Secretary of State's IT Purchases Include Systems Integration, Facebook Ads

The California Secretary of State’s Office has made some noteworthy purchases of IT services in the first half of 2020, including for systems integration, Facebook advertising and leadership training for its executive team.

The single largest purchase of IT services between Jan. 1 and June 30 was for $3,733,896 for system integration for the CAL-ACCESS Replacement System (CARS), a public window into campaign disclosure and lobbying financial activity by state candidates, donors, lobbyists, lobbyist employers and others. The CARS system is replacing the California Automated Lobbyist and Campaign Contribution and Expenditure Search System (CAL-ACCESS). CAL-ACCESS has, since its inception in the late 1990s, used a forms-system driven for parts of its business. The CARS project is intended to replace the forms with a data-driven system. The Secretary of State’s Office contracted for the systems integration with Enterprise Services LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of DXC Technology (formerly Hewlett Packard Enterprise, or HPE).

The next-largest purchase by the office was $483,615 for a consulting agreement with Global Touchpoints on the California Business Connect Project, which automates paper-based processes, allows businesses to file and request copies of records online, provides public access to Secretary of State business records, and allows fee payments to be processed within one business day.

An advertising contract with Facebook Inc., for $425,000, was for advertising that ran from Feb. 3 through March 31. The purchase document contains no other details.

The fourth-largest contract during the period was for $369,925 through Radian Solutions Inc., for quality assurance testing for California Business Connect, the same project for which Global Touchpoints is consulting.  

The fifth-largest purchase of IT services during the first half of the year was for $351,255 with Gartner Inc. for subscriptions to the Gartner Executive Programs Leadership Team Plus and Gartner for Technical Professionals for the office’s top IT executives and members of the Enterprise IT staff.