The California Health and Human Services Agency is establishing a pre-qualified pool of as many as 15 vendors to provide "user-centric design" and agile software development services.
The Child Welfare Services - New System (CWS-NS) will be the first project to use the newly formed group of companies, the agency said in a May 5 announcement. The vendor pool will be modeled after a purchasing agreement for agile development the federal government established in 2015.
To be considered for qualification, vendors must submit a working prototype of software demonstrating agile development. "The working prototype will be an application that will allow parents of foster kids to establish and manage their profile, and view children's residential facilities in their ZIP code, and communicate with the case worker via a private inbox. The working prototype will access open data through the HHS API [Application Programming Interface] to retrieve data about foster family agency locations
that are nearby," the invitation says.
A CMAS designation is not required to participate.
Submissions are due June 9.
Forming a pool of agile developers could be an emerging trend in governments at all levels. Last year, the Federal Acquisition Service and 18F announced 17 vendors qualified through its prequalified pool. They submitted working prototypes developed from a public data set.
