Vendor Engagement Resources

Doing Business with Statewide IT Procurement

The N.C. Department of Information Technology’s Statewide IT Procurement Office works with many different vendors across the state to deliver technology goods and services for state agencies, local governments and community colleges.

To conduct business with the state, vendors should sign up on the North Carolina electronic vendor portal, which allows them to:

In the portal, vendors can register for all applicable commodities, goods and services that their organization provides. Registering enables vendors to receive vital information about bid opportunities that match their interests. In most cases, vendors also submit proposals using the portal.

Support

For support, vendors can have questions answered by phone or email:

Call the eProcurement help desk at 888-211-7440:

  • For buyer questions related to the N.C. Electronic Vendor Portal requisitions and purchase orders, select Option 1
  • For general vendor questions, select Option 2
  • For buyer assistance with solicitations, select Option 3
  • For vendor billing questions, select Option 4

Email:

Resources for Vendors

Tab/Accordion Items

Overview

This section provides guidance to potential and existing technology partners on submitting architectural diagrams to the state of North Carolina.  The state of North Carolina is dedicated to ensuring that its technology investments meet the goals and objectives of the state and the technology leveraged by the state is secure, scalable and aligns with the IT standards set forth by the N.C. Department of Information Technology.

Architecture Diagram Requirements

The technology footprint of the state and its agencies is vast.  It encompasses a host of technologies including cloud (SaaS, PaaS, IaaS), client server, mainframes and IoT to name a few.  These technologies rely on an expansive network and security protocols to ensure that the services provided to the state of North Carolina are seamless and secure.  

When preparing your architecture submission, it is important that your submission clearly demonstrates how your proposal will work.  What are the proposed technologies and where will they be located?  How will your proposed technologies communicate with other technologies in the state’s network?  

Architecture Submission Format

NCDIT requires that all vendors submit their architectural diagrams via Microsoft Visio.  The following ZIP file contains a Visio template to assist you with your submission.

Vendor Architecture Template (ZIP file)

This template provides the stencil including shapes and connectors that you will need to use for your architectural submission.  

View an example that highlights the core elements NCDIT is looking for.

Overview

The goals listed below reflect the overall strategy of NCDIT to find better ways to leverage and share what is common across the state in terms of IT. Key elements of the vision include providing agile, world-class technology solutions, with an emphasis on digital services, delivering value through a disciplined approach to the management of technology across the enterprise of state government, increasing overall productivity of agencies and their employees, meeting the Governor’s directive to increase the use of shared data and analytics among agencies, and protecting government systems and citizen information from unauthorized access.

Updated Statewide Information Technology Goals

  1. Secure IT systems and infrastructure: Provide a resilient infrastructure that mitigates risk, supports business continuity, provides security and privacy of the State’s and citizens’ data, and supports secure collaboration and information sharing.
  2. Deepen trusted partnerships: Support and empower the business of state government by improving processes, enhancing cross-agency collaboration and cooperation, and establishing and managing IT standards.
  3. Improve the management and transparency of IT: Better utilize the state’s IT resources by increasing visibility into what the State has, what it costs, and how the State uses it.
  4. Modernize and centralize IT operations: Modernize and centralize technology operations to effectively support a 21st century government.
  5. Empower our citizens through technology: Provide transparent, easy-to-use, and customer-focused government and student services.
  6. Promote better decision-making through analytics: Leverage the state’s data to make more informed decisions, policies, and laws.

Strategic Resources

Overview

An enterprise approach optimizes IT security and risk management activities performed at the statewide level, allowing the state to gain economies of scale and helping to ensure security program consistency.

Security Resources

Overview

The Government Data Analytics Center is developing a comprehensive master data management tool to document the state’s data sources and definitions, as well as any quality issues associated with the data in terms of accuracy, currency, and completeness. Evaluating a data source at the enterprise level with varying business perspectives can point out these types of data quality concerns. Based on this knowledge, the GDAC can work with the data source agency to identify ways to improve and expand the capture of quality data to support more accurate analysis and decisions.

Overview

North Carolina constituents expect outstanding digital experiences when interacting with state government. NCDIT's objective is to provide content, resources and services seamlessly, across all devices and at any time. We prioritize user-centered digital services, focusing on accessibility, simplicity and consistency, while maintaining the utmost standards of security and reliability.

Digital Commons

NCDIT administers Digital Commons, a tailored content management platform built on the open-source Drupal framework (currently Drupal 10) and hosted on FedRAMP-compliant Amazon Web Services. Serving as the state's enterprise web content management system, Digital Commons sets the standard for delivering web and digital content.
The platform sustains more than 80 websites for various agencies, boards, and commissions, including the nc.gov constituent portal.

Resources

Overview

NCDIT provides more than 40 services to state agencies and other local government entities. NCDIT’s technical services range from networking to platform and hosting to productivity and collaboration. 

Key NCDIT Services

Overview

The State Chief Information Officer strives to simplify electronic transactions with North Carolina State Government. The SCIO is required to ensure this happens in a secure manner. This is accomplished through authentication of users and controlled access to applications and services.

Standard

To achieve this, the SCIO requires all inter-agency and external facing solutions/applications that create content use the State’s Identity and Access Management solution (“NCID”).

More information about the NCID service.

NCID is used to integrate with numerous systems to synergize the end-user experience by providing authentication/authorization to State applications and solutions.

All solutions requiring NCID authentication must externalize identity and access management and support one of the following protocols:

  • Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML v2)
  • OAuth/OIDC
  • Lightweight Directory Access Protocol
  • Web Services (SOAP/WSDL)

As existing solutions are upgraded or replaced, they will be required to support the above protocols.

A formal exception is required to use a solution other than NCID. The agency must provide just cause for the exception to be approved.

Find the exception form and additional information about exceptions.