Best of Texas Awards Reflect Innovation and Collaboration

Thomas Beckley, IT planning manager at the Texas Workforce Commission (TWC), accepted the Excellence in Project Management Award for designing and championing Project Web Access (PWA).

Using best practices, Beckley designed and developed dashboards for commission executives and staff to plan, monitor and control assigned projects, according to the agency. Beckley, who has been with the agency for more than two years, trained end users, and he mentors a PWA users group for the agency.

Best Application Serving an Agency’s Business Needs was awarded to the Texas Department of Public Safety (TxDOT) team working on the Geospatial Portal.

“The portal was designed to meet a broad range of needs in support of TxDOT’s mission-critical priorities focused on preserving assets and promoting safety. The applications support users from field crews to the executive level alike through situational awareness, efficient data capture and informed decision-making,” according to the agency. The team designed the portal using agile best practices. Jenn Lash, statewide GIS program manager at TxDOT, accepted the award with the team.

Best Workforce/Workplace Initiative went to the Texas Workforce Commission’s Civil Rights Division for using technology to decrease process times.

Using software and solutions already in place, the civil rights team created and implemented workflows and processes to decrease time on complaint resolution, in some cases by 50 percent, according to the agency. Customers have 24/7 access to file complaints, and staff has a central location to track them to resolution. Bryan Snoddy, director of the TWC Civil Rights Division, accepted the award.

Innovative Use of Data Analytics was awarded to the Texas Health and Human Services (HHS) team that deployed the State Health and Analytical Reporting System (SHARP).

The unified reporting platform brings together public health analytics, reporting, data management, data exchange and data sharing. Analysis, reporting and publishing are enabled by the centralized data warehouse, and a public dashboard to be used by health agencies, government and citizens is available. The project created secure but faster COVID-19 data sharing, helping identify regional service gaps and monitoring sensitive data. Ricardo Blanco, CIO of HHS, accepted the award with the team that includes Texas’ state epidemiologist.

Best Application Serving the Public was awarded to the Office of Special Populations and Monitoring in the Texas Education Association (TEA).

The rapid application development team built an application to help administer the Supplemental Special Education Services (SSES), leading to a cost savings of $3.8 million and the addition of 18,600 students across the state. “The SSES program gives a $1,500 one-time online grant to parents and caregivers of eligible students served by special education who have been impacted by COVID-19 school closures,” according to the department. Fuat Aki, associate commissioner of technology for the TEA, accepted the award with his team.

Health and Human Services and the Department of Information Resources (DIR) collaborated to migrate and modernize the state Medicaid program and were awarded Best IT Collaboration for the Riata migration.

“HHS’ Medicaid Management Information System (MMIS) is a massive, fully integrated, highly complex ecosystem composed of applications, processes, call center, mainframe computers and data center infrastructure,” according to the agency. HHS worked with multiple teams at DIR and industry partners to migrate applications to DIR-managed data centers. Ricardo Blanco, CIO of HHS, and Texas state CIO Amanda Crawford accepted the award for the project, which affects about 90,000 HHS consumers.