Final proposals for the Board of Equalization’s $309 million Centralized Revenue Opportunity System (CROS) IT project were received on Oct. 19 and the evaluation process is underway, BOE officials said at a board meeting on Tuesday.
In the meantime, BOE is spending about $750,000 a month on the project, said BOE chief deputy director David Gau, as it continues “pre-implementation” activities such as documenting business rules, converting 5,000 reports and forms and converting more than 1 billion records.
The Board of Equalization has spent a total of $25.3 million on CROS as of Sept. 30, Gau said.
After some turmoil a few months ago, BOE board members on Tuesday talked optimistically about the future of CROS, which will replace the BOE’s patchwork of legacy systems built in the 1990s to collect and monitor sales-and-use taxes, some property taxes, special taxes and more. The system is expected to cost about $309 million, and the state intends to hire a single system integrator to manage the migration.
Board members did briefly discuss the $750,000 a month burn rate, the rate at which the project budget is being spent.
“Obviously our burn rate is really high every month, and if we’re not meeting our schedule and our deadlines then that is going to start concerning me,” BOE board member Fiona Ma said.
Ma urged the CROS management team, which lost project director Eric Steen after he resigned last month, to continue issuing monthly project reports to the board.
“It is an important project and we are expending money, so I want to make sure the public as well as all of us are on the same page,” Ma said.
The Department of Technology had tapped the brakes on the CROS procurement, causing a delay of a few months in order to require the Board of Equalization to finish a master schedule for CROS. The Department of Technology accepted the master schedule last month.
BOE member Diane Harkey credited the board’s staff for helping get BOE back in sync with the Department of Technology.
“There was a bit of a mess with that, but I think we have the understanding,” Harkey said. “We always did have a good program moving forward; it’s just the communication was lacking and we’ve got a great team in charge.”
According to updated procurement documents, the contract award and execution will occur on June 1, 2016.
BOE chair Jerome Horton recommended further discussion about the burn rate.
