Procurement of OA Groupware Related Services Implementation and Support (2028)

Invitation for Provision of Materials

A procurement of specified services is planned, and interested parties are invited to provide materials and comments concerning the procurement.

Date: July 24, 2026
Contract officer: Akihiro Kondo, Director of the Procurement Office, Accounting Department, Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST)
Procurement agency number: 813
Location number: 13
Notice number: 8-117

1. Procurement details

(1) Classification of the services to be procured: 71 and 27.

(2) Nature and quantity of the planned services: Procurement relating to the introduction, operation and operational support of OA groupware-related services (2028), one complete set.

(3) Procurement method: Purchase, etc.

(4) Scheduled procurement period: September 2028 or later.

(5) Basic requirements

Security functions

• Provide functions equivalent or superior to the current environment, including the integrated authentication provided by Microsoft 365 E5 (Entra ID), device management (Intune), EDR (Microsoft Defender for Endpoint), SIEM (Sentinel), and electronic certificates (Cloud PKI).

• Provide a tool capable of efficiently managing smartphones loaned by JST. It must manage both iOS and Android devices and operate together with Intune.

Groupware functions

• Provide groupware functions equivalent or superior to the current Microsoft 365 E5 environment, including the portal home screen, email and calendar (Exchange), Teams, SharePoint, OneDrive and other Microsoft 365 applications.

• The portal home screen must support automatic updating and display correctly in Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge.

Additional email functions

• Email misdelivery prevention, automatic separation of attachments and recipient checking are not provided by Microsoft 365 E5 and must therefore be implemented through integration with separate services, such as SSO.

• The misdelivery-prevention function must be capable of holding messages addressed to external recipients. Where internal and external recipients are mixed, it must be capable of holding only the external recipients.

• Senders must be able to view a list of held messages, inspect each message and release messages individually.

• The automatic attachment-separation function must notify the recipient of the URL and password in the same email so as not to cause confusion.

• At the time of sending, the recipient-check function must display information enabling the sender to distinguish the recipient’s affiliation, position and persons with similar names, or provide an equivalent alternative function.

• A failure in any additional email service must not stop Exchange email. If email is stopped, it must be restored within a short period, approximately one to two hours.

Meeting-room list and reservation functions

• Display a list of meeting rooms, including equipment, that cannot be handled through the Exchange calendar, and allow users to check availability and make reservations from that list.

• The list display must support automatic updating.

File-sharing functions

• JST currently uses Box for external file sharing. Provide another means of sharing files with external parties that cannot use Box.

• It must be possible to add the JST domain address, jst.go.jp, to the file-sharing URL.

• System administrators must be able to delete any folder or file in the file-sharing environment.

Workflow functions

• Approximately 200 forms used in the current workflow system must remain usable without modification.

• Existing workflow data, including attached files, must be migrated without alteration.

Cross-platform search

• Enable cross-searching across SharePoint, Teams, OneDrive and Box provided within the Microsoft 365 E5 environment.

Virtual desktop and virtual PC functions

• Provide through virtual desktops or virtual PCs the same functions as the standard PCs supplied by JST.

• Virtual desktops and virtual PCs must operate on Windows PCs and Apple Mac computers.

Account-management functions

• Provide centralized management of accounts for the functions offered by the next groupware environment.

• Integrate with Microsoft 365 E5, the other functions described above and Active Directory. Account additions, deletions and changes must be performed only through this account-management function, and the resulting data must be linked to the other services.

• During organizational restructuring and personnel changes, including those at the end of a fiscal year, processing within the account-management system must be completed in approximately ten minutes. Time required for synchronization with Microsoft 365 and other systems is excluded.

2. Method for providing materials and comments

Interested parties are invited to provide general reference materials concerning the services described in item 1(2), comments on the requirements in item 1(5), and information concerning libraries that can be supplied.

(1) Requested materials

1. Proposal
2. Catalogs
3. Certificates of list prices and records of previous deliveries
4. Materials concerning the period required for delivery
5. Materials concerning the support structure
6. Any other materials considered necessary

(2) Submission address and contact

Procurement Office, Accounting Department, Japan Science and Technology Agency
5-3 Yonbancho, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo 102-8666
Contact: Ikumi Shimazu
Telephone: 03-5214-7996
Email: [email protected]

(3) Deadline for providing materials: September 15, 2026, at 17:00 JST. Postal submissions must arrive by the deadline.

i. Materials must be submitted together with a document, issued in the name of the organization’s representative, clearly stating the organization’s intention to respond to this invitation.
ii. The contact point for inquiries concerning the submitted materials must be stated.
iii. Six copies of the materials must be submitted in Japanese.

(4) Requests for additional information

Requests for additional information or inquiries concerning the explanatory documents must be submitted in writing in Japanese by email to the contact point stated in item 2(2), by August 21, 2026, at 17:00 JST.
3. Distribution of explanatory documents

(1) Distribution period: July 24 through September 15, 2026.

(2) Distribution location: The documents can be downloaded from https://choutatsu.jst.go.jp/ from the publication date. They may also be obtained at the contact point stated in item 2(2).
4. Procurement briefing session

(1) Date and time: August 6, 2026, at 14:00 JST.

(2) Location and format: The session will be held simultaneously at the venue and online using Zoom.

Venue:
Bid Room, 2nd Floor, Science Plaza
5-3 Yonbancho, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo 102-8666

Parties wishing to attend must apply by email to the contact point stated in item 2(2) by August 5, 2026, at 17:00 JST.

5. Other information

Details of this procurement plan are provided in the explanatory documents. The contents of this announcement are provisional and may be changed.