After a monthslong procurement that included proofs of concept — increasingly seen as a way to streamline vendor selection — the state has hired an IT company to build an important tech component of Gov. Gavin Newsom’s drive to end homelessness.
The California Business, Consumer Services and Housing Agency (BCSH) has selected Michigan-based Plante Moran, one of the country’s largest accounting, tax and consulting firms, to quickly stand up the Homeless Data Integration System (HDIS), which the agency said in a news release late Monday will enable California’s “first-ever unified homeless data warehouse.” Among the takeaways:
- After a procurement that began April 3 and was ongoing through Nov. 30, BCSH has selected Plante Moran to provide “an end-to-end system, including standing up the data warehouse; obtaining and de-identifying data from 44 Continuums of Care (CoC); and creating a secure method to view the data.” A central goal is to link state government with CoCs — regional planning bodies that grapple with homelessness — giving the state better visibility into their aggregated, generalized information; enhancing its ability to report on that annually to the federal government; and improving work to combat homelessness. CoCs, which BCSH said are “established to administer federal homelessness programs under the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development” have all executed data agreements with the agency to share local Homeless Management Information System (HMIS) data.
“We are one step closer to establishing a comprehensive homeless data warehouse to capture local information, better understand the services being provided to individuals experiencing homelessness, and measure our progress,” BCSH Agency Secretary Lourdes Castro Ramírez said in a statement, thanking the COCs. - The contract was signed on Friday, BCSH said, after more than a dozen “state entities and CoCs contributed to the planning, procurement, and proof of concept phase” of procurement. State employees involved included members of BCSH, the California Department of Technology (CDT), the California Government Operations Agency and its Office of Digital Innovation; and “regional technical service leads” from the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
“Competent and reliable data has proved to be the indispensable driver of accuracy,” state Chief Information Officer and CDT Director Amy Tong said in a statement. “HDIS will be a pivotal step toward realizing California’s efforts to develop technologies that will help the state understand the occurrence and duration of homelessness across the state.” - Plante Moran, which also offers public- and private-sector entities analytics and data management services, is charged with delivering a “fully operational” HDIS by next spring — essentially between March 20 and June 20, the agency confirmed, indicating it may have more details on the system’s technical specifications closer to its launch. Plante Moran will be leveraging aspects of solutions from at least four other companies in the HDIS. The contractor is working with Seattle-based Amazon Web Services (AWS), a representative confirmed to Techwire. Plante Moran is working with Redwood City-based Informatica to provide master data management and integration, for better context and completeness of data. It’s working with San Mateo-based Snowflake, which will provide the data cloud/data warehouse for the HDIS system, a representative told Techwire on Tuesday. And it is working with Seattle-based Tableau, a representative confirmed to Techwire, to further enable state staff, data scientists and CoC members to understand the data collected, ask questions and gain insight without necessarily needing to write reports.
- BCSH’s base contract with Plante Moran is for $3.99 million and derives from a three-year service agreement, the agency said. The contract is funded administratively through existing funds, and BCSH and the California Homeless Coordinating and Financing Council will assess continuing CoC and council needs to determine whether contract extensions are needed.
