With $7M in Hand, Caltrans Eyes 2025 for Possible Data System Buy

Seven years after embarking on an enterprise data governance program, the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) has money in hand to procure a solution — perhaps sometime after the new year.

The Caltrans Data is Authoritative, Trusted and Accessible (CTDATA) project, which began in 2017, has pushed the department toward adopting data goals, defining roles and responsibilities, and assembling a team of data stewards. That’s the groundwork laid for the purchase of an enterprise data governance technology solution (EDGTS), for which Caltrans requested — and received — $7.7 million from the Legislature this year.

The department conducted a request for information (RFI) for the EDGTS in January. At the time, Caltrans estimated it would go out to bid on the solution in September. But Bobby Bommarito, a senior procurement officer in the Office of Statewide Technology Procurement who served as the point of contact for the RFI, told Industry Insider — California via email that the solicitation has yet to be released and instructed those interested to “continue to monitor the eProcure site for the potential release of the EDGTS solicitation after the first of the new year.”

According to Caltrans’ Budget Change Proposal requesting funding for the solution, it would seek an enterprise system to:

1. Assess and report on data quality
2. Manage metadata and data dictionaries
3. Catalog data to enhance findability and accessibility
4. Create and execute extract-transform-load (ETL) processes to automate data preparation and system interoperability activities
5. Manage and discover terminology and definitions used by different business areas to minimize misunderstandings when working with data

Those disparate business areas have a history of going their own way when it comes to data; different stakeholders may rely on each others’ data but have completely different approaches to managing and describing it. With an enterprise solution and the CTDATA framework in place for standardizing and understanding data, Caltrans aims to allow for much easier and more effective use of its data across the board.

For example, the department envisions the EDGTS improving processes associated with:

• Reporting for projects funded through the Road Repair and Accountability Act of 2017 (SB1)
• Transportation asset management
• Creating and maintaining data for the 10-year State Highway Operation and Protection Program

According to the January RFI, the department has a wide variety of data sources it would seek to tie into the EDGTS. It identified 10 “candidate systems” to illustrate the situation. They included the COBOL-based Contract Administration System, the SQL Server-based Standard Tracking and Exchange Vehicle for Environmental System, the Oracle-based California Transportation Improvement Program System, and the FileMaker Pro-based Office Engineer Database.