DSD Closed Large Language Model

Scope of Work Template

SOLICITATION NO. IFQ 5300 NKJ1001

Description: Development Services Department Closed LLM Solution

Introduction

About the City of Austin

The City of Austin, Texas, is the capital of the State of Texas and the 11th most populous city in the United States. Founded in 1839 and named after Stephen F. Austin, the "Father of Texas", Austin is widely recognized for its rich history, dynamic culture, and scenic beauty. Home to more than one million residents, with the regional population being over 2.3 million, the City is a thriving hub for government, technology, education, and the arts. The City of Austin has experienced consistent and substantial growth emerging as one of the fastest growing urban centers in the United States.

Austin is known for its vibrant culture, innovative spirit, and cultural diversity. As the "Live Music Capital of the World", Austin attracts visitors and new residents alike with its high quality of life, vibrant outdoor lifestyle, and robust economy. This dynamic city tops numerous "Best" lists for business, entertainment, cost of living, quality of life, and more. The City's dedication to building a thriving community has made them a player on the international scene with events such as the United States Grand Prix-Formula 1, ACL Music Festival, South by Southwest, and their first major league sports team, Austin FC (Major League Soccer).

The Austin area is home to major employers such as Dell Technologies, Tesla, Apple, Samsung Austin Semiconductor, IBM, Whole Foods Market, Kendra Scott, YETI Holdings, as well as the largest employer in Austin, the State of Texas. The City is also home to the University of Texas at Austin, one of the largest and most respected public research universities in the nation.

Austin is committed to excellence in public service, sustainability, equity, and community engagement. City departments operate under a Council-City Manager form of government and provide a wide array of services to support residents, businesses, and visitors. This solicitation supports the City's ongoing mission to promote responsible stewardship of public resources while fostering a safe, inclusive, and thriving community.

Purpose

The purpose of this contract is to secure a closed large language model (LLM) solution to support both staff and the broader community in efficiently accessing accurate information related to development regulations and processes. The goal is to reduce the time and effort required to research official source materials, while enhancing service delivery and aligning with existing City technologies.

Term of Contract

This Contract shall remain in effect for an initial term of 12 months or until the City terminates the Contract. This Contract may be extended beyond the initial term for up to two (2) additional 12 month periods at the City's sole option.

This Contract shall become effective upon execution of agreement by final signature and shall remain in effect until the earliest of when the deliverables set forth in the Contract are complete or the City terminates the Contract.

Background

Integrating closed LLM technology aligns with the Department's customer-centric values of Consistency, Connection, and Credibility. By automating repetitive tasks, delivering context-specific insights, and analyzing large volumes of data, the solution is expected to improve operational efficiency and strengthen data-driven decision-making.

Project Overview

The City seeks to engage a vendor with an LLM Solution that will utilize the specific source data to provide efficient, consistent and accurate responses to inquiries about City development and permitting. This City will introduce the solution to internal customers to understand the capabilities of the LLM and other information to create the best external user/public facing tool.

The City will implement the LLM solution in phases with the results of each phase determining the viability of the next phase. These phases are as follows:

Phase 1 - Internal Pilot Only

City Staff-only access

LLM references approved public documents only

Usage analytics provided

Human-centered augmentation focus

Phase 2 - External Beta

Narrow FAQ topics only

Limited, approved publicly available content

Standard disclaimer language

Human escalation path enabled for unsupported queries

Phase 3 - Broader Public Launch (expanded capability)

Post-pilot metrics achieved

Expanded content coverage with enriched LLM capabilities (e.g., improved retrieval and knowledge grounding)

Security sign-off completed

Accessibility compliance sign-off completed

Operational support model fully in place (monitoring, incident handling, ownership)

Requirements

Contractor's Minimum Program Requirements

Provide natural language processing through the performance of natural language task implementation, factual accuracy, and consistency related to how questions are answered; the solution's ability to access, accurately interpret, and synthesize data/information across various resources, and to perform reliable code interpretation and integration in a sustainable way (maintenance and updates, etc.).

Ensure program safety though the ability to exclude or reject processing "assumed" information, secured against external system penetration or interference (jailbreaking), and the protection of Personally Identifiable Information (PII) or other private information.

Provide quality user experience measured by thoroughness, real time usability, accuracy/reliability, and helpfulness of responses.

Demonstrated delivery of enterprise AI/LLM systems for government or regulated entities, with references for deployments aligning to NIST CSF/Texas Cybersecurity Framework and municipal data protection.

Provide a documented information security program supporting confidentiality, integrity, availability, incident response, and privacy-compatible with City Code Chapter 2-11 (Information/Records Management) and City information security governance.

Ability to deliver WCAG 2.1 AA (or 2.2) conformant wemb UI for public-facing components per ADA Title II web/app accessibility rule.

Public Information Compliance: Understanding of Texas Public Information Act (PIA) obligations for public-facing answers, logs, and records retention/disclosure workflows.

Provide Microsoft / SSO integration support for admin-users instead of managing user-provisioning locally in LLM

Contractor's Minimum Functional (non-technical) Requirements

Content Coverage & Source Grounding

Reference and continuously use Title 25 - Land Development Code (including Zoning, Subdivision, Site Plans, Transportation, Drainage, Environment, Water/Wastewater, Sign Regulations, Technical Codes).

Include Planning and Development Services Code Interpretation Library and related City resources/tools to reflect practice and guidance.

Provide section level citations (e.g., 252492) and links to authoritative City pages/Municode entries in every answer.

Use Modes

Internal staff mode: technical queries; procedural steps; code checks; with access to detailed citations and source reasoning.

Public facing mode: plain language explanations with links to source sections and City pages; no disclosure of nonpublic records.

Answer Quality & Safety

Produce answers that are accurate, transparent, and source grounded; expose confidence or "show your sources" metadata. (Aligns with City AI transparency principles.)

Filter/avoid prohibited content; respect City AI guardrails provided in the City of Austin Policy Clarification on the use of AI and ensure human oversight for consequential uses, no monitoring/discipline by AI alone.

Update Cadence

Detect and refresh model source - grounding within 10 business days of City code amendments or new official interpretations/resources.

Contractor's Minimum Technical Requirements

Deployment & Architecture

Closed environment: no public endpoints; access restricted to authorized users; no vendor training on City data without explicit written consent. (Align to City Data Security Standards.)

Encryption: TLS 1.2+ in transit; AES-256 at rest; document key management. (City data security exhibit practices.)

Access Controls: Role-based access; SSO/integration-ready; administrative audit logs. (City ISO governance aligned with NIST/Texas CSF.)

Provide Service Level Agreement (SLA) and uptime commitments

Security & Privacy

Controls aligned with NIST CSF / Texas Cybersecurity Framework (Identify/Protect/Detect/Respond/Recover); document maturity or coverage.

Provide an Incident Response playbook and breach notification consistent with City standards; cooperate with Information Security Office.

Accessibility

ADA Title II web/app rule compliant; WCAG 2.1 AA (or 2.2 AA) conformance documented through ACR/VPAT.

Records & PIA

Support City Chapter 2-11 information/records management: ownership of City records, retention schedules, export, and destruction.

Provide search/export of logs and content to satisfy the Texas Public Information Act (PIA) within statutory timeframes.

Contractor's Minimum User Requirements (Minimum)

Internal Users (City Staff)

Administrative UI for: user management, roles, audit logs, configuration of sources, and answer review workflows (human-in-the-loop).

Staff experience: ability to ask technical questions; see citations; copy/share results; flag issues for correction. (Supports transparency and reliability.)

External Users (Public)

Web UI that is accessible (WCAG), mobile-responsive, and provides plain-language summaries with links to relevant City pages and code sections.

Disclosure: Indicate when AI is used, provide an easy path to official source texts, disclaimers for informational use (not legal advice). See City of Austin Policy Clarification on the use of AI and any other City AI transparency direction.

Contractor's Minimal Service Levels

Availability: Target 99.5% monthly uptime for the hosted service (informal purchase baseline), with email support during business hours. (Resiliency expectations based on City cloud practices.)

Issue/Incident Response: Acknowledge within 1 business day; critical fixes with workaround within 3 business days. Notify City per City Information Security Office (ISO) policies and cooperate with any system security investigations.

Tasks /Responsibilities

Contractor will:

Develop and provide a High-Level Solution Design (HLSD) document for the proposed Large Language Model (LLM) solution and its integration with City of Austin (CoA) data sources, systems, and identity services. The HLSD shall describe the end-to-end architecture, data flows, security controls, integration patterns, operational model, and deployment topology. HLSD Template and design principles can be requested from ATS Enterprise Architecture Team

Provide Training and testing: Provide City staff with training for the operation and administration of the software application. In addition, vendor will create a testing module/environment prior to launching the software in a "live" environment.

Provide Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) for staff and administrative users.

Provide Access to Records and have a PIA Plan: Export formats; log retention; search capabilities; destruction at end of term; confirmation of City record ownership per Chapter 211.

Provide Reporting as needed - updates, incidents

Provide assurance that City data will not be used for unauthorized model-training

City of Austin will:

Provide source grounding source data and resources

Participating in testing and implementation providing timely feedback and any information required to deployment

Submittal Requirements

Bidders must provide concise documentation evidencing compliance; excessive marketing material is discouraged.

Feature Compliance Checklist (Section 5): "Meets/Does Not Meet," with short notes and links to documentation.

Security Summary: NIST/Texas CSF alignment narrative; encryption and access controls; incident response/breach notification contacts; acknowledgment of City Data Security Standards.

Accessibility ACR/VPAT: WCAG 2.1/2.2 AA statement and testing summary.

Pricing: Fixed, all inclusive quote (setup, configuration, initial ingestion, training for admins, support for 12 months), with optional addons priced separately. (IFQ clarity.)

BE/WBE Outreach Confirmation (if applicable): Statement of efforts and subcontracting plan in line with City program materials for informal purchases.

Delivery Locations

Delivery is to be made within Insert number of calendar days in words and (numbers) calendar days after the order is placed (either verbally or in writing). Delivery shall be made to the following location unless otherwise specified by the City in the order:

10. Specific Invoice Requirements

The City's preference is to have invoices emailed to DSDAccountspayable@austintexas.gov or mailed to the below address:

For questions regarding your invoice/payment please contact the City Contract Manager.

11. Designation of Key Personnel

The City and the Contractor resolve to keep the same key personnel assigned to this engagement throughout its term. In the event that it becomes necessary for the Contractor to replace any key personnel, the replacement will be an individual having equivalent experience and competence in executing projects such as the one described herein. Additionally, the Contractor shall promptly notify the City and obtain approval for the replacement. Such approval shall not be unreasonably withheld. The Contractor's and City's key personnel are identified as follows:

12. Deliverables/Milestones

[Include the following table to outline the deliverables/milestones for this project; each should correspond with tasks/requirements listed in section 5.0 above.]

13. Appendices/Exhibits

[List each of the appendices or exhibits that are attached to the SOW.]