In a request for proposals (RFP) issued Dec. 1 by the California Department of Technology’s Office of Statewide Project Delivery, the California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) is seeking a system integrator to “modernize vehicle registration (VR) and control cashiering (CC) business processes, systems and service delivery.” This will be Phase 2 of DMV's Digital eXperience Platform (DXP) project, which Director Steve Gordon told Techwire recently will “update and replace software, hardware and programming languages for current legacy DMV core systems” over roughly three to five years. DMV awarded the first phase of the DXP contract to Deloitte as the systems integrator. It is focusing first on modernizing occupational licensing (OL) – a smaller system – and hopes to go to pilot in that area in spring or summer. But vehicle registration is the department’s largest income source, a roughly $8 billion revenue stream. Among the takeaways:
- DXP’s Phase 1 “established Salesforce as the enterprise software as a service (SaaS) to modernize the DMV's occupational licensing (OL) systems, processes and services,” per the RFP. Phase 2’s successful bidder “will build upon and expand the OL modernization to deliver a single OL and VR solution as well as replace the legacy CC functions and services.” The goal, generally, is to provide “an overarching business process model designed to deliver a seamless customer journey,” per the RFP, via a solution that also integrates with existing “legacy services, systems and databases.” Overall, this procurement aims to replace legacy systems for VR business processes that involve roughly “8,000 internal users and up to 50 million transactions annually.”
“We would like to emphasize that this will be a much larger procurement than Phase One, and we are looking forward to competitive participation from the vendor community,” the department told Techwire via email. - Objectives in modernizing VR and CC systems include “leveraging Salesforce to optimize workflow-based processes,” implementing legislative requirements; and internal and external interfaces, reporting and data access; having secure, centralized data storage with remote backup; secure data transmission; secure, robust audit and tracking available down to the user level; and having a solution that’s compatible with “state, federal and DMV architecture standards.” There’s also, generally, the desire to have “ongoing agile-based support,” plus continuation of the “DevSecOps model” into maintenance and operations; using the OL solution functions and features as a baseline for the VR solution; and maturing the former to ensure alignment with the VR solution.
- DMV currently does more than 52 million VR business transactions a year, with more than 8,000 internal employees on deck to process them as they come in from more than 34 million unique customers. This includes VR transactions that come in from DMV’s Business Partner Automation (BPA) locations – “licensed entities authorized to act in place of DMV for select VR transactions.” This arrangement, the RFP says, benefits DMV and its customers by keeping about 7 million transactions a year out of DMV field offices – and generating $32 million in BPA revenue for the Motor Vehicle Account via a $4 transaction fee per completed registration transaction from BPA participants. The department now uses the “legacy and obsolete DMV Automation (DMVA) system” for front-office services; BPA participants use it too. It dates to 1983 and will be replaced by the new VR solution. Deliverables include project management plan and subplans – including system security, DevSecOps, quality, testing and production release, training, change management and maintenance; the solution architect document; software requirements; implementation approach; training and organizational change management delivery; readiness assessment; maintenance; and final feature delivery.
- Key staff requirements, generally, focus on previous work on projects of similar size, scope and value. The project manager, for example, is asked if he or she had the identical title on a similar initiative with a contract value of at least $20 million and which included agile systems development and managing third-party and internal cross-functional teams. The technical lead and solution architect are asked if they worked on a previous project with elements including software-as-a-service configuration or custom development of system components, legacy data conversion, organizational change management and access design.
- Overall project cost, including “Salesforce licenses and related technology that will be purchased separately by DMV outside of the VR contract,” is not to exceed $60 million. “It is understood that no funds sufficient for the purpose of this contract have been appropriated until such time as the budget for each fiscal year covered by the contract has been adopted by the Legislature and signed by the governor,” per the RFP. The contract term is three years, with a June 24 estimated start date, and two optional one-year extensions for maintenance and operations, on the part of the state. Phase 1 proposals are due Jan. 25 and will be evaluated Jan. 26-Feb. 9. Bidders selected for Phase 2 will be notified Feb. 11; Phase 2 proposals are due March 3 and will be evaluated March 4-18. Phase 2 demonstrations are March 21-25 and will be evaluated March 28-April 1. A notification of award is expected June 6.
