Lawmakers Discuss Department of Elder Affairs’ Modernization Efforts

The Florida House of Representatives IT Budget and Policy Subcommittee recently met to discuss several agencies’ cloud modernization efforts, including the Florida Department of Elder Affairs (DOEA).

Jeremy Daniell, the department’s new chief information officer, spoke on behalf of the agency and detailed some of its latest modernization work.

Key takeaways:

Application modernization began last year. According to Daniell, the department moved forward with Microsoft’s Power Platform in February 2024 and secured licensing to initiate an application modernization process on April 1, 2024. Microsoft provided service integration to conduct proof of concepts for the department’s ticketing system, the Adult Protective Services referral tracking tool and an application for the Adult Care Food Program.

The department focused on training. In August 2024, DOEA collaborated with Microsoft to participate in workshop training on Power Platform, Power Automate, Dynamics 365, Dataverse administration, application life cycle management, GitHub and Azure DevOps.

“In September, our business analysts began drafting the scope of work documentation,” Daniell said. “This document details specific tasks required for each application, including the application, inventory review and confirmation planning for the development, data migration and decommissioning, performing the development data migration and decommissioning, testing and validation and final data cleanup.”

After that, a finalized statement of work was included in an RFQ advertised by the department in December 2024. HSO was awarded the contract and is currently in the onboarding process, with kickoff scheduled for the last week of February.

Solicitations and expenditures remain top of mind. DOEA awarded a contract to ISF late last year to "[improve] its data management capabilities through design development and implementation of a data architecture."

As for expenditures, Daniell said, the department’s expenditures include about $350,000 for contractors, $19,000 for training and $1.3 million for licensing, maintenance and support.

Meanwhile, according to Daniell, expected expenditures for the next 12 months include $500,000 for contractors, $1.4 million for licenses, maintenance and support, $1.4 million for application development via a system integrator, $800,000 for data, strategy and implementation services, and $200,000 for an IT service management ticketing system and implementation setup.