Every Friday I write down what LFW actually did that week. Week one, week two, week three, week four, week five, week six.
This is week seven, and our email newsletter subscribers see it first.
Recommended for award
A school district in Texas recommended LFW for award on its Drupal design and development contract.
It is our first recommendation, about six weeks after we started bidding on government contracts.
The recommendation is not final. If the district approves it, LFW joins its pool of approved suppliers, and work comes as orders at the prices in our proposal.
On a note related to Texas, LFW is now a member of the Texas Municipal League. Will you be at the TML Conference, the 114th Annual Conference and Exhibition, in San Antonio on November 11 to 13?
A bid on a platform that's new to us
This week we bid on maintaining a city website in Pennsylvania that runs on DNN.
DNN (formerly DotNetNuke) is a content management system built on Microsoft .NET. We haven't run a DNN site for a client before, and the proposal says so.
Our philosophy: after nearly two decades of building and running websites, a new platform is a new manual, not a new job. The work underneath is the same:
- Keep it patched
- Keep it backed up
- Keep it accessible
- Keep it online
So the proposal says what we know, what we will learn, and how we will prove it in the first 90 days.
Remember our company mantra? It's "There is no lift too heavy." Our web capability knows no bounds, including learning an entirely new content management system.
Bids become products
LFW can build any kind of software, not only websites.
We read every request for proposals we find. This week we started building the product when the same need shows up again and again, before the next one is posted.
These came out of bids this week:
- LFW League Manager: youth and adult sports leagues for a parks and recreation department, with registration, teams, schedules, volunteer coaches and email to families
- LFW Referral Tracker: a health department sends a referral and follows it until it closes
- LFW Newborn Screener: newborn screening follow-up, one record per baby from the first screen to the last result
- LFW Lab Manager: a newborn screening laboratory, from the card to the released report
Referral Tracker, Newborn Screener and Lab Manager handle health information. We know how to set that up properly:
- On AWS, under a Business Associate Agreement, using only services AWS lists as HIPAA eligible
- In the software itself: sign-in per person, access by role, encryption, and an audit log of who saw what
Once we've had a chance to dig into the products, we'll talk about them more heavily.
Thirteen proposals out
Thirteen proposals went out since last Friday's post:
- A national museum in France
- A state health department in Wyoming
- A city in Germany
- A housing authority in Maryland, for an intranet on SharePoint
- A city in Tennessee, for its tourism website
- A county health department in Maryland, for a referral tracking system
- A township in Ohio
- A rural community in New Brunswick, Canada
- A tribal nation in Montana
- The city in Pennsylvania, for its DNN website
- A regional transportation planning organization in Washington
- A community action agency in Texas, for website hosting
- A training authority in South Africa, for its website
The legislature in the Pacific I mentioned last week is still on. That one is due Monday.
Email or portal only
Last week I said a regional commission in Georgia was next. We passed on it: the bid needed an affidavit notarized in person.
A few weeks ago, we would have done it. We have:
- Mailed a proposal on a flash drive
- Had documents notarized
That made sense when we needed every shot we could get.
We even looked at flying to Guam to deliver a bid in person. Between the travel time and the size of the contract, we decided against that one too.
Now that we've been recommended for an award, our time is better spent on the work itself. So we're pulling back on bids that need paper, a notary or an in-person step.
We'll still do one now and then. Most of our time goes to bids submitted digitally:
- By email
- Through a procurement portal
If you have an RFP, send it to us. We'll read it and tell you if it's a fit.
Four nos
A university in California. Its notice of intent to award, dated earlier in the month, names another firm. We found that on Monday.
A transportation commission in California did not move us forward. They received more than 130 proposals.
A central bank in Norway did not take us past the qualification stage.
A nonprofit in New York wrote that we were not in the top 20 of 243 proposals.
A WordPress Foundation donor
LFW is now a donor to the WordPress Foundation, listed as LFW.com LLC on the donors page.
I have a long history in WordPress, and I have a lot to thank it for. We are glad to be a donor.
We posted it on X earlier this week.
Signed the Overlay Fact Sheet
I signed the Overlay Fact Sheet this week. The signature is Leland Fiegel, Founder, LFW.com LLC.
Its conclusion is that no overlay product on the market can make a website fully compliant with an accessibility standard.
Quiet on security
Last week, PHP and Node.js both shipped security fixes on the same day, and PHP2Shell took sites offline across Europe.
Security was quiet this week: no widely reported emergency release for the platforms we watch. The week itself was not quiet.
We remain vigilant either way. You should too. Be wary of suspicious emails and calls, even when they appear to come from an official source. That source may have been hacked.
Next week
Next week, proposals go out to:
- A city in Oregon
- A housing authority in Florida
- A county in Kansas, answering a request for information on agenda management
- A regional police service in Ontario, Canada, for freedom of information software
- A territorial government in Canada
- The legislature in the Pacific
A response to a sources-sought notice also goes to a defense agency.
If you know someone who runs the website for a public institution, I would be grateful for an introduction.
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Leland Fiegel