In a request for proposals (RFP) issued Monday on behalf of the California Department of Transportation, the California Department of Technology (CDT) seeks a New Transportation System Network solution (New TSN) to replace its current, legacy system. Find Part 1 here and Part 2 here. Among the takeaways:
- Caltrans’ current, legacy TSN is used by many of its offices as a “source system of record” — and the TSN is the “primary information system used by Caltrans to manage data and perform calculations used to make the State Highway System safer,” according to the RFP. The New TSN will preserve and expand the older system’s functions, in an effort to serve Caltrans and other agencies better. CDT seeks “a more robust and flexible tool” that will let Caltrans comply with Federal Highway Administration mandates including the Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century (MAP-21) and Fixing America's Surface Transportation (FAST) acts. The goal, per the RFP, is for the New TSN implementation to enable compliance by 2023 — and federal compliance is a “critical objective” of the contract.
- Caltrans’ legacy TSN is an enterprise Oracle app developed in the 1990s and jointly managed by three of its divisions including IT. It has four distinct modules — highway inventory data, traffic census data, collision or crash data, and traffic investigation reports; and the system lets Caltrans connect this data. The legacy TSN is a “significant repository of data,” but it’s nearing end of life; lacks the geospatial capabilities needed to conform to federal mandates; and it doesn’t offer “easy to use query and export capabilities” — requiring IT staff time to do things users “should be able to perform for themselves.” “Making use of the legacy TSN in contemporary business intelligence tools requires expert assistance,” the RFP says, noting “the software and supporting hardware on which Legacy TSN relies on are obsolete, creating a maintenance challenge.” Among its goals, the new TSN must use Caltrans’ GIS-based Linear Referencing System (GIS-LRS), now being implemented via Esri Roads and Highways software, as its spatial data framework; offer “modern GIS map interfaces and geospatial capabilities for query and data exploration”; and extend the “information management storage and capabilities available for the State Highway System” to local roads so the system can include data for all public roadways in California in the future.
- Contractor requirements include integrating commercial off-the-shelf and/or software-as-a-service products to meet the New TSN’s goals and requirements; emphasizing “configuration over coding, with the fewest possible changes to program area modules to meet business needs”; creating an “Authoritative Reporting System” for all TSN data considered “authoritative and complete”; and developing and implementing “moving data between solution elements/components.” The contract may use subcontractors, but they are the contractor’s “sole responsibility.”
- The contract’s total cost, including extensions, is not to exceed $11,567,500. The contract term will be four years once it’s approved by CDT — with the option of two one-year extensions. Intents to bid and questions are due Feb. 24; state responses will come March 4. Conceptual discussions are set for March 22-26, and proposals are due by 4 p.m. April 6. Proposals will be evaluated April 7-20, and negotiation invitations set for April 27-30. The contract award date is set for Sept. 21.
