In a request for information, the Office of Problem Gambling (OPG) within the California Department of Public Health (CDPH) seeks responses ahead of a data management system (DMS) replacement project. The office promotes awareness and prevention of gambling disorders and makes treatment available to people who are negatively impacted by problem gambling, per its website; it also trains counselors statewide in treating gambling disorders. Among the takeaways:
- OPG partners with UCLA’s Gambling Studies Program (UGSP) to manage the California Gambling Education and Treatment Services (CalGETS) program. OPG uses a legacy version of a cloud-based DMS that is not user friendly and is “frustrating for providers to complete applications, submit invoices for services provided, and request treatment block exemptions,” according to the RFI, released Aug. 14. CDPH needs a more efficient and user-friendly process, which would improve providers’ opinion of the CalGETS program and incentivize them to deliver much needed services for residents with “problem gambling behaviors” and people impacted by those behaviors. Currently, UGSP transfers approved invoice data received from CDPH manually via downloads from the DMS, a process that is error-prone and has the potential to result in incorrect payments. Additional problems include a lack of flexibility to update or remove data collection fields; the inability to provide customized services for clients and to collect pertinent client data to provide more efficient services; and the inability to track invoice or payment status.
- The existing DMS does case management, including provider and client management, treatment history, treatment sessions, and notifications; invoice management, which includes purchase orders, new invoices, invoice status, payment status and history; reports management, with the ability to generate canned reports, meaningful ad hoc reports and data extracts; and Key Performance Indicators (KPI) dashboards. The new system should do all of that plus additional case management functions to house templates, forms, studies, and schedule clinical supervision or interface to the Provider Education Resource Center system; add interfacing to and from the UCLA accounts payable system and UCLA BruinBuy+ payment system to invoice management; and add training modules and completion status to training management. The new system should also be Internet accessible; have a secure user interface that will let users add or edit providers, clients, treatment blocks, treatment sessions, invoices, and run a variety of reports; and capture the minimum data volumes listed in the key statistics/metrics table without impacting performance. It should support more than 200 end users, archive data older than four years, and preferably be maintained by a third-party vendor as a cloud-based subscription.
- Requirements include a brief overview of respondent’s company including years in business, number of employees, nature of business and client description, plus experience with projects of similar size and scope. Description of proposed solution should include technology infrastructure architecture, whether software as a service (SaaS), commercial off-the-shelf (COTS), cloud, hybrid, etc.; an overview of your approach to begin the project and engage stakeholders; and an overview of the development/implementation approach. Also describe the makeup of the project team; any development, project management or other software tools that may be needed for the project; and any one-time software costs. The state has a variety of requirements on information security and system architecture, and which are applicable will depend on the respondent’s system/solution architecture proposed. Non-functional requirements that should be considered include access control, data protection, incident response, audit and compliance, and physical security. Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, National Institute of Standards and Technology, and California State Administrative Manual security standards will likely also need to be considered in a response.
- OPG’s DMS project is now in the market research phase, which should enable CDPH to understand viable alternatives for its system, and how they can meet its business and technology needs. The RFI is focused on getting feedback from prospective bidders on its draft requirements for the OPG DMS; the feasibility of tech solutions to meet its requirements; the scope of services needed to implement a solution; and cost and effort estimates. Information CDPH obtains from the RFI may be used, partially or fully, to develop requirements for a future solicitation for the project. Depending upon its analysis of feasible alternatives, CDPH may opt to procure a commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) solution with any necessary modifications, or to procure a SaaS solution on a cloud platform.
