The California Department of Fair Employment and Housing has to make its case management system, called "HoudiniEsq," vanish just five years after it was launched.
The department is requesting about $4.4 million through a Spring Finance Letter for a system replacement of Houdini, which was manufactured by North Carolina-based company Logic Bit Software LLC. The vendor has notified California it will end support of the system in December 2017.
"We have an online case management and filing system," department director Kevin Kish said about Houdini on April 26, as he sat beside CIO PJ Bajwa during a legislative budget hearing. "It's the backbone of how we accept and process approximately 20,000 complaints of discrimination we receive every year. The vendor of our current program is not renewing the contract. For much of the past year, we've worked very closely with the Department of Technology to identify alternatives."
The Department of Fair Employment and Housing uses Houdini to "manage complaints through the investigation life cycle of filing, investigating, mediating, litigating and closing complaints."
The public submits initial complaints through the case management system. The Department of Fair Employment and Housing would like a new system to include an appointment system, allow the public to directly upload relevant documents and be Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) compliant.
Houdini went live in 2012, and soon after state officials and the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development began noticing problems and a backlog of complaints. Investigators at Fair Employment and Housing complained the off-the-shelf, case-management software was developed for lawyers, not state investigators.
The replacement system will cost approximately $6.5 million, according to a state estimate.
