Page 40 - GCN, March/April 2016

AGILE
traditional RFP would likely result in a project that lacked functionality, could easily go over budget and might take longer than expected.
Shortly after, a team from Code for America began working with state of- ficials to develop a more effective and budget-friendly way of building the system. The solution was to issue a set of smaller RFPs and, more important, focus on users’ needs.
John Boule, director of California’s Office of Systems Integration, said the first two RFPs have been released — one for an application programming interface that would enable the new modules to communicate with the legacy mainframe database and anoth- er to support the intake module and capture data for services such as emer- gency calls and complaints. Bids have been submitted, and officials expect to award the contracts in April and May.
Once development is underway, of- ficials will conduct user testing to en- sure that the system works the way it needs to. Ultimately, Boule said, that approach enables the team to test so- lutions, decide whether they help the user’s workflow and then integrate the functionality into the system. Func- tionalities in the legacy application will be retired as each new module is deployed.
The team eventually plans to host
its development environment in Cal- Cloud, the private cloud service pro- vided by the state’s Office of Technol- ogy Services. Officials will work with internal experts and private-sector professionals to address specific secu- rity needs, Boule said.
When officials first explored the tra- ditional, all-in-one procurement ap- proach, they estimated that they could deliver the new system in one chunk by fiscal 2021, Lightbourne said. Now the team expects to launch new fea- tures starting in fiscal 2016 and con- tinuing through fiscal 2018.
“We are looking to save significant time in getting upgrades to the user quicker, and that’s been the main thing,” Lightbourne said.
The state has been reaching out to the vendor community through two forums that have shown a high level of interest and participation. On the funding front, the agile procurement approach allows each RFP to be budgeted separately as it comes out, said Michael Wilkening, undersecretary of the California Health and Human Services Agency.
The new Child Welfare Services sys- tem is a joint effort by the California Health and Human Services Agency’s Department of Social Services and Of- fice of Systems Integration, the state’s Government Operations Agency and Department of Technology, and the
County Welfare Directors Association of California. At the federal level, the Department of Health and Human Services’ Administration on Children, Youth and Families and the General Services Administration’s 18F consult- ing shop have also been involved.
HHS: PROTOTYPES AND CROWDSOURCING
Applying agile concepts to procure- ment is still relatively rare, but the idea is not entirely new. At the Department of Health and Human Services, for ex- ample, the Buyers Club program has been reviewing new acquisition oppor- tunities and contracting vehicles since early 2014 with an eye to transforming the way the government buys digital services.
In 2015, the HHS Office of the Assis- tant Secretary for Planning and Evalu- ation wanted to replace its website, web content management system and intranet, and it needed to migrate two legacy databases.
Rather than releasing a traditional RFP, the Buyers Club issued a 10-page statement of objectives with two stages. The first stage asked for pricing propos- als and a short concept paper. Stage two, or “show and tell,” gave the five short-listed vendors two weeks and $10,000 to submit a new cost proposal, performance work statements and a
So far, everyone who’s done these types of projects...has had success. I think it’s the way that we should be heading, and a lot of us have proven that it really works.
38 GCN MARCH/APRIL 2016 • GCN.COM
— MARK NAGGAR, DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES