Industry Insider — California regularly spotlights such endeavors in its Opportunities section. Here’s a look at several public-sector governmental entities with technology or innovation-related initiatives:
- The California Government Operations Agency’s (GovOps) portion of the state’s enacted 2023-2024 Fiscal Year budget includes $2.4 million, with rounding, and two positions, for Procurement Division e-marketplace implementation. The funding is the result of a budget adjustment from a budget change proposal that sought $2.2 million from the Service Revolving Fund and $224,000 in reimbursements, plus the positions, to “implement, maintain, and operate the statewide eMarketplace solution.” The solution will be a statewide online public-facing marketplace to improve data accuracy, timely decision-making and transparency into government spending. It would interface with the Financial Information System for California’s (FI$Cal) PeopleSoft system and improve state buyers’ ability to find and order directly from approved supplier online catalogs in a “more ‘Amazon’-like shopping environment.”
- GovOps’ budget also includes $516,000 from the General Fund and one position for state surplus property, digital inventory, affordable housing in accordance with state Senate Bill 561 and Assembly Bill 2233. Both bills, which Gov. Gavin Newsom signed in September, generally require the Department of General Services (DGS), an entity under GovOps, to evaluate how suitable state-owned parcels are for use as affordable housing; and require it to update its digitized inventory of all state-owned parcels that are “in excess of the state’s foreseeable needs and suitable for affordable-housing development.”
- The Sierra Joint Community College District has issued a request for prequalification for a new science building at its Rocklin campus. The project will remove several temporary buildings and put up a two-story, 600,000-square-foot concrete building with spaces for classrooms, laboratory, library, instructional support and exhibits. Construction budget is $62.6 million. Project experience must include at least two new builds of a public educational facility in the state, with Division of the State Architect jurisdiction and a completed construction cost of at least $50 million each, as well as two additional new builds or renovations of a California public education facility with a completed construction cost of at least $40 million each. Questions are due by 2 p.m. Aug. 25, with responses coming by 5 p.m. Aug. 28. Responses to the RFQ are due by 3 p.m. Sept. 8; the list of qualified bidders is expected to be published Sept. 22.
- The North County Transit District’s Adopted FY2024 Operating Budget and FY2024-FY2028 Capital Improvement Program, the former of which covers FY 2023-24, includes IT spend such as $10.3 million to replace obsolete signal control equipment and tech upgrades on the LOSSAN rail corridor; $105,000 for network firewall replacement; $92,000 for SQL server upgrades; $90,000 for storage area network fiber channel switches; and $44,000 for customer service improvement — bus information texting platform. The district has also received funding from the California Department of Transportation to finish a phased infrastructure and technology implementation plan supporting BREEZE bus speed and reliability on 10 high-priority corridors. The district intends to leverage technology to improve its project reporting for internal and external audiences.
- The Solano Community College District has issued a request for qualifications seeking to create an IT project management services pool of qualified companies that can work on capital projects. Firms must “understand the wide range of IT needs that are associated with today’s modern college programs” and have experience with Ellucian Banner. Companies chosen will be responsible to the college district for oversight and management of all IT-related tasks on a given project. The college district has begun moving to Ellucian software as a service, with the software either hosted by the company or a third-party host. Main portions include ERP essentials, job scheduler, and Ellucian Intelligent Learning Platform for Canvas, Workflow Experience and Experience Premium. Questions are due by 4 p.m. Aug. 23; responses to the RFQ are due by 2 p.m. Sept. 6.
- The city of Menifee highlights a number of IT- and innovation-related goals in its Proposed Biennial Budget for FY 2023-24 and FY 2024-25. (Menifee City Council members approved the budget in late June; however, an approved edition is not yet available.) These include, for the City Clerk’s office, creating a more comprehensive, transparent, easy to navigate website that includes access to Microsoft Outlook Passport and Laserfiche; and centralization and digitization of citywide records plus records and Public Records Act training. For the Finance Department, there’s Phase 1 of an enterprise resource planning (ERP) implementation, developing and expanding the department’s SharePoint intranet website, and setting a procurement ethics policy and procurement manual.
