Created in 2005, California’s Office of Systems Integration and the projects under it — the portfolio — have a current-year budget of $763 million and about 300 employees. Like many of the programs it manages, much of it is largely unknown to outsiders. So here’s a summary of the office and the projects it’s managing.
At the highest level, OSI, which sits under the umbrella of the California Health and Human Services Agency, deploys and manages large systems at the local, state and federal levels.
Partnering with other departments, including the California Department of Technology, OSI develops solutions for the departments of Social Services, Health Care Services and Public Health, and Covered California.
OSI currently has nine projects in its portfolio:
The Appeals Case Management System The ACMS will create a single case management database for intake, scheduling and reporting functionalities. It will streamline the existing manual processes. It will have a public portal to request a new hearing or check the status of an existing hearing. The program touches both the state’s welfare and social services programs. Last month the Office of Systems Integration announced that the bid for ACMS will be awarded to Visionary Integration Professionals (VIP LLC) under a contract of more than $10 million.
Last year OSI inherited day-to-day management of the California Healthcare Eligibility, Enrollment and Retention System (CalHEERS), which services the Department of Health Care Services (DHCS), including Medi-Cal and Covered California. The 2017-2018 budget proposal includes $33.4 billion for DHCS. The system communicates with the Statewide Automated Welfare System (SAWS), another OSI project. This communication allows CalHEERS access to Medi-Cal eligibility, enrollment and reporting information, as well as recommends eligibility to public benefits programs such as Medi-Cal, CalFresh and CalWORKS.
CalHEERS is currently in the maintenance and operations (M&O) phase, and the base contract with Accenture will expire this summer. Re-procurement activities are underway. The Statewide Automated Welfare System automates processes for CalWORKS, SNAP and other welfare services. This system has begun to integrate information across counties through the Welfare Data Tracking Implementation Project. OSI chief deputy director Peter Kelly told the Legislature last week that California eventually plans to modernize and migrate onto a single SAWS system statewide.
The Case Management Information and Payrolling System is currently serviced by a contract with Hewlett-Packard that ends in March 2018. The call for final bids will close in April 2017 and could result in a contract of up to 10 years. This is the second iteration (CMIPS II) of the 40-year-old system. The system processes more than 1,000,000 in-home caregiver time sheets each month for a $7 billion gross annual payroll for the In-Home Supportive Services (IHSS) program. The new contract could include a rollout of new features, such as document management and improved help desk capabilities. The state is also exploring CalCloud as an infrastructure and storage option.
OSI and the Child Welfare Digital Services organization have been working on agile design and development of the Child Welfare Services - New System project for the past 15 months, and will release further updates and contract awards this year. The new system will eventually replace the aging Child Welfare Services – Case Management System (CWS/CMS). New digital services will access the legacy database through an application programming interface (API), thus ensuring continuity of important child welfare data. The complete modernization will take place in increments, creating an opportunity for agile design, while gradually decommissioning the legacy desktop application. The first service, the Intake Digital Service, was awarded as a contract in January. The system falls under Social Services and Licensing proposed 2017-2018 spending of $12.6 billion.
OSI has worked to update and maintain the Electronic Benefit Transfer Project, another piece of the Welfare Program’s $9.8 billion budget. Beginning in 2016, ClearBest is providing risk management services risk management during the transition from Xerox to Fidelity National Information Services Inc. as the vendor for 2 million Californians to receive their welfare benefits. The new vendor is working to create an electronic Women, Infants and Children program alongside OSI.
OSI also supports the Statewide Fingerprint Imaging System, based on Los Angeles Automated Finger Image Report and Match welfare application, that reduces fraud and administrative error in public assistance payments. A quality assurance services bid was released in late 2014 separate from the operations contract belonging to Hewlett Packard Enterprise Services and MorphoTrak. The quality assurance provider will supervise technology updates and any errors. Thirty-three thousand applicants are processed each month throughout all 58 California counties.
Editor's Note: On Thursday, March 16, this story was edited throughout to include updated information provided by the Office of Systems Integration. Techwire thanks OSI for the contribution and feedback.
