The California Department of Public Health has decided to hand over project management of its Women, Infants and Children Management Information System to the Office of Systems Integration (OSI), according to state records.
The stakeholders face an October 2020 deadline from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to stand up a federally approved MIS system. According to a recent project update, California expects to choose a vendor for the MIS system in 2017.
“Given the complexity and high criticality of the project, executive management recognized the need for more resources and a more robust project management structure led by OSI,” the project team wrote in a recent update about the interagency agreement.
The Department of Technology and the California Health and Human Services Agency also were involved in the decision to move it to OSI.
The project manager for eWIC MIS, George Lembi, retired in July 2015, and a new request for offer will be advertised to hire an acquisition specialist to complete the project’s RFP.
The project is currently approved for a $46.2 million budget.
Planning for California’s new eWIC management system started in 2009. California’s WIC program is supported today by a “centralized, real-time mainframe system which was transferred from Florida WIC in 1995 and is known as the Integrated Statewide Information System,” according to the project’s feasibility study. For the last two decades, the system has been maintained by the California Department of Public Health’s IT Service Division.
OSI also is managing procurement of the complementary, online eWIC Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT) solution project. Both systems will be developed and implemented simultaneously. Issued in June 2015, responses to the Request for Proposal for eWIC EBT are due Oct. 23.
