The California Department of Health Care Services — which has a FY 2023-24 budget of $162.7 billion, according to Gov. Gavin Newsom’s proposed FY 2024-25 state budget — is one of 12 entities that are part of the California Health and Human Services Agency. It’s a linchpin in state health care, assisting millions of low-income residents with disabilities with access to affordable, integrated, high-quality health care. Project delivery needs to be just as vital, malleable and swift-moving, three top IT leaders said Feb. 15 at an Industry Insider Member Briefing. Among the takeaways:
- DHCS is evolving the structure of its IT organization and its project approach. The department is taking a more centralized approach to its organization — a bit of a shift away from customer-level IT shops, said Chris Riesen, DHCS chief operating officer for programs, and it’s doing something similar with respect to modernization projects. “We’ve recognized that we can’t really be successful in modernizing the technology for our customers if we’re not also building an organization that can continue to sustain it, that understands that it’s not really about a single point in time of delivery, but that we have to continue to evolve those IT products over time,” Riesen said.
Over time, he said, the desire is to shift from large projects toward more continual product evolution that is quicker and drives small incremental change. “We’re working towards an organization that truly is driven from a product mentality,” he said. “We’re trapped in a world that is very waterfall-based, but yet we’re implementing and have used and will continue to use agile iterative delivery to move forward.” - IT modernization centers on three areas. First, said Steve Trimble, the division chief for Medi-Cal Enterprise System Modernization at DHCS, it’s partnering with stakeholders to help them consider how best to modernize service delivery to residents. Second, it’s working to modernize how products are delivered within the department. And third, it’s modernizing the actual technology itself.
“We’re responsible for modernizing all of those legacy systems that have been in place for years and years — some of them, three, four, five decades — that are still being used by the department to help deliver services,” Trimble said. - Limited flexibility and rigid change control can hold back agile development. There’s a fine balance between planning sufficiently and overly prolonging the process — potentially delaying customers getting what they need for years, Trimble said. New needs, he said, can restart that process, further lengthening product trajectory. The Project Approval Lifecycle (PAL) process via the California Department of Technology should include “just enough planning to be able to engage and begin discovery and development,” with the delivery process supported by contracts that support and encourage change.
“And then when we get our product into maintenance and operations, it should really be modernization and operations,” Trimble said. “We should be encouraging constant modernization and evolution. If we do that, then we avoid ever really having a legacy system again, if we keep those systems modern.” - Encouraging and supporting change throughout product delivery can make the process more effective. It’s among the tenets of IT product delivery, said Crystal Taylor, DHCS division chief for IT Strategy Services, with products that meet the needs of their users serving as the ultimate testament to effective product delivery. This means that products may need to shift, change or evolve to follow business needs and strategies if they are to be successful.
“We need to change what we’re doing in order to address it, and IT product delivery processes and mindset welcome that change,” she said. “You don’t get trapped in project objectives that are wrapped in a sphere and bundled like a present under a tree, right?”
