In a Request for Information released Jan. 14, the California Department of Rehabilitation (DOR) seeks “input and best practices feedback” on what’s needed to create a Consumer Payment Card (CPC) Services Project. The state will ultimately seek “new CPC services” to enable DOR Vocational Rehabilitation (VR) consumers to “directly purchase approved program goods and services … from business and governmental entities,” according to the RFI. Vendor input is aimed at helping the state refine its requirements and understand any potential impacts of implementation. Among the takeaways:
- DOR gives “VR employment services” to about 100,000 consumers “to prepare for, find, and obtain employment statewide through local district offices.” In providing these services, DOR authorizes VR program “approved goods/services needed by the consumer to achieve their employment goals.” The department now issues an average of 170,000 “revolving fund checks for (more than) $18.5 million to consumers”; averages 2,400 “revolving fund checks for (more than) $1 million”; and more than 17,000 bank drafts for about $4 million to vendors annually for “approved low-cost items such as clothing, exam fees, school books and supplies, internet costs, gasoline, and bus passes ... .” These directly pay for the approved goods/services. Consumers have to either cash the revolving fund checks through a personal bank or pay fees at check cashing locations. In the case of bank drafts, consumers have to take these to the vendor, where a vendor representative and the consumer must sign at purchase. Many vendors don’t know how to or are unable to process this “outdated form of payment.” Collectively, these methods of payment “require significant amount of processing by DOR staff.”
- DOR seeks new CPC services that would administer the “automated issuance, delivery, payment, reconciliation, and reporting of pre-authorized VR program purchases made directly by DOR consumers through the … cardholder.” That process could include the department submitting manually or through a data interface consumer and authorization needed to issue or reload onto a card through “a vendor’s web-based system”; direct card usage at point-of-sale terminals, ATMs or online as applicable; fraud control; regular payment statements; and mobile or online CPC account access. The primary goal for the card, which would be issued through a third-party vendor, is to enable DOR consumers to directly buy authorized goods/services from business point-of-sale systems and through business and government websites and to be reimbursed in a timely manner for goods or services the consumer bought using their own money. Project goals include enabling the consumer purchase of approved goods or services; expediting consumers’ receipt of funds, to do away with “VR employment service delivery delays”; streamlining DOR staff processes to save district and accounting staff time; and saving and redirecting funds away from printing and mailing of checks and bank drafts to consumers.
- This project hasn’t made it to RFP yet, but due to the scope of this project, DOR anticipates the CPC services project will likely have to be divided into two phases. The first would be initiating CPC services “through a vendor to implement the issuance and administration of CPCs to consumers.” The second would be linking or connecting the CPC service system to “defined DOR web-based systems to streamline CPC authorization, payment, and reporting processes.” Those systems include the Aware case management system contracted with Alliance Enterprises; and the VR Connections Portal contracted with Salesforce, according to the RFI.
- The estimated term or value of any resultant contract ultimately achieved by RFP aren’t stated. Questions from vendors are due by 4 p.m. Jan. 21, with state responses coming by 4 p.m. Jan. 28. Responses to the RFI are due by 4 p.m. Feb. 5.
