Request for Information — Internet Services and Managed IT Services

1. Purpose and Background

The City of Abilene is evaluating its future internet connectivity and managed information technology (IT) service needs. The City’s current provider agreements expire April 24, 2027, and the City anticipates a transition to future services by that date.

The purpose of this Request for Information (RFI) is to gather information from qualified providers before the City develops formal procurement specifications. Responses will help the City better understand available service models, technical options, industry practices, transition considerations, and information that should be included in future Requests for Proposals (RFPs).

The City currently anticipates issuing separate RFPs for Internet Services and Managed IT Services. Respondents to this RFI may address Internet Services only, Managed IT Services only, or both.

The City is seeking information and recommendations at this stage. Respondents are encouraged to identify alternatives or approaches the City should consider rather than simply confirming the City’s preliminary assumptions.

2. Procurement Objectives

Through this process, the City intends to:

• Understand available internet, broadband, fiber, redundancy, and failover options.
• Understand available managed IT service models and cybersecurity capabilities.
• Identify appropriate service levels and performance standards for City operations.
• Understand equipment ownership, licensing, administrative access, lifecycle, and replacement options.
• Identify transition requirements and realistic implementation timelines.
• Develop specifications that allow future proposals to be compared fairly and consistently.
• Identify industry practices or technical considerations the City may not yet have identified.

3. Current Environment

The information below is intended to provide respondents with a general understanding of the City’s current environment. It is preliminary and should not be treated as a complete asset inventory or final specification.

Device counts reflect devices observed during a seven-day network export and are not a confirmed asset inventory. July 2026 citywide traffic totaled approximately 13.98 TB, including 9.49 TB downloaded and 4.49 TB uploaded. The City’s network currently uses Cisco Meraki firewalls, switches, and wireless access points at various locations.

Additional facility information, including addresses, square footage, user counts, device counts, existing circuit details, and other technical information, may be developed or provided during the subsequent RFP process as appropriate.

4. Response Instructions

Please identify which service area(s) your organization is addressing:

• Internet Services
• Managed IT Services
• Both Internet Services and Managed IT Services

Respondents may answer directly beneath each question or provide a separate response document that follows the same numbering. If a question does not apply, please indicate “Not Applicable.” If additional information would be needed to provide a meaningful answer, identify what information is needed.

Responses should be submitted electronically to For security reasons, you must enable JavaScript to view this E-mail address. no later than October 30, 2026.

Questions or requests for clarification regarding this RFI should be submitted in writing to City of Abilene at For security reasons, you must enable JavaScript to view this E-mail address. . Responses to questions that may be relevant to other interested parties will be issued as amendments to this RFI and posted on the City’s Bid Postings webpage ( https://www.abilenecityhall.com/bids.aspx ) so that all interested parties have access to the same information. Respondents are responsible for reviewing posted amendments prior to submitting a response.

5. Respondent Information

1. Provide the legal name, business address, website, and primary contact information for your organization.
2. Identify the service area(s) for which your organization is responding.
3. Describe your organization’s experience providing comparable services to municipal governments or similarly sized public-sector organizations.
4. Describe the geographic area from which your organization would support the City and the location of personnel who would routinely serve the City.
5. Identify any subcontractors or partner organizations that would be expected to provide a material portion of the services and describe their anticipated roles.
6. Describe any qualifications, certifications, manufacturer partnerships, or other experience relevant to the services addressed in your response.

6. Internet Services

1. Describe the internet service options your organization could provide to the City’s 12 current service locations, including available connection types such as fiber, cable, fixed wireless, or other technologies.
2. For City Hall and the Police Department, the City is currently considering at least 1 Gbps symmetrical service. Based on the information provided, what service level would you recommend for these locations and why?
3. For the remaining City locations, how would you recommend determining appropriate download and upload speeds? Identify the information you would need from the City to make those recommendations.
4. Does your organization offer internet service without monthly data allowances or usage caps? Describe any limitations, thresholds, or usage-based charges that may apply.
5. Describe available redundancy and failover options. Explain whether redundancy would use a physically diverse path, a different carrier or technology, cellular backup, or another approach.
6. Which City locations, based on the information provided, would you recommend receive redundant or failover service? Explain the basis for your recommendation.
7. Describe any construction, fiber extension, right-of-way, easement, or site preparation that could reasonably be anticipated to serve the City’s locations. Explain how such costs are typically handled.
8. Describe the equipment your organization would typically provide at each site and identify whether that equipment would be purchased, leased, or included as part of the service.
9. Describe how your organization handles equipment that reaches the manufacturer’s end-of-support date.
10. Describe available static public IP address options and how those are priced or allocated.
11. Describe the network monitoring, outage detection, and customer notification services included with internet service.
12. Describe the service level agreements available for internet service, including uptime commitments, response times, restoration targets, scheduled maintenance, and service credits.
13. Describe the support available outside normal business hours, including nights, weekends, and holidays.
14. Describe how your organization would approach installation and transition from the City’s current internet provider while minimizing service disruption.
15. What facility, circuit, usage, equipment, or other information should the City include in a future Internet Services RFP so providers can prepare accurate and comparable proposals?
16. Identify any internet connectivity options, risks, or industry practices the City should consider that are not addressed above.

7. Managed IT Services

1. Describe the managed IT service models your organization offers, including fully managed, co-managed, or other arrangements that may be appropriate for an organization of the City’s size.
2. Based on the general environment described in this RFI, what managed IT service model would you recommend for the City and why?
3. Describe your help desk model, including hours of operation, methods for submitting requests, remote support, on-site support, and after-hours or emergency support.
4. Describe how support requests are prioritized. Provide typical or contractual response and resolution targets for critical, high, medium, and low priority issues.
5. Describe what routine user support is included in the base service and what types of requests or projects would typically be billed separately.
6. Describe your approach to user onboarding and offboarding, account administration, password support, multi-factor authentication, software installation, printers, mobile devices, and other routine user needs.
7. Describe your approach to network administration, including firewalls, switches, wireless access points, virtual private networks, firmware updates, configuration management, and network documentation.
8. Describe your approach to endpoint management, including patching, operating system updates, antivirus or endpoint detection and response, device monitoring, encryption, and asset inventory.
9. Describe your experience administering Microsoft 365 environments, including Exchange Online, Teams, SharePoint, OneDrive, Entra ID, Intune, licensing, and security configuration, as applicable.
10. Describe how administrative credentials and access would be handled. Explain whether the City would retain independent administrative access to its Microsoft 365 tenant, network management platforms, and other City systems while your organization performs day-to-day administration.
11. Describe your approach to maintaining network diagrams, asset inventories, configurations, credentials, procedures, and other documentation needed for continuity and future transition.
12. Describe how your organization distinguishes routine managed services from separately billed project work. Provide examples of work that would typically fall into each category.
13. Describe the on-site support model you would recommend for the City, including whether on-site time is scheduled, provided as needed, subject to minimum hours, or billed separately.
14. Describe how your organization supports strategic technology planning, budgeting, equipment lifecycle planning, and long-term recommendations.
15. Describe the reports and account-management information normally provided to clients, including ticket metrics, network health, cybersecurity, asset lifecycle, and service review meetings.
16. What information about users, devices, servers, software, facilities, equipment, and existing services should the City include in a future Managed IT Services RFP so providers can prepare accurate and comparable proposals?
17. Identify any managed IT service options, risks, or industry practices the City should consider that are not addressed above.
18. Would you recommend that the City migrate from its current .com domain to a .gov domain? Please explain the benefits, risks, costs, and transition considerations of such a migration.

8. Cybersecurity, Backup and Business Continuity

1. Describe the cybersecurity services included in your standard managed IT offering and identify services that are optional or separately priced.
2. Describe your approach to firewall management, endpoint detection and response, vulnerability management, security monitoring, log review, and incident response.
3. Describe any security operations center (SOC) or security information and event management (SIEM) services available and how alerts are reviewed and escalated.
4. Describe your approach to cybersecurity awareness training, phishing testing, and other employee-focused security services.
5. Describe your backup services, including systems covered, backup frequency, storage location, retention, immutability, monitoring, and restore testing.
6. Describe your approach to disaster recovery and business continuity, including recovery time and recovery point objectives where applicable.
7. Describe your experience supporting law enforcement environments subject to Criminal Justice Information Services (CJIS) requirements. Explain how you would approach logical separation of Criminal Justice Information systems from general office and public traffic.
8. Describe your experience managing or providing security support for operational technology systems such as water and wastewater monitoring or control systems. Clearly identify whether your services would include direct management, security monitoring and patching support only, or neither.
9. Identify cybersecurity or continuity requirements you recommend the City include in a future RFP.
10. Describe how your organization addresses CJIS personnel security requirements for employees, contractors, or subcontractors who may have physical or logical access to systems that store, process, or transmit Criminal Justice Information (CJI), including applicable personnel screening, fingerprint-based background checks, security awareness training, access authorization, and termination of access.
11. Describe the types and typical levels of insurance coverage your organization maintains for services of this nature, including general liability, professional/errors and omissions liability, and cyber liability coverage, as applicable.
12. Describe how your organization would support the City's access to, retrieval of, and export of City records or data created, stored, or maintained within systems managed by your organization, including the process and typical response time for retrieving information requested by the City. Describe available retention, archiving, search, and export capabilities and identify any associated limitations or costs.

9. Equipment, Licensing and Ownership

1. Describe the equipment ownership model you would recommend for the City. Explain the advantages and disadvantages of City-owned, provider-owned, leased, or service-included equipment.
2. If equipment is leased or provided as part of a managed service, describe what happens when equipment reaches manufacturer end-of-support or must be replaced for capacity, security, or reliability reasons.
3. Describe how manufacturer warranties, licensing renewals, hardware replacement, spares, and failed equipment are normally handled.
4. Describe how software licenses, cloud subscriptions, network management accounts, and device registrations would be established. Identify which should be held in the City’s name and which, if any, would be held by the provider.
5. Describe what happens to equipment, licenses, configurations, documentation, and administrative access at the end of the agreement or during a transition to another provider.
6. Identify any equipment or licensing information the City should gather before issuing its future RFPs.
7. Identify whether any equipment or services your organization would anticipate providing include equipment or components appearing on the FCC Covered List or otherwise subject to applicable federal restrictions on covered telecommunications equipment or services. Describe any exceptions or alternatives the City should be aware of.

10. Implementation and Transition

1. Based on the City’s target transition date of April 24, 2027, describe a reasonable implementation timeline for the service area(s) addressed in your response.
2. Identify major transition milestones and the amount of lead time normally required for ordering circuits, equipment, licensing, staffing, configuration, testing, and cutover.
3. Describe the information and cooperation you would need from the incumbent provider during transition.
4. Describe how you would obtain and validate administrative credentials, documentation, configurations, backups, asset information, and other knowledge transferred from an incumbent provider.
5. Describe how you would test services before final cutover and how deficiencies would be identified and resolved.
6. Identify the most significant transition risks the City should plan for and how those risks can be reduced.
7. Would your organization be willing to conduct an on-site evaluation of the City’s existing equipment, wiring, and site conditions before submitting a future proposal? If yes, indicate whether such a walkthrough would typically be provided at no cost as part of the procurement process.

11. Pricing and Contract Structure

The City is not requesting a binding price proposal through this RFI. The following questions are intended to help the City understand common pricing structures and identify the information needed for future RFP pricing schedules.

1. Describe how your organization typically prices the service area(s) addressed in your response, such as per user, per device, per site, per circuit, flat monthly fee, hourly rate, or another model.
2. Identify the primary factors that affect pricing and the information the City would need to provide for accurate pricing in a future RFP.
3. Identify common one-time costs, recurring costs, separately billed services, equipment costs, licensing costs, construction costs, or other charges the City should anticipate.
4. Describe typical contract terms, renewal structures, annual price adjustments, and termination provisions for the services addressed in your response.
5. Describe how pricing is typically handled when the number of City users, devices, facilities, or service levels changes during the contract term.
6. If your organization offers both Internet Services and Managed IT Services, describe whether there are operational or pricing advantages to purchasing the services together. Also identify any disadvantages or limitations the City should consider.

12. Alternative and Hybrid Service Models

1. Are there service models other than fully outsourced managed IT that you believe the City should consider, including co-managed, hybrid, shared-resource, or specialized-service arrangements? Describe the model and when it works well.
2. If the City were to retain an internal or part-time IT resource, which functions would you recommend remain with an outside provider and which could reasonably be handled internally?
3. Describe any services that you believe should be procured separately rather than bundled with general managed IT or internet service.
4. Identify any advantages, disadvantages, cost considerations, staffing requirements, or operational risks the City should consider when comparing fully managed, co-managed, hybrid, or in-house approaches.

13. Recommendations to the City

1. Based on the information provided, what are the three to five most important issues you recommend the City address in its future Internet Services RFP?
2. Based on the information provided, what are the three to five most important issues you recommend the City address in its future Managed IT Services RFP?
3. What requirements commonly included in public-sector IT procurements do you believe are unnecessary or could unintentionally limit competition?
4. What requirements do public-sector organizations commonly overlook that the City should consider?
5. What additional information would you need from the City before you could determine whether your organization can meet the City’s needs and provide a meaningful proposal?
6. Please provide any additional recommendations, alternatives, concerns, or information that would help the City develop fair, practical, and technically sound RFPs.

14. RFI Conditions and Disclaimer

• This RFI is issued solely for information gathering, planning, and market research. It is not a solicitation for bids or proposals and will not result directly in a contract award.
• The City is not obligated to issue an RFP, purchase any goods or services, or reimburse respondents for costs incurred in preparing a response or participating in discussions related to this RFI.
• The City may use information received through this RFI to develop future specifications, scopes of work, evaluation criteria, procurement strategies, and solicitation documents.
• The City may request clarification or conduct follow-up discussions with respondents as part of the information-gathering process.
• Respondents should clearly identify information they consider confidential or proprietary. Any such designation will be handled subject to applicable Kansas law and City requirements.
• The City reserves the right to modify the anticipated procurement schedule and approach as additional information is gathered.

Appendix A - Anticipated Procurement Schedule

Dates are preliminary and may be adjusted by the City.

RFI - Internet Services and Managed IT Services