The GovReport

On the future of government

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Can blockchain technology help prevent unemployment fraud?

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Can blockchain technology help fight fraud at the Employment Development Department?  If pending legislation is approved this year, a study by the Office of Digital Innovation (ODI) will aim to answer that question.  Assembly Bill 2781 by Assemblymember Jordan Cunningham (R-San Luis Obispo) last week unanimously passed the Senate Governmental Organization Committee advancing closer to final approval.  The measure calls for the ODI to study how blockchain technology might help prevent fraud.

With a surge in claims related to the pandemic over the past two years, the EDD has paid out as much as $31 million in fraudulent claims. Because blockchain records are considered “unalterable by design” the technology is uniquely promising for industries that handle sensitive or personal data regularly, such as with unemployment claims, according to an analysis of the bill.

According to the analysis, the bill:

  • Requires the Office of Digital Innovation (ODI) to study the feasibility and appropriateness of the utilization of blockchain technology by EDD for the purposes of identity verification and fraud prevention, subject to the availability of funding, as specified.
  • Requires the study to include evaluation of potential inequities in the processing of claims and administration of benefits that could result from the use of blockchain technology by EDD for identity verification and fraud prevention.
  • Requires ODI, on or before January 1, 2024, to report to the Legislature on the findings of this study, including risks, benefits, and considerations for the potential use of blockchain technology by EDD for the purposes of identity verification and fraud prevention.
  •  Defines “blockchain” to mean a mathematically secured, chronological, and decentralized ledger or database.
  • Includes a sunset date of January 1, 2026.

Bailey-Crimmins Appointed State CIO and CDT Director

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Gov. Gavin Newsom has appointed Liana Bailey-Crimmins Director of the California Department of Technology and State Chief Information Officer, the Governor’s Office announced. 

Bailey-Crimmins had been serving as the State Chief Technology Officer since 2021, following a two-year stint as the Chief Information Security Officer at the California Public Employees’ Retirement System. 

Her 34-year career with the state began with an internship and has spanned eight different departments, including prior information technology roles with California Correctional Health Care Services. 

The new role requires Senate confirmation and includes a $206,797 annual salary for Bailey-Crimmins, who is registered without party preference. 

Russ Nichols, who has been CDT’s acting director and State CIO since the departure of former director Amy Tong to GovOps, will continue with the department as deputy state CIO and chief deputy director of CDT.

Back in 2021, Bailey-Crimmins provided testimony when she was confirmed by the Senate as the State Chief Technology Officer. 

In that confirmation, she shared crucial insights on technology-related issues including the belief that an iterative approach is the best way to carry out large-scale IT projects.

“We believe that by putting these things in modules, we are delivering good functionality to our constituents and to our business partners. It shows. . .that we’re building upon our successes,” Bailey-Crimmins said. 

Above all else, Bailey-Crimmins has maintained the perspective that the overarching goal of her job and all of tech is to serve the community.

“I believe walking a mile in our customers’ shoes is extremely important. . .not just focusing on the technology, but actually walking out into every single institution.”

Image: LinkedIn

Adam Dondro Appointed OSI Director

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Gov. Gavin Newsom has appointed California Health and Human Services (CalHHS) Agency Information Officer Adam Dondro as Director of the Office of Systems Integration (OSI), according to a press release.

Dondro has been with CalHHS since 2017, where he served as Agency Chief Information Officer for nearly five years. Prior to joining CalHHS, he served as Assistant Director of Horizontal Integration at the California Department of Social Services from 2013 to 2017, Assistant Secretary for External Affairs at the California Department of Technology from 2010 to 2013, and Budget Committee Consultant and Legislative Aide at the California State Assembly from 2005 to 2010.

Dondro will replace outgoing OSI director Dan Kalamaras, who was appointed by Gov. Newsom in 2018.

“OSI will be the trusted leader in the management and delivery of large, complex technology projects, enabling improved service delivery to the people of California,” says the office’s website.  

Ten AI Government Tech Startups to Watch in 2022

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First, it was apps, then it was about the cloud, next came data analytics, and now government tech startups are venturing into their next – and arguably biggest – undertaking: the world of artificial intelligence.

The impending world of AI presents an opportunity for entrepreneurs to offer governments a new level of service scalability, efficiency, and security. In fact, based on adoption, AI is likely to be a necessity to manage government’s ever-evolving service needs. As an industry, the firm Precedence Research currently values the AI market (private and public) at nearly $120 billion, and this figure is forecasted to more than double by 2025, at almost $314 billion, and hit $1.6 trillion by 2030. As a whole, global investment data from Pitchbook reports that AI startups collected more than $115 billion in 2021, increasing investment 87.2 percent year over year.

With AI’s influence on how we manage, produce, and consume services, entrepreneurs in the gov IT space are already fashioning their own AI solutions for a range of niches and jurisdiction types. Some are tinkering with traffic management, others are attempting to boost civic engagement, another focus is on planning, while still others are providing tools that handle a combination of tasks. Across all industries, a Gartner report shows top use cases that include knowledge management, digital workplace support, crowdsourced data intelligence, virtual assistants, and support for autonomous vehicles.

As governments consider testing and incorporating AI into their services, the GovReport decided to look at which AI startups and young companies are making an impact. Some of these startups have a direct connection to government, while a few others are presenting potential opportunities.

Here are the ten notables carving their way into government IT.

  1. CITYDATA.ai

Company Summary: The company provides local data insights to government workers in the office and in the field. This work is done through a range of products that include dashboards for daily assessments of geographical areas, chatbots that engage and alert field crews, and geospatial data that shows a municipality’s mobility patterns.

Leadership: CEO Apurva “Apu” Kumar

Headquarters: San Francisco

Founded: 2020

Website: beta.citydata.ai

The Details: CITYDATA is a startup that describes itself as an AI mobility data intelligence and chatbot company. Its CEO Apu Kumar took the helm of the company after serving as the chief of research and development for the civic tech company LotaData.

Since its launch in 2020, CITYDATA has developed a number of AI products. The services are centered around four primary data-as-a-service products. Its city data dashboard, “CITYDASH” uses machine learning algorithms to generate geospatial insights and other data points for more than 1,500 cities worldwide. The company also has a citizen engagement chatbot, “CITYCHAT; a mobile workforce management tool called “CITYWORKS,” and a cities vehicle fleet tracking service dubbed “CITYFLOW.”

The startup has quickly amassed a slate of public and private sector customers that are inside and outside the US — these include the City and County of San Francisco, where it’s headquartered, as well as the smart city nation of Singapore. In 2021, CITYDATA also participated in the United States National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) Accelerator to develop its solutions while supporting NGA’s work to generate intel for the US military, US allies, and the nation’s homeland security organizations. For its government customers, CITYDATA expects their services will be leveraged for smart city programs, economic development, urban planning, mobility and transportation, tourism, disaster impact analysis, sustainability, and resilience.

  1. CrowdAI

Company Summary: A visual data intelligence service that generates notifications, warnings, and insights about satellite, camera images, and other visual data.

Leadership: Devaki Raj (CEO) Nicolas Borensztein, Pablo Garcia

Headquarters: San Francisco

Founded: 2016

Website: https://www.crowdai.com/

The Details:

CrowdAI made headlines in 2020 when it started helping California’s Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CalFire) to identify active wildfires. The startup’s algorithms used machine learning to analyze drone and satellite imagery from past fires to detect new fires. What that effort means for CalFire now is that they can fly drones as high as 20,000 feet to get geo-tagged images and notifications of a fire with a resolution of only 90 feet away.

Beyond fire detection, CrowdAI offers tools for multiple disaster response scenarios. Whether it’s a fire, flood, or hurricane, the startup’s AI technology can be used by first responders to assess damage, find disaster victims, map accessible roads for rescue operations, and to understand where to mobilize resources. Based on this capacity, the US Department of Defense has contracted CrowdAI to process worldwide military intelligence.

The startup’s aim is to enhance its platform, which is designed to make geodata insights easily actionable, codeless for users, and easily understandable. ­In the private sector, CrowdAI also supports a range of industries that, among others, include facilities & maintenance, oil & gas, insurance, retail, and industrial applications.

  1. Abnormal Security

Company Summary: A platform that quickly integrates with email services to detect dangerous emails and prevent phishing and ransomware attacks.

Leadership: Evan Reiser (CEO), Sanjay Jeyakumar

Headquarters: San Francisco

Founded: 2018

Website: https://abnormalsecurity.com/

The Details: Hello

Anyone familiar with government and cybersecurity knows that phishing and ransomware have been a vexing problem in recent years. Seemingly innocent emails have tricked city staff into downloading malicious ransomware and duped departments into sending funds to scammers posing as government contractors. And looking at research, this threat is only getting worse, with the 2022 ThreatLabz Phishing Report reporting that phishing attempts have risen 110 percent in the government sector between 2020 and 2021. 

Abnormal Security’s co-founders, CEO Evan Reiser and Chief Technology Officer Sanjay Jeyakumar, created the startup because of this challenging problem. Instead of merely detecting ransomware files or suspicious email addresses, Abnormal Security uses AI to differentiate safe and suspicious behavior within an organization’s email communications. By analyzing behavior, the startup can spot threats that aren’t already identified within a limited library of malicious software. The company’s AI solution does this by quickly profiling management, staff, and vendors to set baselines for normal email activity and abnormal activity. Abnormal’s software can be up and running in a matter of hours and integrates with common email services like Microsoft 365 and Google Workspaces.

Further, the company advertises its AI software can also create risk assessments for outside vendors. “By recognizing when a vendor may have a high risk of fraud, Abnormal knows when an email should be more heavily scrutinized for malicious activity,” the company notes. IT Departments also get a control panel that tallies threats, lists blocked senders and displays other helpful cybersecurity statistics.

  1. DataRobot

Company Summary: A user-friendly machine learning platform that allows non-coders to design predictive models for any number of processes and applications.

Headquarters: Boston

Founders: Tom de Godoy, Jeremy Achin, CEO Dan Wright

Founded: 2012

Website: https://www.datarobot.com/

The Details: DataRobot is a company that wants to put AI and machine learning into everyone’s hands through a user-friendly platform. The service lets users take their data and create machine learning predictive models to generate insights, flag problems, spot service gaps, or see growth opportunities. For state and local government, DataRobot suggests that this might mean enabling a department to reduce fraud by analyzing state benefits transactions, helping a department’s human resources review candidates, or enabling state leadership to forecast where COVID-19 supplies and vaccines may be needed most.

As one example of government procurement, DataRobot helped the US Military reclaim more than $2.2 billion in excess funds for use in other projects and needs. DataRobot did this by enabling contracting officers to predict the contracts likely to underspend funding so staff could deobligate and reallocate the money to other high-priority projects. In addition to the financial gains, the work aided the military in eliminating thousands of staff hours and improving efficiency by three to five times.

Other government uses for DataRobot, the company notes, can be found in cybersecurity, education, law enforcement, defense analysis, and in the field of healthcare, where agencies are seeking a greater understanding of patient care. In public health, DataRobot gained experience in this field, working with the federal government during the pandemic to identify gaps in COVID-19 information and track usage and inventory of ICU supplies like ventilators and patient bed availability.

  1. CitiBot

Company Summary: CitiBot offers a smart chatbot for a city website that can answer questions, submit service requests and provide update notifications to citizens.

Leadership: Founder and CEO, Bratton Riley

Headquarters: Charleston, South Carolina

Founded: 2016

Website: https://www.citibot.io/

The Details: Cities are always growing, and with this growth comes a greater demand for customer service. The startup CitiBot is a solution to automate responses to constituents and acts as a tool to manage service requests. Through CitiBot’s AI-enabled text messaging, web chat, and interactive text alerts, the company’s chatbot can give users details on common requests — such as trash collection times — and process specific requests for services like road potholes, graffiti clean-up, and animal services. In addition to its chat and customer relationship management tools, CitiBot also offers a live data and analytics dashboard to track usage.

CitiBot says its chat bot has also proven itself as an effective tool to increase citizen engagement with government. In Arlington, Texas, after CitiBot was launched in 2020 it increased engagement by more than 500 percent in less than a year. This work accounted for more than 24,500 resident sessions and an average of nearly 1,100 resident communications per month. 

“If you open the virtual door to city hall and make it accessible to chat, people will continue to use it,” said Jay Warren, Arlington’s director of communication and legislative affairs. “Because of Citibot, Arlington is able to efficiently engage and work with our residents and ultimately have a better city because they’re telling us what issues they see in their neighborhood, and we can go out and fix them.”

  1. Hayden AI

Company Summary: An AI-driven traffic violation system for cities and citizens to record and report incidents to law enforcement in real-time.

Leadership: CEO Chris Carson, Bo Shen, Vaibhav Ghadiok, Michael May, Charles Territo

Headquarters: Oakland, Calif.

Founded: 2019

Website: https://www.hayden.ai/

The Details: Traffic accidents are a significant issue no matter where you are or what city you might live in. In 2021 alone, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration reported that road deaths surged to a record 42,915 fatalities, a figure representing a 10 percent spike from the previous year and the largest percentage increase since 1975.

To combat traffic deaths and protect residents, the startup Hayden AI has developed a solution to identify traffic violators and assist enforcement officers. Offering both AI software and specialized cameras, Hayden AI can transform almost any set of city vehicles into an automated traffic violation reporting system. Starting with school busses and transit buses, Hayden AI mounts an automated camera system to the buses, and when the camera’s AI algorithms detect a violation, the system records the violator’s license plate number, image, location, and creates an “evidence package” for law enforcement to review. Hayden AI’s school bus solution targets violators passing school busses when passing is prohibited, while the company’s transit solution records bus lane violations. Hayden AI claims its reporting has an average accuracy of 97 percent.

In the future, the company plans to roll out its automated system to police vehicles, streetcars, and street sweepers. Yet, for citizens eager to launch the software in their community, the startup is testing a free app, dubbed SafeSense, that can be installed on a smartphone to automatically detect common vehicle violations and report them to the police. The resident will just need to mount their phones to their front windshield – similar to an Uber or Lyft driver – and the app will automatically start recording data.

  1. Qucit

Company Summary: Qucit uses machine learning to interpret human behavior and make bike-sharing systems and urban planning more efficient for cities.

Leadership: Founder and CEO Raphaël Cherrier

Headquarters:  Bègles, France

Founded: 2014

Website: www.qucit.com

The Details: The catalyst for Qucit dates back to 2013, when its founder and CEO Raphaël Cherrier found himself frustrated by the local bike-sharing service in Bordeaux, France. Cherrier was dismayed when discovering empty bike stations when he wanted to rent a bike or full stations, preventing him from returning a bike to a stall. Working as a researcher and teacher at the University of Bordeaux, he began a study of bike-sharing operations, and from this exhaustive study came Qucit, an AI-enabled system designed to take the guesswork out of bike-sharing maintenance and management.

Qucit helps urban planners and bike sharing managers predict rental demand, bike maintenance needs and notifies field crews when bike stations require “rebalancing” — adjusting the number of bikes to fit usage. Further, the startup routes service teams between bike stations and pinpoints the locations of abandoned bikes.

In Toronto, Canada, these tools aided Bike Share Toronto in 2020 to increase bike stations from 200 to 625 and increase the number of bikes from 2,000 to 6,850. The work has led to a 68 percent fewer empty stations and a 66 percent increase in bike availability, according to Qucit’s data. Outside bike share operations, Qucit has grown to provide its services to shared motorized vehicles and offers support for urban surveys.

  1. Gretel

Leadership: CEO Ali Golshan, Alex Watson, John Myers, Laszlo Bock

Headquarters: San Diego, Calif.

Founded: 2020

Website: https://gretel.ai/

The Details: It could be said that governments largest resource is data. After all, whether an agency is hyper-local or blankets itself federally across state borders, data is always at its core. It’s a commodity that increases with every transaction, be it birth certificates, business licenses, taxes, or parking tickets; data keeps growing. Yet one of the biggest barriers to processing, sharing, and developing insights from government data is privacy. Certain data like medical records can’t be shared due to privacy regulations. And this limitation can restrict departments from sharing information even within the same state or city. It also prohibits certain opportunities to develop effective policies and practices through data analysis.

Seeing this obstacle, co-founders Ali Golshan, Alex Watson, John Myers, and Laszlo Bock decided to create Gretel, an AI startup that offers organizations, be they private or public, an easy way to anonymize sensitive data. The San Diego, Calif., startup does this anonymization by using AI to create “synthetic data.” Organizations can run their data sets through Gretel’s AI software — whether on-prem for added security or in Gretel’s cloud — to produce a second synthetic data set without identifying information but with all the important details from the original.

“What if you could have instant access to an unlimited supply of high-fidelity data that are statistically accurate, privacy-protected, and safe to share? That’s the promise of synthetic data,” said Alex Watson, Gretel’s co-founder and chief product officer on the company’s site. “Synthetic data opens up the possibilities of enabling access to artificial and privacy-preserving versions of personal data in minutes, with 95 percent of the accuracy of the real-world data it was trained on, and without having to wait weeks for manual anonymization and approvals.”

The startup has achieved initial successes with clients in finance and genomics, but with its eye toward growth and government’s need for accessible data, Gretel seems an ideal fit for government, and especially agencies such as law enforcement, social services, or health care that routinely work with sensitive information.
 

  1. NATIX

Company Summary: NATIX uses AI to map crowd densities using video data so urban planners and local law enforcement can ensure safety in a city’s high trafficked areas.

Leadership: CEO Alireza Ghods, Omid Mogharian, Lorenz Muck

Headquarters: Hamburg, Germany

Founded: 2020

Website: www.natix.io

The Details: Cities are synonymous with crowds. Rush-hour commutes send workers charging toward parking lots, weekends pack malls with shoppers, and there are also events, protests, and natural disasters that can quickly raise a pop-up crowd just about anywhere. For city planners and law enforcement, managing these crowds has often been reactionary and informed by rough estimates and educated guesses.

NATIX, a startup based in Hamburg, Germany, hopes to improve public safety work with AI imaging software that empowers officials with real-time, anonymized estimates of crowd numbers and clustering. NATIX’s AI algorithms allow cities to take any video camera and turn it into a sensor to map and manage overcrowding. The platform eliminates the chore of manual counts while simultaneously giving officials heat maps, a dashboard for crowd analytics, and a reporting feature to create shareable crowd assessments.

The NATIX’s crowd management solutions have been deployed in the Hague, Netherlands, and have helped the city’s law enforcement manage its most populated areas. With NATIX’s solution, The Hague won the 2021 Smart City Award in Barcelona, Spain, for its effective use of advanced technologies. Since its launch in 2020, NATIX has gone on to develop additional monitoring services. Its front door camera can detect facemask usage for those attempting to enter a home or facility. The startup also has a construction zone monitoring tool and a parking spot monitoring tool.

  1. Cardinality AI

Company Summary: Cardinality.ai delivers AI, SaaS, and cloud-based services for the government, specializing in smart foster care management and foster care placement.

Leadership: CEO Thiag Loganathan, Chief Innovation Officer Ganesh RVR, Kevin Jones, Jr., Peter Allen, Anna Harper, Vijay Krishna (co-founder), CTO

Headquarters: Gaithersburg, Maryland

Founded: 2017

Website: www.cardinality.ai

The Details: AI in foster care might seem like an unlikely application for advanced technology, yet for the team at Cardinality, this combination presents a breakthrough opportunity to help one of the nation’s most vulnerable populations: children.

This startup is all about social impact and equipping social services with the most effective technology to streamline the foster care administrative process and improve outcomes. Cardinality does this in a few ways. At its most basic, Cardinality helps child welfare officials modernize their applications and documentation with digital forms and workflow management. Then using AI, Cardinality takes its support to the next level by enabling social services with intelligent recommendations. These algorithmically generated recommendations help social workers identify at-risk youth early and match them to suitable foster care families based on the previous reporting.

“AI can be used in finding the right child-foster care provider fit. Using AI, agencies can select the ideal foster care arrangement based on the attributes of the child and the provider,” wrote Cardinality CEO Thiag Loganathan and CIO Kevin Jones in a blog post. “Further, AI can augment human effort in the recruitment process for adoption by cutting down on time taken to place a child in a loving, permanent home.”

Education Data System Announces Data Sharing Agreements

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California’s developing education data system has signed legal agreements with 15 agencies and education organizations to pave the way for new data sets on student progress throughout the state’s education system, the Cradle-to-Career System announced.  

“Thanks to the unprecedented collaboration and leadership of more than a dozen California agencies, departments, and organizations, we are now poised to build out a landmark data system,” said Governor Gavin Newsom. “Bringing this information together will enable a greater understanding of barriers students face and empower Californians to build more equitable futures.”

The legal agreements will allow the new system to create tools that give users access to data while having the authority to enforce security standards. 

The state will spend the next five years developing such tools, according to the announcement.   

Working in concert with Cradle-to-Career include: 

  • Association of Independent California Colleges and Universities 
  • Bureau for Private Postsecondary Education 
  • California Community Colleges Chancellor’s Office on behalf of the California Community Colleges Board of Governors 
  • California Department of Education 
  • California Health and Human Services Agency
  • California State University Board of Trustees
  • California School Information Services
  • California Student Aid Commission
  • California Labor and Workforce Development Agency

The Office of Cradle-to-Career Data is currently working to procure the technology platform that will securely house the data set.  Earlier this month, the state released a solicitation for proposals to use an “iterative, cloud-first approach,” to develop the system with a goal of selecting a vendor by late summer 2022.

Newsom Signs Blockchain Executive Order

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Crypto assets and blockchain technology make up $3 trillion on the global market. Around 16 percent of adults have invested in or traded cryptocurrency. 

Gov. Gavin Newsom is bringing some regulation to a burgeoning, wide-open market. On May 4, Gov. Newsom signed an executive deal that will begin to create a regulatory approach that will foster an industry and workforce that utilizes blockchain technology in California. 

“California is a global hub of innovation, and we’re setting up the state for success with this emerging technology – spurring responsible innovation, protecting consumers, and leveraging this technology for the public good,” said Governor Newsom. “Too often government lags behind technological advancements, so we’re getting ahead of the curve on this, laying the foundation to allow for consumers and business to thrive.”

The state has identified seven major priorities in the executive order. Within those directives, there is an emphasis on “California values” like equity, inclusivity, and environmental protection. 

The state also has the desire to “exercise statutory authority,” that will protect consumers (balancing risks and benefits). 

Perhaps the most intriguing priority is to “explore opportunities to deploy blockchain technologies to address public-serving and emerging needs, working with the private sector, academia, and community to present pilots for innovative policies, programs, and solutions that demonstrate and showcase the potential of adopting blockchain technologies to respond to specific challenges identified by state agencies.”

The opportunity to capitalize on the untapped potential of an emerging sector is spelled out explicitly, but most of the order is concerned with regulation. 

According to the executive order itself, the Department of Financial Protection and Innovation will assume a host of responsibilities, including publishing consumer protection principles, collect and review consumer complaints, and work in tandem with law enforcement agencies to address criminal activity. 

Gov. Newsom’s executive order follows two months after President Biden’s March 9 executive order on “Ensuring Responsible Development of Digital Assets.”  

 

What is Challenge-Based Procurement?

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What is a challenge-based procurement? Former San Francisco Chief Innovation Officer and City Innovate Co-CEO Jay Nath talks with Christina about new approaches to government technology procurement. Watch the 10-minute interview here. 

CDT Kicks off Round Two of the Technology Modernization Fund

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The California Department of Technology announced round two for proposals to be funded by the Technology Modernization Fund (TMF).

The $25 million TMF was created in the 2021-02 budget that will “allow CDT to provide quick funding to state departments to invest in technology modernization efforts or to stabilize IT systems at risk of failure.”    It will fund small efforts that can quickly provide high-value services and fund urgent needs identified by the state’s Stabilization Service.

In the first round of the TMF, five of 21 project applications were chosen to pitch their ideas to a committee of state executives. Four of the five pitches were chosen to move forward:

  • The Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation is integrating state HR systems with commercial job boards and recruitment platforms. If the project is successful, it will be extended to other state departments. (Budget: $3.5 million/two years.) 
  • The California Environmental Protection Agency is developing a geospatial dataset to protect Californians from hazardous waste. (Budget: $1.5 million.)
  • The Department of Food and Agriculture is moving their system that tracks companies who can test and repair weight and measurement equipment online. (Budget: under $1 million.)
  • The Department of Consumer Affairs Speech-Language Pathology & Audiology & Hearing Aid Dispensers Board is moving application, processing, and payment for 13 license types from paper to online. (Budget: $400,000.)

Work on these four projects began back in Jan. 2022. 

State entities will have until April 8 to submit proposals for the innovative grants. 

According to the CDT website, “Projects must have clear, concrete goals, a viable and quick path to delivery, and strong support from the requesting entity’s executive leadership.  Proposals submitted will be evaluated based on their probability of success, replicability, and support of statewide goals.”

Two Bills Would Mandate Modular Approach to Large-Scale IT Projects

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Information technology projects in California government are a billion-dollar business — and two bills working their way through the Legislature seek to change the way some such projects are handled.

While large-scale contracts and projects managed by the California Department of Technology (CDT) historically have been carried out in both “waterfall” and modular fashions, AB 1806 and AB  2558 aim to mandate the modular approach.

AB 1806, introduced by Assemblymembers Rudy Salas (D-Bakersfield) and Devon Mathis (R-Visalia), would require CDT, when feasible, to use modular contracting for large-scale IT acquisitions, and defines modular contracting as “a contractual approach that provides for incremental delivery, implementation, and testing of an information technology acquisition by dividing it into discrete increments.”

AB 2558, introduced by Mathis, would require CDT to establish and implement an oversight modular modernization framework by January 1, 2025.

California already has experience with modular contracting and modernization; in 2015, for instance, federal technology and design consultancy agency 18F began working with the state to modernize its child welfare system using the modular approach — which had some pain points, but ultimately was a success.

“The way we started it is we developed short-term contracts, so every contract we put out was like six months in duration and with like 700 optional extensions,” said Ben Hafer, who served as the chief of operations for California’s Child Welfare Digital Service project at the time of its implementation, in an online forum following the project’s implementation.

The long-term contract was still in place “to ensure that you’re getting value for the teams you have on-site, but there’s always that hook,” he continued. “Every six months, if you’re not delivering, if we’re not happy with your performance, if you’re not giving this value for the money that we’re giving you … then the next person up is on deck.”

Now, AB 1806 and AB 2558 seek to make modular contracts and modernization the norm for such large-scale acquisitions and projects — which AB 1806 states “is estimated to result in an eventual total expenditure exceeding” $2.5 million.

In addition, AB 1806 would require, “to the maximum extent practicable, a contract for an increment of an information technology acquisition using modular contracting to be awarded within 180 days after the solicitation is issued, and would require an increment of an information technology acquisition to be delivered within 18 months after the solicitation resulting in award of the contract was issued.”

In addition, an amendment to AB 1806 made on March 17 would require CDT to develop a process for overseeing large-scale IT acquisitions using the modular contracting approach.

AB 2558 stipulates that, if passed, CDT would be responsible for establishing and maintaining a framework for IT projects using a modular modernization approach — through multiple stand-alone components that result in incremental improvements over time — rather than replacing the entire system all at once.

Neither Salas nor Mathis returned request for comment in time for publication, at which time both AB 1806 and AB 2558 had been referred to the Committee on Privacy and Consumer Protection.

Cradle-to-Career Data System Inches Forward

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At the first Cradle-to-Career (C2C) Governing Board meeting for 2022, held last month, the board walked away with one primary action item and two follow-up items to keep the C2C system moving forward.

“Now with much of the planning behind us,” said C2C Board Chair Amy Fong during the meeting, “acting and really leaning into that can help us pivot and make that data system a reality in service to all Californians.”

As previously reported, C2C will connect data across various education segments to not only benefit students, but also inform educators and legislators in their policy- and decision-making. The Governing Board holds four quarterly meetings annually to provide oversight and leadership to the C2C office.

The primary action item, said C2C Board Liaison Sydney Armendariz, is finalizing the advisory board member selection process; the secondary items are to identify:

  • ways to integrate independent colleges and the California Colleges Guidance Initiative (CCGI) into one single college application; and
  • how to ensure that classes listed in local school districts’ Student Information Systems accurately transfer into the four-year universities’ Course Management Portal.

Advisory Board Member Selection

C2C has two advisory boards, each with a unique purpose.

The Data and Tools Advisory Board ensures that the data and tools provide actionable information for the C2C system, said C2C Executive Director Mary Ann Bates, adding that their work will include looking at data points, public facing tools and priority topics for research.

The Community Engagement Advisory Board, she said, ensures strong feedback loops with data users to support evidence-based decision-making, increased analytical capacity and equitable access to actionable information.

“Their work will include, for example, recommending professional development and technical assistance models, as well as communication strategies to ensure that a broad range of Californians know about and are using the tools of the data system.”

Each advisory board will have 16 members, and Bates noted the importance of cultivating a diversity of perspectives on each board. “We want to be inclusive of a diversity of voices and lived experiences,” she said, “and to recruit members who have expertise in equity.”

How exactly to select members for each of these boards is the primary action item going forward — but applications for these positions are currently being accepted; they’re due March 21.

“These will be a really important mechanism for continuing the work with communities that was started during the planning process,” Bates said. “A key priority early on will be to seat the two advisory boards and ensuring that we have wide representation on those two boards that can really inform all of the work that we’re doing here from an early stage as we get started.”

The hope, Bates said, is to have a slate of advisory board members ready for a vote before the next meeting.

Single, Common College Application

Currently, there is one website — CaliforniaColleges.edu — where potential students use one application for all California community colleges (CCCs), a separate application to apply to all of the 23 California State University (CSU) campuses, and another separate application to apply to all of the 10 University of California (UC) campuses.

Beyond that, there also is one single application for more than 800 private, out-of-state and international colleges/universities — but this application cannot be used for CCCs, CSUs or UCs.

So what investments, asked Thomas Vu — member of the Governing Board and vice president for policy for the Association of Independent California Colleges and Universities — would it take to make one common college application (common app) for every college and university a reality?

“I think the answer is, one, getting common app integrated,” said CCGI Founder and President Tessa Carmen De Roy, “and, two, like everything else, doing the communications and engagement work to get your members to understand what the potential additional value add to them is.”

More specifically, she added, how could they be enticed to get involved with the common application — to start using what, for them, would entail a significant system change.

“I think it would be worth convening and talking with them to figure out what are their pain points,” Carmen de Roy added, “because that’s really what we aim to do is to help to reduce pain points both for students, first and foremost, but also for the institutions supporting them… It would be really about figuring out what does your membership need to make it worth their while to participate.”

While a financial investment by the state for such a rollout is possible, the current projections given to the state don’t include a full-scale common application rollout.

“We still need to figure out exactly how it needs to happen before we can scope it and figure out exactly what it would cost,” Carmen de Roy said. But for that to even happen, she said, those education institutions not yet integrated with CCGI must be willing to integrate — the ways to do which are currently a focal point for the Governing Board.

Reconciling SIS Course Listings with CMP Course Listings

Also of concern is properly entering A through G coursework into college applications, said Carmen de Roy, adding that this is a confusing area for many people.

Stated simply, for California high school students to meet baseline eligibility for admission to a four-year UC or CSU campus, they must complete a 15-course sequence of classes with a C- or better — these are the A through G requirements.

 Each letter represents a subject area:

A. History/Social Science.
B. English.
C. Mathematics.
D. Science.
E. Language Other Than English.
F. Visual and Performing Arts.
G. College Preparatory Elective.

In school districts, the Student Information System (SIS) houses this information and generates student transcripts — but the problem, Carmen de Roy said, is that the SIS labels courses in a way that doesn’t accurately transfer into the Course Management Portal (CMP), which “is the source of truth database for admissions to four-year colleges in the state.”

This is what’s known as an “a-g mismatch,” examples of which include the SIS course title as Algebra 2A/2B but the CMP course title is Algebra I (see image at left).

“So what we have is students trying to figure out looking at their transcript and seeing Algebra 2A/2B, trying to figure out how to enter that into their college applications,” she said. “And as you might imagine, they make a lot of mistakes.”

Another issue that arises due to this mismatch or discrepancy is, in many K-12 districts statewide, there’s a misunderstanding as far as which students will actually be admissible to a four-year college.

So ultimately, Carmen de Roy said, the students are taking college preparatory coursework and getting the necessary grade, but the course isn’t being recognized at the point of applying to college.

“Basically, kids aren’t getting credit for the courses that they have completed,” she added. “This obviously is an enormous problem.”

A team is working on this issue all day every day, and CCGI has built some tools on CaliforniaColleges.edu — called the CSU and UC Eligibility Tools — to bring transparency to this issue and help students. But how to ensure that classes listed in a local district’s SIS accurately transfers into the four-year universities’ CMP without a lot of legwork on the part of educators is top of mind.

What happens if California does not repay federal unemployment funds?

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The past two years of the pandemic have had a severe economic impact on California’s unemployment fund, which was depleted due to a massive surge in claims from people losing their jobs.   Christina Gagnier talks with Tom Sheehy, Principal at the Sheehy Strategy Group and former California Department of Finance executive, about efforts to pay back federal funding that kept the claims system running. They also discuss a potential tax increase on employers if federal funding is not repaid. 

Smart Health Cards, Open-Source Technology and What’s Next for California’s Chief Technology Innovation Officer

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Last fall, California successfully launched a digital vaccine card and shared the code with other states — it’s a success story on rapid deployment and open-source technology.   Rick Klau, the state’s chief technology innovation officer gives GovReport Host Christina Gagnier the backstory and talks about what’s next for the California Department of Technology.   Watch the 14-minute interview here.     

What will motivate the next generation of public servants?

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Public and private sector leaders from across California met on Feb. 22 in Sacramento to share ideas and network at Government Innovation California, a one-day event put on by Public Sector Network. 

The event featured presentations from over 50 speakers, including several panel discussions, one of which discussed the ways the public sector can reach out and recruit from upcoming generations.

The panel, titled “Developing the Next Generation of Public Sector Workforce,” was moderated by Rebecca Friedman, founder and president of Koru Strategies.

Three panelists, Brendan Murphy, Chief of Administration for CalHR, Jennifer Carver, Deputy Director for FiSCal, and Jaclyn Padilla, Deputy Director of Human Resources at California Department of Corrections & Rehabilitation, tackled a few pressing issues regarding the future generation of public sector workers.

Friedman posed a basic question: “Will future public service workers be interested in performing meaningful work with tangible evidence of social responsibility and impact?”

Jennifer Carver made salient points about the importance of branding the public sector as a way to give back to Californians directly, appealing to Gen Z’s (generalized) sense of social responsibility. 

Furthermore, being digital natives, the up-and-comers have a quicker learning curve in technological pursuits.

“[Gen Z] has IT in their blood,” Carver said.

Despite being a late fill-in to the panel, Brendan Murphy shared his off-the-cuff insight on the younger generation.

“Their sense of purpose is driving them regardless of what venue they’re looking at,” Murphy said. 

Because of the wide breadth of agencies and departments to choose from, it’s easy to find an appealing niche in the public sector. 

“Your sense of purpose can be found here,” Murphy added.

Recruitment is still a challenge, especially in the midst of a global pandemic. That said, advancements in the way of virtual job fairs and target recruitment via data has bridged the divide in recent years.

Photos: Government Innovation California – Feb. 22, 2022

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The Government Innovation California conference was held on February 22, 2022, in Sacramento.  More than 175 attendees registered for the day-long conference that featured speakers from state and local governments and technology companies.  Based in Toronto, Canada, Public Sector Network hosted the event, the organization’s first in California. 

Government Innovation California - Feb. 22, 2022
Government Innovation California - Feb. 22, 2022
Government Innovation California - Feb. 22, 2022
Government Innovation California - Feb. 22, 2022
Government Innovation California - Feb. 22, 2022
Government Innovation California - Feb. 22, 2022
Government Innovation California - Feb. 22, 2022
Government Innovation California - Feb. 22, 2022
Government Innovation California - Feb. 22, 2022
Government Innovation California - Feb. 22, 2022

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Two Bills Aim to Tackle No-Bid Contracts in California Government

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Since the pandemic’s onset, California state government has awarded technology-related and other no-bid contracts worth more than $3 billion to at least 30 technology and health care companies, according to a Kaiser Health News analysis. Overall, the state entered into more than 8,000 no-bid contracts in 2020 alone — 80 of which total more than $25 million and amount to more than $11.9 billion combined in spending, according to a press release.

A $5 million no-bid contract was awarded in May 2020 to improve the California Employment Development Department’s online portal for processing unemployment claims that was amended three times, reaching a total of $28.4 million. That same month, a $13.67 million no-bid contract was awarded for the California Department of Public Health’s (CDPH) COVID-19 Contact Tracing Initiative; it was amended twice to reach a total of just under $83 million. And another no-bid contract for the CDPH’s California Vaccine Management Solution (CalVax) grew from $6.9 million in December 2020 to $173.2 million after five amendments.

But two bills introduced on Feb. 8, 2022, would make the continuation of no-bid contracts in the state worth $25 million or more much more difficult to renew automatically — COVID-19-related or otherwise.

Bills Promoting No-Bid Contract Oversight

The first bill, SCA-7, would require that, on or after January 1, 2023, state agency no-bid contracts of $25 million or more that are up for renewal or extension be approved by the Joint Legislative Budget Committee. As of the date of publication, the bill detailed that:

  • At least a certain number of days (to be determined) before the contract’s end date, the state agency will submit the proposed extension or renewal’s terms and conditions to the Joint Legislative Budget Committee.
  • After receiving this information, the committee will hold a hearing to review the contract’s extension or renewal at least 60 days before the contract’s end date.
  • A state agency won’t approve a contract’s renewal or extension until a certain number of days (to be determined) after the review hearing.

This bill has been read and introduced, but it won’t be acted upon until on or after March 11.

The second bill, SB 947, supports SCA-7 by expanding California Whistleblower Protection Act provisions to certain private entities awarded no-bid contracts and their employees.

Under the bill, “Private entity awarded a no-bid contract” means “a person, business entity, combination of persons and business entities, or a combination of business entities” that have entered into a contract with the state or a state agency and that contract:

  • Didn’t require competitive bidding or proposals;
  • Is for an amount equal to or greater than $25 million.

Should this bill become law, “a person who intentionally engages in acts of reprisal, retaliation, threats, coercion or similar acts” against a state employee who makes a protected disclosure is subject to civil liability and criminal penalties. A protected disclosure is a good faith communication that reveals or demonstrates an improper governmental activity or a condition that may significantly threaten the health or safety of employees or the public.

Under the guise of the pandemic, the governor has secretly negotiated millions of dollars in no-bid state contracts and auto-renewed them with little to no legislative oversight or transparency,” said Senate Republican Leader Scott Wilk (R-Santa Clarita), author of both bills. “Right now, there are no laws on the books requiring public oversight hearings on renewals of no-bid state contracts of $25 million or more for any state agency. My bills would add that much needed component to the law.”

Impact on California Technology Contracts

Though Wilk’s legislation was prompted by Governor Gavin Newsom using his emergency powers to award such contracts, it would, if passed, affect all no-bid contracts of $25 million or more entered into by state agencies — something California has participated in for many years. In 2017, for instance, then-state Auditor Elaine Howle’s office estimated that California spent $44 billion on non-competitive government contracts over five years, and noted the lack of agency oversight.

SCA-7 would shift oversight to an outside committee, thus holding agencies more accountable. The true impact on technology contracts in California is currently unknown, nor is the California Department of Technology’s take on the bills, as the agency said it does not comment on pending legislation.

But given that transparency in government has been a widespread trend over the years, perhaps bringing no-bid contracts into the fold is a logical next step.

“Government at every level works best when there are checks and balances in place to ensure programs funded with taxpayer dollars provide the best bang for our buck,” Wilk wrote in a piece for the Orange County Register. “Those checks and balances also include ensuring employees – whether they are public or private sector employees – involved in these programs are able to raise concerns when something does not look right without fear of retaliation… Transparent government is good government.”

Gov. Newsom Appoints Amy Tong as GovOps Secretary

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Gov. Gavin Newsom appointed Amy Tong as the new Secretary of the Government Operations Agency (GovOps), according to a Monday press release.

“With her keen focus on creating a culture of innovation, commitment to public service and proven track record, Director Tong’s leadership is integral to continue implementing our vision for bringing government technology into the 21st century with more accessible, responsive services to meet the needs of Californians,” Gov. Newsom said in the release.

From 2016 to 2021, Amy Tong, 48, served as director for the California Department of Technology and has been serving as director for the California Office of Digital Innovation since 2022.

Tong replaces incumbent GovOps secretary Yolanda Richardson, who recently announced she will be leaving her current role to become the new CEO at San Francisco Health Plan.

How Can California Prepare Itself for the Inevitability of AI?

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When the Little Hoover Commission authored its 2018 report Artificial Intelligence: A Roadmap for California, they captured a state that was ill-prepared to face the inevitable changes that AI will bring to the economy and work landscape in the near future.

California is home to Silicon Valley and the fifth largest economy in the world. They should be leading the pack when it comes to quickly (and ethically) developing AI, but at the time of the Commission’s report, the state was well behind.

The report highlighted labor representatives that were concerned about job displacement, wage inequality, and a stunted middle class exacerbated by AI. It foreshadowed the inevitability that workers’ lives would change. California needed to prepare for a future where workers would be redeployed en masse. If not, they would be unemployed en masse.

“Some workers will have to be retrained to work alongside AI directed machines, while others will have to be redeployed within the company or elsewhere in the economy; businesses have a vital role to play in aiding these transitions,” the McKinsey Global Institute was quoted as saying in the report. “This will require changes in skills, mindsets and culture as we transition into a world where ‘coworkers’ include machines as well as other people.”

In the three years since the Commission published their report, California has made strides towards realizing a statewide strategy that can prepare its citizens for a major shift as AI assumes a more prominent role in the workspace.

In the fall of 2020, the California Department of Technology (CDT) launched the Artificial Intelligence Community of Practice, a quarterly virtual forum “open to anyone interested in engaging and collaborating on how to responsibly adopt AI technologies.”

Additionally, GovOps, CDT and CalData hosted an AI Risk Assessment Workshop that can help the state mitigate risks emerging from AI applications.

The state needs to move from discussion to action. In a Jan. 25 press release, the Little Hoover Commission provided four recommendations for the state to shape an AI policymaking agenda that can promote accountability and transparency in the development and utilization of AI.

Those recommendations include:

  • Appoint an AI special advisor within the Governor’s cabinet that will create a strategic plan ensuring “the safe and transparent deployment of AI in the state.”
  • Form an AI Commission composed of AI experts from various sectors to provide leadership.
  • Require state agencies to create strategic plans that create an ethical AI framework that promotes “economic, social, and environmental good.”
  • Improve data collection from the Employment Development Department that can identify jobs that are “at risk” of being made obsolete due to AI.

“Lawmakers must seize this moment by prioritizing policies that will safely and effectively harness the power of this innovative technology,” the Commission warns.

AI implementation is on the horizon and approaching quickly. The state must be prepared as the landscape shifts and harness this technology responsibly and ethically.

CDT’s Statewide IT Annual Report 2021 Highlights IT Trends, Vaccine Support and More

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On Jan. 31, 2022, the California Department of Technology (CDT) released its Statewide IT Annual Report for 2021, announcing the report’s release and focal points via Twitter:

The report shared statistics related to security, the Project Approval Lifecycle (PAL), workforce training and innovation, and then highlighted several projects the CDT completed or made progress on throughout 2021 — both COVID-related and otherwise.

Trends in California Government IT

The report’s statistics on the CDT include, but are not limited to, the following:

  • 400+ million blocked malicious probes daily;
  • 25 scheduled and completed information security audits, 14 of which were full audits and 11 of which were check-ins;
  • 24 technology transactions in PAL, 11 of which were approved, 11 were delegated and two were withdrawn;
  • 20 participants each in the CDT’s new Emerging IT Leadership training and Cybersecurity Boot Camps;
  • 2,611 datasets made available to the public via ca.gov; and
  • 159 state-contributed open source code sets.

In addition, the CDT only experienced one electronic incident that resulted in unauthorized disclosure of Personally Identifiable Information (information that can be used to distinguish or trace an individual’s identity, such as name, Social Security number, date and place of birth, to name a few) that was “contained in lost or stolen unencrypted electronic devices and storage media.”

COVID-19 Vaccine Support

As was the case for most state and local entities nationwide, the response to COVID-19 dominated much of California’s efforts throughout 2021, wrote former state CIO Amy Tong and Deputy CIO Russ Nichols in the report’s introduction.

Before California created the My Turn vaccine finder tool, the state was ranked last in vaccine distribution in the United States, the report says.

“Sixty-one different vaccine distribution systems that served niche communities left a void of statewide data to inform the optimal distribution of vaccinations statewide,” according to the report. “California needed a system that would handle the entire vaccine management process – from inventory to inoculation to reporting – to equitably vaccinate as many Californians as possible before the state reopened on June 15.”

Using Agile methodology, the state collaborated with San Diego and Los Angeles counties to create My Turn, which helped “to quickly reach at-risk and underserved populations, provide a holistic view of available appointments, and reduce inventory backlog.”

Another project sought to reach underserved communities (the senior population (aged 65+), minority population, disabled population, households with limited English-speaking ability and Californians with incomes below the poverty line) and increase vaccination rates throughout California.

Called the Vaccine Uptake Tool — which was a collaborative effort among the California Office of Emergency Services, CDT, the California Office of Digital Innovation, Esri and Google — this piece of technology essentially used data to increase vaccination in the state by combining “all areas of coverage into a score that would allow the team to identify localized concentrations of underserved communities,” the report states. “It exemplifies the power of technology in building not just more efficient and effective government, but a compassionate and fair government.”

Finally, California’s Digital COVID-19 Vaccine Record (DCVR) portal launched in June 2021, so every vaccinated Californian has “an opt-in, secure, and shareable digital copy of their COVID-19 vaccination records to use as they see fit.”

CDT also released the DCVR’s front-end and middle tier code to the public domain on GitHub, which means any state interested in deploying its own digital vaccine record system ca use the free code “to connect their own immunization registry back end and launch a similar portal to California’s.”

Tong and Nichols noted that throughout 2021, CDT leadership and staff “never let up as we moved to ensure vaccines were distributed equitably and quickly, and … created digital access to the vaccine record to help the state on its move toward reopening.”

Broadband, Data Privacy and More

Pandemic support wasn’t the only focal point in 2021; CDT also worked on and completed several initiatives, including, but not limited to:

“Since the pandemic, CDT’s continued collaboration with other departments, public and private entities and educators proved critical to getting projects done quickly” Tong and Nichols wrote. “What we do isn’t just about delivering technology — it’s about delivering fast and secure public services and making common technology easy to use for government workers and our residents.”

 

 

California DMV Digital eXperience Platform Aims for ‘World Class Self-Service Channels’ for Customers

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In 2021, the California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) launched solicitations for its Digital eXperience Platform (DXP) project — and at the start of 2022, DXP Phase 1 is in the build stage and an RFP for DXP Phase 2 is accepting applications.

Stated simply, the DXP project is an IT modernization and business transformation initiative that will replace DMV core technologies and re-engineer business processes and channels using the cloud and automation, says DMV Chief Digital Transformation Officer Ajay Gupta.

The DXP Project has three phases. Phase 1 is focused on occupational licensing, Phase 2 on vehicle registration and Phase 3 on driver licensing.

Once the entire project is complete, the DMV “expects to provide world class self-service channels, faster in person and mail-in service fulfillment to our customers, and a digital platform in our back office with improved employee experience,” Gupta said, adding that the department also expects to reduce operating costs through reduction in IT infrastructure, and less paper and fewer manual processes with the use of new technologies and processes.

DXP Phase 1: Occupational Licensing

The DMV’s Occupational Licensing branch licenses and monitors motor vehicle-related businesses and individuals in the state, which is no small feat given the more than 31 million vehicles and 24 million licensed drivers on California roads. The Occupational Licensing branch regulates vehicle manufacturing and sales, driver training, vehicle registration, to name a few.

Salesforce was selected as the software-as-a-service (SaaS) and Deloitte as the systems integrator to configure the platform for DMV needs. Together, Salesforce and Deloitte will modernize the DMV’s Occupational Licensing systems, processes and services, which Gupta said serve car manufacturers, distributors, dealers, sales personnel and traffic schools. According to the DMV’s City Innovate solicitation, the project includes the following:

  • Internal and external interfaces, reporting, data access capabilities, as needed;
  • A centralized database;
  • Secure storage at a centralized location with a backup at a separate site;
  • Secure storage and transmission of data and secure, robust audit and tracking capabilities at the individual user level;
  • Compatibility with state, federal and DMV architecture standards; and
  • Ability to integrate with Amazon Web Services, DocuSign, and customer text and chat services.

The two vendors also must provision for ongoing system support throughout the life of the contract, which Gupta said lasts close to two years — the first year for implementation releases and a second year for Phase 1 maintenance and operations.

Gupta said he expects the Phase 1 solution to go live in late summer 2022.

DXP Phase 2: Vehicle Registration

The DMV is now looking for a system integrator to modernize Vehicle Registration business processes, systems and service delivery; the department released the RFP on Dec. 1, 2021, and vendors have until June 1, 2022, to respond.

According to the RFP, the successful bidder for Phase 2 will build upon and expand the Occupational Licensing modernization to deliver a single Occupational Licensing and Vehicle Registration solution — and replace the legacy Control Cashiering functions and services.

“The solutions technology platform will leverage industry best practices to deliver intuitive and customer centric services. It will leverage key architectural attributes such as flexibility, usability, scalability, supportability, workflow configurability, and security in order to support changing business and customer needs,” the RFP states. “It will provide an overarching business process model designed to deliver a seamless customer journey.”

Due to COVID-related extension requests from the vendors, the vendor selection likely will occur by the end of June 2022, Gupta said, and the Phase 2 build will begin right after vendor selection.

DXP Phase 3: Driver Licensing

On the horizon is Phase 3, which will focus on modernizing the Driver Licensing business processes, systems and service delivery.

Gupta said vendors can anticipate an RFP release date of late spring or early summer of 2022 for Phase 3, the procurement process for which is likely to be completed by end of 2022 with build work beginning in 2023.

Once the entire DXP project is complete, Gupta said the DMV expects not only to attract IT talent with use of the latest state of the art technology platforms, but also to compete with the best of the retail sector as far as customer experience and service fulfillment.

“DMV expects an integrated, omni-channel approach to fulfilling our customer journeys,” he said, adding that these channels will be augmented with new automated self-service options, reduced processing times and lower transaction costs to the DMV. “DMV hopes that the new DXP further enables the state in serving our customers amidst the changing customer service landscape driven by technology innovations and pandemics.”

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