During the next two years, the state of California plans to focus on some of the government's largest IT systems in the health and human services sphere.
California self-reported the five priorities presented in this infographic to the annual Digital States Survey from the Center for Digital Government. Three of the five refer directly to system modernizations.
No. 1. The state is about a year and a half into the $420.7 million Child Welfare Services - New System (CWS/NS) project. As has been well chronicled on Techwire, the project is using modular procurement and agile and user-centric design to modernize the the system. The project is the first in California state government using a pre-qualified pool of the companies eligible to provide agile development services.
No. 2. Modernization of the Medi-Cal Eligibility Data System will transform the current legacy system maintained by the Department of Health Care Services. The system was implemented in 1983. The MEDS system supports 35,000 end users, according to the Department of Health Care Services. The CalWorks and CalFresh public benefits programs, along with several others, use MEDS data. DHCS has requested $6.6 million for planning efforts through July 2018 for the MEDS project.
No. 3. Officials are laying the groundwork to try again on a replacement of the California Medicaid Management Information System (CA-MMIS). The project, a decade in the making, will replace a legacy computer system that handles millions of transactions a day for Medi-Cal, the state’s health program for low-income residents. California received a $123 million settlement from Xerox after it officially terminated its modernization contract with the company last year. However, the company continues to run the state’s existing computer system. The Department of Health Care Services recently released a Lessons Learned report on the project.
