Chat-Bot

The contract for the Chat-Bot service is scheduled to end on March 1, 2027. The start date is not explicitly stated as a fixed date, but it is mentioned that if no start date is specified, the contract conclusion date will be considered the start. The total duration of the contract is not explicitly stated as a fixed number of months or years.

Key milestones and phases include:

• A piloting services phase, which can be extended by an additional three months upon technical justification and separate agreement.
• An operating phase, which involves the public provision of the chatbot.
• The creation of a Go-Live concept, support for the production launch, and a subsequent four-week Hypercare phase.

The service duration can be extended by the agreed months if it is not terminated with three months' notice before the end of the term.

The core scope of work for this tender involves the provision and operation of an AI-powered chatbot for citizen inquiries for the Bundesgesellschaft für Endlagerung (BGE).

The high-level summary of the Statement of Work and core deliverables includes:

• Initial Services: The contractor is responsible for initial services to establish operational readiness.
• Piloting Phase: This phase, lasting three months, involves providing functions and a test environment. The contractor will support BGE with setup, technical questions, and error analysis across three consecutive test phases with defined configurations. This includes technical support, error analysis, urgent security and error corrections, standardized phase documentation, utilization of existing exports, an overall overview, and a Go-Live recommendation. Token costs for this phase are included in a partial flat rate.
• Go-Live and Hypercare Phase: The contractor will create a Go-Live concept, support the productive deployment, and conduct a subsequent four-week hypercare phase. This encompasses establishing communication, escalation, fallback, and restart procedures; commissioning; knowledge transfer; interface testing; analysis and error resolution; configuration optimization; key figure evaluation; user feedback; necessary adjustments within the agreed scope; and a final report.
• Operating Phase: The productive solution is to be operated for 39 months from the Go-Live date. This includes hosting, maintenance, monitoring, service desk, support, and services related to security, data protection, quality, and accessibility. The service specifies 24/7 core functionality with a 99.0% Service Level Agreement (SLA) and support from Monday to Friday, 08:00 to 18:00 Uhr. Other services include readiness/alerting, incident and escalation management, updates/patches, backup/recovery, a model registry, knowledge management functions, reporting/exports, change and portability documentation, and regression tests.
• Token Cost Management: The billing of incurred token costs will be consumption-dependent, based on the actual costs charged by the AI model provider. The contractor must provide verifiable proof of costs, detailing the AI model used, billing period, number of input and output tokens processed, and the underlying prices of the model provider.
• Contract End Services: At the end of the contract, the contractor must transfer all customer-specific content and artifacts to BGE or a designated third party. This includes updated export and migration documentation, the export of customer-specific data, settings, and parameters, a handover protocol, and proof of subsequent deletion.
• Optional Deliverables:
• Additional Workshop: An additional workshop, if separately requested and agreed upon by BGE, including preparation, execution (up to eight hours), results documentation, and coverage of travel and incidental expenses.
• Extension of Piloting Services: An option to extend the piloting services for an additional three months, upon expert justification and separate agreement, which includes the continued provision of the test environment and technical support.