Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: Okay. Are we

[Lisa Gavan (Joint Fiscal Office IT Consultant)]: live? Yes.

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: Great. Alright. Welcome everybody to House Energy and Digital Infrastructure on the afternoon of Thursday, January 8. We are going to check-in today with a consultant that we are looking for the joint fiscal office, Lisa who tracks state. Alrighty. And I don't see your testimony posted on the website. So let me get into my email. You sent it at 01:00 yesterday? Yeah. Just after one. To Joe to me. Okay. I

[Unidentified Committee Member A]: do. Let's see. 01:00. Got it.

[Lisa Gavan (Joint Fiscal Office IT Consultant)]: Okay. I'm

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: gonna forward that right now to the committee and to Alex. Alex, I know this is your first time hosting a meeting. Mhmm. So I don't wanna overwhelm you. Okay. I'm gonna copy you if you have the ability to get it posted right away. That's great. And if that's too much multitasking, it'll be in everybody's inbox. K. Hang on, guys. You're just about to send that. Oh, great. Alright. And I'm sending it to everybody Are emailing yesterday?

[Lisa Gavan (Joint Fiscal Office IT Consultant)]: Now it's we'll post to our website.

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: Alright, folks. So, everybody has a hard copy. And, you're gonna have that in your Ledge email in a sec, and it'll be up on the website. Foronto. Okay. For the record, Lisa Gavan,

[Lisa Gavan (Joint Fiscal Office IT Consultant)]: I'm the contracted joint physical office IT consultant. So, the document that I put together is really a rehash of a lot of information that was shared with JITalk over the summer and the fall. So some of it I thought you you all would be that you would find helpful. So for example, I have the summary of all projects that I'm monitoring. As you know, I don't monitor every IT project. So I've included just some facts about the ones that I am that I thought you you all would appreciate having in one central location, things like the total appropriations on the project and some facts. So that's part of the document. Also, other projects of interest that I thought you might wanna monitor including the allocations like the the network project that's underway. So I'm not monitoring that. I haven't reviewed that one, but I thought you'd be interested in that. And then I also listed a summary of the upcoming reviews that were planned, and we'll we'll talk through those. And then at the very end, one of the things I thought we'd really appreciate is a consolidated list of the sources that inform can inform your oversight, things like the annual reports that ADS puts together, a mention of the reviews that you have access to, and the dashboard project inventory, etcetera. And you'll notice that the highlighted items in that in that linked section includes the new items that were added via is it F48? F48, I think. Yep. So I highlighted those so you could be better on the list. So that's the document. Great. So if we get started around the summary of the reports, the unemployment modernization is ongoing. It's still on track to be completed in May

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: year. It was just looking fantastic. And, Lisa, for each project I'm sorry. But could you start at the very beginning and say, just a reminder, this is the Department of Labor. Sure. Like, let's go back to the let's go back

[Lisa Gavan (Joint Fiscal Office IT Consultant)]: to the basics and remind everybody what these important projects are and what state agency and stuff and and what it's intended to. Okay. Sure, Jane. Okay. So the unemployment insurance modernization project is really the replacement of their legacy systems at labor that handle the taxes to employers and also the benefits to clients. And this started three years ago. It is a it was allocated 10,000,000 and then additional allocations of 30,000,000. The total of 52,300,000.0 down in appropriations between f y twenty two and f y twenty three. The total cost of the implementation and three years of management of the project is $45,300,000. There is a difference between the total funds available, which is 52.3 and the known costs of 45,300,000.0. The difference was 7,000,000, and it was to be used for the business process redesign and staff augmentation. Now in conversations with the labor commissioner over the summer, she said they didn't actually hire anybody to do the business process reengineering after all because it made more sense to have the people that were on staff that knew, you know, the processes, knew the legacy systems to do that work. And they thought it would be too hard to find a very niche area to find somebody who could fulfill that role. Now if you remember on the ERP project, they did hire a vendor to do that, but Workday is a well known ERP system with lots of expertise in the private industry. So that's why they were able to do it there. So I completely understand why they didn't do it, and really they're they're they're moving along nicely, so you can't argue with it. They're actually, I think, going to come in under budget based on a consolidation of the two phases that they have. If you recall, the very first their proposed was to do the, taxing piece first, launch that, have that go live, and then follow-up with the benefits piece. That was actually a finding of my review where I didn't see how they could do that, not because you couldn't do it with a new system, but because the legacy system was so entwined together, it'd be hard to separate those and then still manage the data in it. And they did reach that conclusion early on, and in the end, it saved them money. But it shows an idea of a I mean, an example of a project where people are reacting to what they're seeing on the ground, making good decisions for the implementation that turn out to into the benefit of the project. They're on track. They say they're going to finish in May 2026, the project. For these projects, I noted the current status on the ADS project inventory website that you all have access to is green. So I noted I noted that current status for all projects. The thing to remember when you're looking at what the status is, whether it's on the dashboard or here in this report, is it's not uncommon for projects to jump between those because it's really a status of the current state of the project that the project managers use to manage. So you might see a project head into red for a time, but it's really to it's part of a communication or, you know, letting management know, look, we're coming. We have some stumbles here. We You have some things that we're struggling through that we're working through. Everybody needs to pay attention now to get us back to green. So it's not uncommon. It's not a state of how the overall project did. It's the current state of the project for the project management perspective.

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: Okay. And just to remind committee members, I mentioned this in passing, but we've had so much info. Is that, thanks, ABS for coming in. Yeah. Secretary Riley Hughes is coming in, the day after the governor's budget address. So I think it's on January 1. But she is confirmed to come in that day, I'm pretty sure, to present the ADS annual report and show the dashboard. And so, we'll have a chance to kind of close the loop and look back at, you know, we took a bunch of testimony last year. We worked closely with ADS to pass a bill. They've changed some of the ways that they're reporting and tracking in response to that bill, and now we get to see the results. Anyway, so thanks to you guys for being here, and that is upcoming.

[Lisa Gavan (Joint Fiscal Office IT Consultant)]: Great. The next project, on the next page is the ERP project. If you recall, this is the, project from the agency administration, and the main goal is to replace the HR system, the vision system, the budgeting system, which is Vantage, and then two legacy systems from the agency of transportation, which is STARS, and the Department of Labor, which was FARS. So STARS? FARS. Bars. Bars. Stars and bars. Stars and bars. So now the state signed a contract with Workday for 28,000,000 over ten years. That was for the license the subscriptions for Workday over that time. General Assembly has appropriated 20 point 600,000.0 for this project. In November 2024, JITOC released 11,800,000.0 for the finance module. The first amount was for the HR system. And then there were some changes that allowed for the the budgeting system to be included in the appropriations, as well as the total allocation to be not just limited, the first allocation amount to HR, but to to look at it holistically so they could be conscious of how they didn't have to be so conscious of how the money allocated across the whole project for those particular modules. So the Workday ERP is the solution for the system. They've also Just to step back, I did a complete review and assessment and presented that to you last session on that particular project. For JITalk, I went through and did an update in September, you know, my assessment of of the current state of the project. Just to inform you, the ERP has two central contracts. One is with Guidehouse, which is the vendor that's implementing Workday, and the other is now with the team partners, which covers the business process transformation. So they're working mainly with the AOA staff to really understand the business processes. Attain is the second vendor. The first vendor was IJA, and they were they left the project as of 2025 due to it was their decision to leave the the project. I think there was some issue financial issues at the company. And so AOA worked to attain to identify a new vendor and brought them on board. It was no you know, these things happen sometimes. So from Sean Brown is the deputy secretary of administration, and I've been working with him mostly to understand the business side of the project. And he's they've contracted directly with the Attain Partners. So the former vendor was paid a total of 346 k of the $2,300,000 project. Attain has a maximum contract of 2,700,000.0. So, you know, that's up. So you have the differences, the $3.46 paid to IJA and the and the point and the 400,000 between the maximum of the contract amount. So, Sean mentioned they did change some of the the scope of work within the contract to just sort of tweak it based on their own understanding after going through that first six months of the project of what they needed. And when you look at the Attain contract, it includes things, like the identifying the current state, meaning the existing systems and what they do. One of the things I had identified in the initial review, was that the guide house contract was to implement Workday, but usually there's a gap between what existing systems can do and what the new system can do, and I was worried that was not going to be really understood or flushed out. But this new vendor is doing that particular work. And so during this assessment, it was notable to see the number of gaps that they had identified via team partners and the the guide house through that work. So and there were there were some, you know, significant gaps. I think there were let's see. Something I don't wanna say the number, but it was something like a 118 gaps, I believe. But only a certain number were identified as critical gaps. There were 21 classified as high and 11 as critical of the one eighteen. Not unusual to identify gaps during a session. Really, this can be as simple as you're going through and you're you're talking about how you implement it and somebody say, I don't see where this is happening. They'll write it down, call it a gap and then they'll confirm it. So, that work has been going on. One of the potential so I went through and I identified the gaps that I found most concerning. And one of the potential gaps was whether or not Workday could be used to replace the agency of transportation time management system. So the reason that STARS, which is agency of transportation, wasn't replaced when the initial initial vision implementation was done was because they need to for a federal requirement, they have to track the data down to an even more granular level than the rest of the state has to. It's the same situation at labor, and I've talked to labor and confirmed exactly what's different. So it's the same level it's not the same granularity, but it's a level down in granularity that then what the state has to track. And so the gap one of the gaps is whether it could replace that time management system. So the time management system is what feeds stars. So the question is, if it if it can't replace that, then how can Workday well then, can Workday replace STARS? And if you recall in a state independent review, the cost to of other states to replace their STARS or their FARS range from 25 to 35,000,000. So it is a concern on whether or not they could or couldn't be replaced. So we're still watching that. That's still unknown. It's a it's listed as a possible gap, but it was important enough that I wanted to mention that to you. Other gaps included that were listed in this were that Workday typically works with third party payroll systems. So like, I'm trying to think of one. ADP? Yeah. Exactly. ADP. And for Vermont, it's the state treasurer's office that is responsible for printing those checks. So there is a a risk of whether or not the state specific system can be integrated in the same way that a third party payroll system could. So it's something to watch out for. The other thing I noted that I I thought was more could be more significant was there's a tool that they're using if there's data that they need to link to, from Workday to an external system. There's a tool called Prism and the the concern that noted on the state risk log was that there are limits to the number of rows that they can actually use to access that. And sort of the workaround was, well, we could remove access to one system, to one set of data, and change it to a new set of data, but it was concerned about how sustainable that would be. In general, if you remember in the initial review, had concerns about whether or not there was a plan to, you know, to actually develop the data lake that included things like data classification to control access, etcetera. So you would know how the data should be restricted or or move forward. So all of this, these are just it's like before, just identifying risks. These aren't confirmed risks, but they are definitely concerns that we're watching. The current, status of the ERP system, again, this isn't being the project, but it is noted as red. And it's noted that there are just delays in the configuration, of the HR system. So, again, it doesn't mean it's gonna stay red at all, but I'm just sharing based on what I've what it said yesterday. So that seems to be our piece of them. Me just make sure. So in the document, I included the executive summary, but I sorry. We have a question. Oh.

[Unidentified Committee Member B]: On these systems, are these built from scratch systems, or are they been the ones off the shelf and modified? Modified. Yeah.

[Unidentified Committee Member A]: Yeah. Back in the question. When they go through these business practices, they're they're kind of evaluating how they do things now and trying to map the new systems to the old business practices. Is that what you were

[Lisa Gavan (Joint Fiscal Office IT Consultant)]: What they typically do when when I talked about the the business process doing the current state analysis, they'll say, this is all the things we do in the old system. And then there's an assessment on do we move forward with this particular practice, or is it based on a requirement that we still have to meet? And if so, is this the best way to meet it? Can we do it? So that's part of the process.

[Unidentified Committee Member A]: Oh, good. Yeah. Was my question. Yeah.

[Unidentified Committee Member B]: I I've asked this question before, but I gotta ask it again. This these projects are just an astonishing amount of money. It it is there any way for you to assess whether these prices are in line with reality, in

[Lisa Gavan (Joint Fiscal Office IT Consultant)]: line with what with actual costs. The independent reviews do that, and I haven't seen anything that it's out of line. And it in fact, one of the things that I noted was that the state didn't ask for nearly enough for this particular project. And part of my concern by just that when you look at the guide house contract, it's really about implementing Workday. It's not about they they don't have any role in identifying where the gaps are. That's the other vendor. But it's also a very tightly boxed contract. So you get this many attempts to do this or it's gonna cost you more. So it doesn't seem like a lot of times with the fixed price contracts, you're not as boxed and you have more control over this. And because there wasn't a complete, you know, a gap analysis done by we need these types of things, These are required components that we need in the new system. This is what Workday does. Where are the gaps? It seems like we won't know what the total cost of project was is until it's done. And the big the big the big items that I had identified was the stars and bars, mainly because I know at that time I was writing the analysis that Iowa Department of Transportation had done a workday implementation and yet they didn't include their STAR system. It just so to me that was a warning, like, wouldn't they have included it if they did? I did ask a follow-up if the state had contact contracted contacted Rhode Island because Rhode Island is just finishing up a Workday implementation Mhmm. And whether they were able to repeat replace their legacy know, their labor system and their finance system. I didn't I didn't get an answer to my questions, but what I heard was Workday is open to working with us and perhaps they can do this and put it in a release, which led me to believe that it wasn't a positive answer, but I don't know for sure. Mhmm. So I did ask the question.

[Unidentified Committee Member B]: But your sense is that we're getting what we're paying for.

[Lisa Gavan (Joint Fiscal Office IT Consultant)]: Yes. And the big challenge on this is, in my time and money. If time and money wasn't an issue, I wouldn't have any concerns. So Last word. Because anything can be done. I remember, like, one of the things I know with state of Rhode Island is they went through a very long process where they work work through their requirements upfront, and Vermont didn't have that benefit. I I am hopeful that, you know, it it it seems like it's about at this point that their business process reengineering group is identifying where those gaps are and trying to reconcile them with Guidehouse. And the question is, you know, what are are there any change orders now? At the time when I asked this, it were in September. But we'll be digging in more to that while being respectful of their time and really hoping for the best because they AES is doing some really good projects with UI. Amazing. They did the successful DMV project, which closed down successfully, which I'll I'll touch on. Okay. So we're so we're, you know, they're they do some some really good work, and I'm hoping that this resolves successfully.

[Rep. Bram Kleppner (Member)]: In the business world, ERP implementations are notorious for time and cost overruns. Yes. Is that the same in the public sector? Are they typically more

[Lisa Gavan (Joint Fiscal Office IT Consultant)]: And they have the highest rate of failure.

[Rep. Bram Kleppner (Member)]: The highest rate of failure.

[Lisa Gavan (Joint Fiscal Office IT Consultant)]: Yeah. If you if you Google it, they do have the highest rate of of failure. What's that to like? They're well, the thing is they're unforgiving because it's financial and it's government accounting. And, you know, there are all these complexities from using a system that was made for the private industry and moving that to a system that does government accounting. There really has to do a hybrid accounting between, you know, the words are escaping me in the accounts here. It's sort of the the real time accounting versus, like, you know, the based on the dollar spent versus the budgeted amount. It's challenging. So it it's not it these are really hard projects. Really hard. And I I when you look at how prices have escalated on these projects across other states that have failed, like Utah. I mean, Nevada had a failed project after well over $90,000,000 spent, and they put the plug in during test. They just said this isn't gonna work. So that isn't I know. Then they started over. So it's not these are free. This is the hardest project there in state government easily of that the IEN. And so it's it's a challenging one.

[Unidentified Committee Member B]: Okay. I guess it's it's pretty difficult. And different Yeah.

[Unidentified Committee Member A]: Projected completion data? I'm not sure. Is that

[Lisa Gavan (Joint Fiscal Office IT Consultant)]: I think it was I don't have it unless it's in my back. On them. I think it was three years originally, but I don't know.

[Rep. Bram Kleppner (Member)]: Is there anything that this committee can do to tilt the odds of success in the state's favor?

[Lisa Gavan (Joint Fiscal Office IT Consultant)]: Well, I think listening to what they need. I I'm not sure. In the the JITOC meetings, there was mention of a a need for additional allegations to this project. I don't know if that's going to come up, but that was mentioned during the session. But typically, they they don't talk about that yet. They'll talk about that in a few weeks. So, I guess, you know, at the oversight and asking questions. And I

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: think the arc of our work here, as I'm seeing anyway, I feel like we did a lot of, you know, laying the groundwork. Last year, we heard about we heard from ADS a lot. We worked on our bill. We heard about a lot of individual projects. We had, you know, state agencies and departments in to talk about their specific thing. And so what I'm what I'm seeing this year anyway is start out with Lisa because she's our Mhmm. You know, she's our person. And then we'll take, I think, very important testimony from EDS so that they can present their annual report. That's a beefy document. We'll look at the dashboard. We'll hear from EDS if if they have any asks. I assume you'll be coming to us, you know, with here's what we think we need. And then as the session goes on, we should have time to either respond to requests from ABS, stay in touch with Lisa, hear about some of these individual projects. I don't know if there's gonna be a budget request. They we we don't know that yet, and they can't tell us until we see the governor's budget recommend. The other thing I

[Lisa Gavan (Joint Fiscal Office IT Consultant)]: would suggest is making sure you you have time to talk to the business side of this. So Sean Brown and his group. Mhmm. Because for a while, I mean, when I when I read the contracts, it seemed like there was a mismatch of goals. You have one goal, the business goal, is to replace the required functionality in the systems that they're replacing because they need those to operate. Can they go live if they don't have all of that functionality with any system? I don't know the answer to that. But there seem to be a mismatch of those goals to the goals of implementing, which were in the guide house, which was implementing Workday. And then there's there's some sneak sneaky little things in here that aren't little. They're big. There are hundreds of systems that integration that are done with the current vision system and the current HR systems. And it will those integrations require any changes in those source systems? Because that could be a big problem. Because some of these systems may not be current. They could have been discontinued systems that just do a little thing. Right? But those little things add up and the cost of altering those and being able to do that in time to go live from the system. So I think those are the questions. And the question too is, can you can you go live if you don't have access to all the data yet? And that's a question for business managers. Right? Because if you can't typically, the minimum that you have to do is report on your grant, the the lifespan of your grant. I know when I was at education, they're typically, you know, thirty six months life. Right? So you if we're importing only one years of data and yet we need to report on three, how is that gonna work? And can we go live if we don't have that? Never mind all the other, pressures on and reasons why you have to access historical information, some of which I outlined in my initial review. So so those are the things. But I would definitely, keep your be willing to hear from the business because the whole point of this is to meet the the mission of the business of the state of the art. And so I would make sure you hear from those folks too. Are you ready for the next? So, yes, the DMV system, that's a good story. They went live in November. They actually came in,

[Unidentified Committee Member A]: I

[Lisa Gavan (Joint Fiscal Office IT Consultant)]: think, a few $100,000 under budget. It's just a good story because that's such a hard system, and that reminds me a lot of what labor's going to go through too, where they had a mismatch of a legacy system and then probably dozens, if not 50 to 60 to a 100 spreadsheets that they were writing these systems on. And they managed to replace it on time and on budget. And that's such a good story. And they worked hard and that was just through the dedication of the people that were on the project. So, you know, we have a lot of good stories, and and it looks like UI is going down that road, which is really amazing because it's those are hard projects. So

[Rep. Bram Kleppner (Member)]: Didn't didn't Rip Southworth work on this

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: I think so.

[Rep. Bram Kleppner (Member)]: I just think it's a shame he's not here.

[Lisa Gavan (Joint Fiscal Office IT Consultant)]: Yeah. Yeah.

[Rep. Bram Kleppner (Member)]: Accept the credit for a his part in that successful on time, on budget. Although, do note, I could hit a $102,000,000 budget.

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: Seems that way. Yeah.

[Lisa Gavan (Joint Fiscal Office IT Consultant)]: It's it's not easy. So other projects that I Sorry.

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: At least just one sec. Sure. I I think you said this, but it says phase two driver services is scheduled to be completed in November 2025? It was. I I It was. Where I have

[Lisa Gavan (Joint Fiscal Office IT Consultant)]: the project status. It's It's completed.

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: Oh, complete. I'm sorry. I was caught up in the notes. Okay. No problem. On we go.

[Unidentified Committee Member A]: Yeah. Well and so the operations, you have five years down there, but so we're basically paying $9,000,000 a year that an operational cost on a perpetual basis. It Well, I mean, it's probably go up, of course. But I don't know. Yeah. Basically, the structure of the contract is $9,000,000 a year.

[Lisa Gavan (Joint Fiscal Office IT Consultant)]: Is it? It it says that right there. Yeah.

[Unidentified Committee Member A]: You have 45,000,000 over five years or whatever. Yeah. Okay.

[Lisa Gavan (Joint Fiscal Office IT Consultant)]: Yeah. They host it. So there's a lot that that the state of Vermont does not have to do on that project anymore too. So but you know how that works. It was a lot to manage the old system that really weren't captured in the pricing, all those individual spreadsheets and the risk and all of that. So it's it's always, you know, it's never less, but it's less risk. And so I can be said.

[Unidentified Committee Member A]: Well, better service.

[Lisa Gavan (Joint Fiscal Office IT Consultant)]: Yeah. Absolutely. I don't know if you can answer this question, but after a project's complete, is there some sort of a survey of efficiency? Like, are we now reducing workload for certain staff? I think it varies. I don't know if that's the case, but I you did make me think they wrote a really great lessons learned that I can forward on to you. I'll put it in a format where it can be posted, but I thought it was really well done. So, thoughtful. So, keep going. So now we're getting into, what's next. The upcoming reviews. Now, IENE, which is the agency of human services. This is their really their their portal for, one for signing up for benefits in one place and being able to share it across systems. And they've been putting a lot of effort into this. This has had this has been going on probably since 2013 in a previous life where they had they were they had posted an RFP and then decided not to go forward with it. And it had multiple reinventions over time, including, you know, three years ago where they had a list. They're they have because it's a federal project, they actually have a vendor that they're required to bring on board that just watch watches the progress of the contract and it as a as a third party for the Fed. So another set of eyes. And they were unable to really get specific. They brought in some new staff on this project, and I love this project now. I was very tough on this project initially, but they have done such great work over the last two years of surveying all the solutions that are out there. And I I would encourage you to invite them in. They gave a great presentation to Chai Talk about the work they've been doing. But they they really surveyed the solutions that were out there. They talked to vendors. They talked to dates. They organized their project around solutions that exist, and then took their detailed requirements and matched those up, lined them up. They're doing such a great job. And every time I think it can't get any better, they come up with something new. So they're they're really working hard. They brought somebody in to help them with the contracting. So when they're when they will undergo an independent review, a lot of times there's kind of a you know, their the contract isn't as complete as one would hope for an independent review of starting. Theirs will be. Theirs is almost done now. So they're doing all the right things to really set them up to success. The way their timeline is working, they will be doing an independent review, and then I will do my review once that's done. I believe they're they had said they're seeking funding for FY 2027. So they wouldn't start the project until after July, But it's everything that I'm seeing now, and I'll still do the full review and if I find something, I will definitely share it with you. But so far, everything looks great on this particular project.

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: Well, if there's a request for state funds that's included in the governor's recommended budget, then that will come to us for quick testimony and review, and that would be something that we have to put in our budget letter to approves. So, that's our that's our process. We're not the deciders, but we I love that word. But we, you know, we'll have to write a budget letter saying we heard testimony on this request from me. Yes. And, yes, we agree or or no, we don't.

[Lisa Gavan (Joint Fiscal Office IT Consultant)]: The thing the only thing that I've noticed that is outside of anyone's control on this particular project is there is a risk if the state if the feds change the state versus federal share percentage. And if that happens during the midst of a contract, would it could happen during the midst of a contract. So that's a risk we can't control. It did change on one of the entities before this project was finalized, the state share changed, just by a fraction of a bit, not by the the the entity that's giving them the most money, would be but that is definitely a risk, but it's something our state can't control. And when you see a project that is so well formed and and just has all of those pieces out for success, you know, to to really contribute to a successful conclusion. And you know that it's it's on a mainframe and it's been they've been trying for so long. It's it's it's just a it's they're poised for success, but there are some things they can't control. But we can't no. If that happens, there might be other issues for the state.

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: Do you know what the the changes that were necessary to comply with federal requirements?

[Lisa Gavan (Joint Fiscal Office IT Consultant)]: All along, there were changes. They were things like, they've been doing these projects on the side all along, like, trying to think about notifications on whether those were were set up in an automated way. Okay. And then there were things like they they had clients putting, like, during COVID, they had client clients entering data on an app that wasn't attached to the actual back end of the app to get so the staff at HS would take that information and then enter it into the access system. So it was sort of, you know, a sneaker net strategy that they they wanted to eliminate burdens on the clients, which is the right thing to do, but it because it wasn't integrated in the back end, that was something they had to correct. Those types of things. Okay. And things like, know, whether it was compliant with disability rules, etcetera. Alright. So, with eligibility for LIHEAP, is that the kind of thing? There's a bunch of that. Yeah. And I think the way they're setting up the contract is very modular too, so they can complete one piece and then work on the next and have it all integrated. So it's a it's a very responsible way to structure things. But, you know, if you do have a chance to hear from them directly Yeah. It it's it's really worth worth it. So, the next system is the the CCWIS system that's they came in and spoke to you this spring. Department of Families and Children and they had a quite a story. I've never seen a more compelling business case and I've seen a lot of ones. Because they're working so hard to really benefit children and families and they're spending a lot of time working on spreadsheets and doing multiple data entry between systems and working really hard and you can see what a big difference this type of system will make for them. They did release an RFP that's been evaluated. They're in a similar timeline as IVMD and you never know what the administration is going to do, whether we'll see the funding request, what they expected. And if they do, you know, I will be doing the review of this particular project too. I'm actually meeting with them next week to get a better understanding of the business side of it, because I have access to what's been done on, you know, the RFP, etcetera. But to talk to them and and to discuss the types of support that they're getting. So that's a possible depending on whether or not they submit a budget free question. Can we talk about network? That's other projects not monitored. I think I mentioned that. Oh, okay. Yeah. So I I didn't do a review on this one, but I knew it was a big enough project that you would probably be interested in asking about the status of this. Okay. So I included I pulled together some information. The thing to know about this particular project is it it seems a bit out of whack around the cost because they're leasing equipment. But if you think about it, just like the states moving more into cloud services and subscription models, so the cost seems more constant over time versus, you know, implementing a system and having it cost a lot of money and then over time having to do it all over again where you get these bulges of cost over time every five years or so. Here they're they're leasing equipment, so it's it's it's a higher annual cost but lower lower overall cost, and I'm sure they can talk to you more about that. So it and it is consistent with their goal to be to to stay current and stay on systems that are current. So I couldn't there was no status. This project, for some reason, wasn't on the the dashboard or the enterprise project management office, so I don't know what the status of the project is. And like I said, I didn't review it. I'm not, you know, monitoring it per se, but I knew that you would be interested in it. So okay. And then, really, it's just the quick links to the projects as I mentioned just to pull those together for you because we did for.

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: Yeah. That's helpful. And I forgot. Okay. So the first link okay. Got it. And there's a link is there a link to where to all your reviews?

[Lisa Gavan (Joint Fiscal Office IT Consultant)]: I thought there was a central site. If you if you if you research my if you just search JFO on my name, you'll see them all there.

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: That's what I thought. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Great. The other

[Lisa Gavan (Joint Fiscal Office IT Consultant)]: thing is the actual the detailed review that I did on the ERP for GITALK, the link is in the document in the ERP section. Yeah. So you can have a subject if you want.

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: And we have a joint hearing, next week, with senate institutions to do kind of a JITalk handout. We just got that book, I think. Rick Sibilia is gonna remind us all of what JITalk is and what its charge is. And then senator Plunkett's gonna give us a little report on what JITAC accomplished over the summer and fall. Mhmm. Yeah. And that is next. Alex, can you do you mind just looking? You don't need to pull it up on the screen since it's not formal, but it's Tuesday, I think. It is. Okay. Yep. And we're still getting, you know, totally up to speed with scheduling and stuff. So, yeah, Tuesday at Tuesday at 2PM.

[Lisa Gavan (Joint Fiscal Office IT Consultant)]: Tuesday at 2PM right here. I'll there. Great. Super. Tuesday at

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: 2PM right here. Jantalk handoff. Great. Any other questions for Lisa? I'm sure we'll be seeing you this year quite a bit. Okay. Great. Why don't we go up live and take a little break, and we'll be back at two to continue our conversation about building energy code working group.

[Unidentified Committee Member B]: So the same way you have.