LACERA’s
Board of Retirement (BOR). The BOR has responsibility over the administration of pension and
healthcare benefits and other fund administrative issues. The BOR comprises four Trustees
elected by the general, safety, and retired members, four Trustees appointed by the County’s
Board of Supervisors, and the sitting County Treasurer and Tax Collector as an ex officio
Trustee. The BOR also has two alternate Trustees, one elected by safety members, and one
elected by retired members.
The Boards and their trustees have fiduciary duties as defined in Article XVI, Section 17 of the
California Constitution and CERL, with duties owed to the plan members and their beneficiaries
taking precedence over any other duties.
LACERA is inviting vendors to submit proposals to provide an enterprise-wide knowledge
management solution that will digitally capture, document, organize, and access critical
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business knowledge and information. The full scope of work is detailed in the next section
below.
For additional information about LACERA, please refer to LACERA's Annual Financial Report,
which is posted on the LACERA website, www.lacera.gov, in the "Investments" section.
2. SCOPE OF SERVICES
LACERA is seeking a knowledge management (KM) solution that will support taxonomy
management and provide a search and insight engine across their knowledge assets. It should
include review and approval workflows that can enable basic content management including
tagging and classification. LACERA anticipates the KM application will complement their
existing Microsoft 365 E5 plan which has been scoped to support 600 LACERA end users. The
knowledge base must also be able to integrate with AI solutions (such as chatbots, etc.)
allowing internal staff and external members to access a common knowledge base as permitted
by asset sensitivity limitations.
LACERA has identified a comprehensive list of functional requirements itemized in Table 1 and
prioritized them. The KM solution should address as many of these requirements as possible,
but LACERA does not require all the functional requirements to be met. The technical
requirements are itemized in Table 2. The KM solution must comply with all the “Must”
prioritized technical requirements.
2.1. Potential Solution Architectures
1. The KM solution may be fully based on Microsoft 365 E5. In this case, LACERA
anticipates the proposal would be to implement the KM solution by configuring Microsoft
365 E5 and supplementing its functionality using Power Automate, SharePoint
Framework (SPFx), Power Apps, Microsoft Graph API, Microsoft Teams Apps and Bots,
and/or Office Add-Ins as needed,
2. The solution may integrate third party applications to provide functionality that is
not currently available in Microsoft 365. In this case, the KM solution based on
Microsoft 365 would be integrated with one or more third-party applications to provide
more functionality. The KM solution would need to include integration of third-party
applications with Microsoft 365.
3. The solution may be based on a platform other than Microsoft. In this case, the KM
solution is independent of Microsoft 365 and particularly, SharePoint is no longer the
primary repository. The KM solution would need to include knowledge assets that are
developed using Microsoft 365 as well as the existing SharePoint apps in scope.
KM solutions may be proposed that are based on any of these solution architectures. If third-
party applications are required, these need to be included in the proposal. Proposals need to
include configuration, development, and system integration services. This request for
proposals is for the entire KM solution.
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2.2. FUNCTIONAL REQUIREMENTS
The KM solution functional requirements are divided into three areas. These are: 1) Asset creation, storage and management, 2)
Taxonomy management, and 3) End-use applications. Please indicate which requirements your KM solution meets and which ones
it does not meet in the Vendor Response column. Add comments to clarify responses as necessary, for example, available OOB,
under development/on the roadmap, requires integration with 3rd party application, requires custom development. The priorities
are defined as follows: Must = Requirements that are critical and necessary for the solution; Should = Requirements that are
important and needed for an optimal solution but not necessary; Could = Requirements that are desirable or nice to have but less
important; Won’t = Requirements that may be considered in the future.
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1
1.1
1.1.1
1.1.2
Section
Asset Creation,
Storage &
Management
Access Control
1.1.3
1.1.4
1.1.5
1.1.6
1.1.7
1.1.8
Requirement
Description
Priority Vendor Response
Custom roles
Object-level
permissions
Ownership
Assignment
Permissions
integrity
Reporting
Role assignment
Role-based
access control
Status-based
permissions
Ability to create custom roles.
Ability to limit permissions to specific
assets, folders, asset types etc.
Ability to assign and change
ownership of an asset.
Ability to detect and resolve
permission conflicts.
Ability to generate reports showing
user permissions and access levels.
Ability to give permissions to
individuals or groups.
Ability to control who can create,
upload, edit, review, approve, publish,
and delete assets (e.g., Contributors,
Reviewers, Publishers, Admins,
Viewers, Owners).
Ability to limit permissions based on
asset status (e.g. draft, published).
Should
Must
Must
Must
Must
Should
Must
Must
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This is the opportunity summary page. It provides an overview of this opportunity and a preview of the attached documentation.