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California Plans Modular Approach, Multiple RFPs for Child Welfare System Modernization

The Child Welfare System — New System (CWS-NS), one of California’s largest IT modernization efforts, will be divided into multiple bid opportunities with the intent of making the project less risky and more agile, officials announced Thursday.

The Child Welfare System — New System (CWS-NS), one of California’s largest IT modernization efforts, will be divided into multiple bid opportunities with the intent of making the project less risky and more agile, officials announced Thursday.

The first RFP will be released in December 2015, and the Department of Social Services and Office of Systems Integration expect the project’s first deliverable will be completed during the 2016-17 fiscal year.

“Instead of the monolithic approach that was envisioned that we were getting ready to release [in a single RFP on Nov. 24], we’re going to a modular approach. We’re going to break up the RFP into a series of RFPs that will tackle each of the different modules — we haven’t settled on the exact number of those and the sequencing of them. We think this approach is going to be less risky and that it’s going to be quicker to deliverables,” said Michael Wilkening, undersecretary of the California Health and Human Services Agency.

It also means a series of vendors likely will participate in the project, rather than having a lone system integrator.

Wilkening believes California is the first state to utilize this type of modular approach in the development of a child welfare system. The federal government, including the Administration on Children, Youth and Families, has started using a similar agile approach in its procurements, Wilkening added. The General Services Administration is helping California with technical expertise.

John Boule, director of the Office of Systems Integration, said another advantage to the multiple RFPs is that it should put modern technology and usable software into the hands of child welfare professionals as quickly as possible — next year rather than in 2020 or 2021.

“This was an opportunity, working with our federal partners who have encouraged this, to be able to make that happen — and to make that happen more quickly and in partnership with counties and our end users,” Boule said.

The new iterative approach should also reduce risk because it will avoid a big change all at once and those associated large-scale issues, Boule added.

California’s child welfare system is expansive. There are about 20,000 end users among child welfare, social workers and juvenile probation workers at the county level; the system itself received almost 500,000 referrals in 2014, said Department of Social Services director Will Lightbourne.

The existing CWS system, which resides on an IBM mainframe at the Office of Technology Services, integrates a variety of functions, such as risk assessment tools, investigation summaries, narratives and court histories, child placement, and licensing. IBM is the incumbent contractor for the current system.

“The current system is a solid data repository, and it has been reliable since it was put in the field in the late 1990s. What it doesn’t have are dynamic interfaces and mobility for frontline workers out in the field so they can do quick risk assessments and come to real-time decisions about what is safe for a family or a child,” Lightbourne said. “The urgency is to equip them with those interactive and mobile tools.”

The California Department of Technology has approved the new modular procurement approach for CWS-NS. The project was initially approved in 2013 with a $449 million budget.

“We aren’t sure what the ultimate cost for the whole system is going to be. We’re hopeful that with more vendors there will be more competition in the multiple RFPs. Hopefully that results in a low cost, but we don’t know yet,” Wilkening said.

A vendor forum providing information about the CWS-NS procurement will be held on Dec. 4. For more information, go to http://www.hwcws.cahwnet.gov.

Matt Williams was Managing Editor of Techwire from June 2014 through May 2017.