Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Rep. Christopher Morrow (Member)]: We're

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: live. Alright. Welcome everybody to House Energy and Digital Infrastructure. It is Thursday, April 30, and we are here to keep learning about the Enterprise Resource Planning project, which is a big IT modernization project across state government. We'll just go around the room and introduce ourselves. Then we always ask everybody who's joining us to introduce themselves from the, you know, the bench seats, and then we'll turn it over to you for the record. So I'm representative Kathleen James from the Bennington 4 District, Manchester. Okay.

[Rep. R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: Scott Campbell, Saint Charles Barry.

[Rep. Richard Bailey (Member)]: Richard Bailey Memorial 2. There's tomorrow in the Wednesday event. Michael Southworth, Caledonia two. Christopher Howland, Rutland for

[Rep. Dara Torre (Clerk)]: Dara Torre. Washington. Great.

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: And joining us.

[Rep. R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: Caledonia, Green Hills Public Affairs. John Kelly, ADS.

[Lisa Gaughan (JFO IT Consultant)]: Lisa Gaughan, JFO IT consultant. Renee Vordeaux, consultant for aims and transportation. Super.

[Rep. Christopher Morrow (Member)]: Kevin Vianney, agency of digital services. And he's trying

[Kevin Vanyo (Agency of Digital Services)]: to use also the agency of digital services. His voice restored. Alright.

[Jada Morse (Director of Administration, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: For the record. For the record, my name is Jada Morse. I'm the director of administration for the agency of transportation, and I'm here today to talk about our experience with the enterprise resource planning or ERP project and why it's important and necessary for the agency.

[Rep. R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: Would you like to move to the agency started?

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: Yeah. That'd great. We have your memo. Absolutely. It's always good yes. I was gonna say, it's always good to walk us through that

[Jada Morse (Director of Administration, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: Of course.

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: On the assumption that everyone may not have

[Jada Morse (Director of Administration, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: Gone through. Yeah. Understood. For example so after reviewing the testimony last week provided by secretary Bradley Hughes and deputy secretary Brown, I wanted to also add the agency of transportation's perspective to the need for the ERP project. I'll use the term ERP for for both components, our HCM, our human capital management, and the financials component. So for us, it's a holistic system. And it's very important for us to be able to move forward with this project in a timely manner. And we are we have been part of this for the last several years, as well as the reset that's occurring now. We currently operate two solutions. We have our FATS product, which is our maintenance activity tracking system. That's where we do our labor, equipment, and materials tracking. And then we also utilize our STARS system, which stands for State Transportation Accounting and Reporting System. So that's our financial system. So timekeeping, we have reporting, and then with our timekeeping, we also have materials and equipment tracking. So why this is important is because we are the cognizant of Federal Highway, as is our we are the cognizant agency for receiving federal monies from US DOT and other sources. So Federal Highway certifies our systems, both the MAT system and the STAR system, for us to be able to receive federal dollars. We put through over $500,000,000 in federal monies every year just from the US DOT. We additionally, because FEMA, the emergency management organization at federal level, We are the initial reporting agency for municipalities. We collect the initial damage assessments for municipalities in the event of a meteorological event, as well as the rails rail trails at our own facilities. So So not the the rest of state facilities, but just our transportation facilities. So in 2023, the flooding events, put over a $100,000,000 in FEMA reimbursements, the projects that are being developed, and those monies are coming to us because of the certifications of our mats and our star systems. So the criticality for us with the ERP system is our mats system, our managing assets for transportation, timekeeping, labor, equipment, and materials component, we've reached end of life of that product. And right now, it was a tri state initiative event originally with New Hampshire, Maine, and Vermont. We don't own the code for it. We are, I will say, looping along with our support from our digital services team who were fortunate enough to have a couple of resources that know how to code in this product and that can provide some updates. But we're one bad day away from failure, And it's really critical for us to be able to move into a system that is what I've started to refer to as our one Vermont system. We're we're desperate from the rest of the organizations, and we think that we can be successful with moving into the ERP system and be able to meet the basic needs of our of the products we have now with the new system. So I understand one of the questions will probably be, well, how are you going to get through the next couple of years until this system goes live? We needed to understand the timing of the product that was going to be released and what the future is going to look like, and we're actively looking at several other pathways to be able to meet the needs of the MAT system where we need where we need to transition off of it before ERP is live. I don't have details on those because we are still fleshing out both of the the options. One of them is would be internal to government and the ADS team digital services is is exploring what that might look like to create us a standalone system that would purely be available for the time that we are are between solutions. So between mass and between ERP. And then we're looking at another opportunity that we might be able to disperse the different functionalities of the mat system into multiple state solutions and be able to put a Band Aid fix on it until we can move into the ERP solution. So a lot more to come. We're just we're in the new days of that. But this is finally able to be started because we have completed our requirements review for the Mats and the STARS systems with our the Guidehouse partners and our digital services business analyst that's been assigned to us. So that's a lot, and that's only probably the first two paragraphs, maybe three of the memo. Actually, four. So

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: I have a question. Yes. So just in in super layman speak, math is critical to pulling to processing or pulling down or tracking a lot of the federal funding? Correct. Because of the time sheet component?

[Jada Morse (Director of Administration, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: Because The labor equipment and materials components.

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: Okay. So when you get these big federal highway funds or something I mean, I'm just trying to it's really important that you be able to document back to them.

[Jada Morse (Director of Administration, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: It's an audit capability for them. Yes. It's a component of it.

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: Okay. Which means that the federal government is gonna needs really granular detail about how many hours people are putting on the project or so we I meant, like, baseline.

[Jada Morse (Director of Administration, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: Yes. Okay. So we whenever we receive monies down, we're certifying that we're using them for the projects that we intend to deliver. And then we have to essentially provide that audit trail of where did the money go through the system and what's it

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: allocated and did we buy and what equipment did we have to buy and whose time went into this. Essentially prove to the dot that we use that money for that highway.

[Jada Morse (Director of Administration, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: Essentially, yes. Okay. Thanks. Yeah.

[Rep. Bram Kleppner (Member)]: Yeah. Could you just explain that you went over the you were trying to do a tri state system?

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: Yes.

[Rep. Bram Kleppner (Member)]: What could you if I you just explain that a little bit. What happened? What didn't work?

[Jada Morse (Director of Administration, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: Other organizations are moving off of the product, and Maine has already moved on to the Workday platform. And other other states are just not interested in continuing the the relationship that we had.

[Renee Vordeaux (Consultant to AOT)]: Okay. And

[Rep. Christopher Morrow (Member)]: where are we at the kind of gap analysis starts and workday? So you So we

[Jada Morse (Director of Administration, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: we provided our requirements for both maps and stars to the project team. And I say project team inclusive of digital services, guide house, attain, and anyone else that I might be forgetting. So I'll I'll look to our I'm seeing nodding heads over here. And our collaborative team has been able to analyze our business requirements for both the STARZ and the Mats products and provide us back a yes, we can do this or no, we cannot or this might require excuse me. A little bit of of massaging of we wanna understand your business process further to know whether we can meet it exactly as you do it now or whether we, ALT, need to think about is the process that we're doing the the process that we need to be doing in the future. So part of our where we're at right now is looking at the business transformation aspect of this. And just because we've done something the same way and doesn't mean that we will do it that way in the future. And that's that's where we're peeling back the onion, so to speak, at the moment is on really understanding in more detail. Yes. You said you can do this. What does that look like? And bringing our federal partners to the table through the FHWA Federal Highway Administration as a resource center. That resource center is part of our certification process. So we'll be bringing them into the design phase of the project when we're looking at our AOT requirements specifically and the product and solution requirements to be able to understand what we need to incorporate from the federal certification perspective.

[Lisa Gaughan (JFO IT Consultant)]: So it's safe to say I mean, sounds like you're in the middle of making those determinations between what your requirements are and whether they could be completed in Workday or if you'd need to kind of add on an integration via Workday or so. So is it still it's still underway then? I would say we're

[Jada Morse (Director of Administration, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: still underway. We have a base understanding that the bulk of our requirements can be met as is, and there's a couple of areas that we might have continuing flushing out to do.

[Lisa Gaughan (JFO IT Consultant)]: Okay. Thank you. You bet.

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: And one of the things, now I've gone off on a tangent, but one of the things that when we were taking a bunch of testimony on and trying to understand how ADS and the legislature would be able to easily kind of track and report on the cost of IT projects across state government. One of the concerns we had with the with the way the ADS budget is being changed and the way the tracking is being changed is that these costs are gonna be the spending authority is gonna be transferred to the different agencies. I think I'm getting this right. And so one question I have is, if you guys determine that

[Kevin Vanyo (Agency of Digital Services)]: that

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: that this new system works for 80% of your needs, but you're gonna have to buy 20% extra modules or figure out other ways to do stuff. How will that cost be accounted for in a centralized way so that we can see what the total cost of that migration was?

[Jada Morse (Director of Administration, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: Do you know what I'm I I did. I understand what you're saying, and I'm not sure that AOT would be the right agency to answer that I think that might be more a combination of AOA and ADS to really understand what they're looking at for statewide.

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: Will you guys be tracking and coding it, Like, you would be able to provide that data.

[Jada Morse (Director of Administration, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: We we have activity level tracking within our systems that we have the ability to have people time code their time that would be spent on an say, this project, for example. We have an activity code that's set up so I know how many people are spending what time associated with work on this project. Yeah. Do want me to Yeah. So

[Kevin Vanyo (Agency of Digital Services)]: what I'm curious is that in the proposed FY twenty seven budget, the spoke is no longer recognized under the ABS budget. So anything that would have been paid via the spoke, that visibility to procurement is no longer reportable by ADS. And so that would require the agencies too, and that would also require AOA to issue chartfields that would be consistently required across every agency and department. And so I think we're I'm seeing the confusion in your faith, which is why I should point that down, like, that doesn't have been reviewed necessarily if that finance management would be providing those standards Okay. Once the budget is passed. But it would require you as an agency to read the board on all spend of the IT spend, depending on the EDS to do that for you, which we've

[Jada Morse (Director of Administration, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: done over the last five years. We would follow whatever we're directed to by the agency of administration.

[Rep. R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: And those costs would need to be in a consistent, as the secretary just mentioned, that in a consistent chart of accounts or whatever the cost categories, coding categories that all agencies have to. I assume that you're not all using the same chart of accounts now.

[Jada Morse (Director of Administration, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: I think we have a standard chart of accounts. You have

[Kevin Vanyo (Agency of Digital Services)]: chart Part of account is standard for the chart fields that vary by account. That's exactly

[Rep. R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: the word you use. Okay. So, anyway, so that that would also have to be standard. Would say

[Kevin Vanyo (Agency of Digital Services)]: what you're what we would need to do is in the current system, we would need to make those modifications to the current system, which is really not built to do what we're asking for it to do. Moving into Workday, being able to visualize this under those expected standards, it has that either related to be filled for that so that it wouldn't need to go through EDS and business office in order to have full reportability on spending that would be IT sent.

[Rep. R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: And this this so that raises the question, which is not the right time to ask it, but who would be responsible for delivering that that summary? That'd be ADS or AOA?

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: Or In

[Kevin Vanyo (Agency of Digital Services)]: in in the future ERP system Yes. ADS would have the access to do it. In the current model, ADS doesn't have the ability, so we would have to depend on AOA to provide that to us. Okay.

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: Morrow, and then I think there's a little question.

[Rep. Bram Kleppner (Member)]: Go ahead.

[Lisa Gaughan (JFO IT Consultant)]: I was just going to clarify that, perhaps around this issue. JFO, James and Emily had looked at this issue with commissioner Gresham, and they believe they could get to it. It's just a matter of you within the current system, it's a matter of using those chartered accounts and creating the codes for for people to use that would allow it to be tracked back. But they can they would be the ones to ask the detail of specifically how they

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: How how they thought that could happen.

[Rep. R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: Yeah. Exactly. Okay. Brett Morrow? It's been a few changes in

[Rep. Christopher Morrow (Member)]: the federal landscape over the last year or two. Wondering if any of that is trickled down to the transportation world in terms of funding, reporting requirements, how that's gonna a lot of in STAR system, as I understand, is based on federal coding requirements. Right? Have those changed? Do you see those changing? Or is this federal transportation landscape just kind of same old same old?

[Jada Morse (Director of Administration, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: So every five years, we go through what's called a reauthorization. We're at the tail end of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, and we're expecting a new five year authorization come October. And at that time, sometimes there are changes to programs. Like this past time, there was a lot more discretionary programs. The time before, there were maybe less discretionary programs. So anytime that we experience something like that, there may be changes in our federal fund codes.

[Renee Vordeaux (Consultant to AOT)]: And I would ask Renee to chime in if there's really any changes that need to be done in SARs on back end of that. No. In terms of the framework in SARs itself, it functions exactly the same. It's just federal appropriation codes that change and which projects would be tied to those federal appropriations within the system itself. So, main framework of it is intact and functions the same.

[Lisa Gaughan (JFO IT Consultant)]: Lisa, one of the issues that we really wanted to talk about was the reason that STARS wasn't integrated into VISION to start. And it's our understanding that it was based on the level of granularity that needed to be tracked in STARS for February reporting. Could you speak a little bit about that?

[Jada Morse (Director of Administration, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: Sure. So my understanding is that there is capability in the current vision system for the level of granularity, but we do not have the appropriate modules in order to do that. And in the future solution, we anticipate that we will be able to get to the level of granularity. We've given our Workday team, the project team as a whole, the level of granularity that we need to achieve, and they've said that they can accomplish it. We've seen it be successful in Georgia DOT, and therefore, we anticipate that we wouldn't have any issues as well.

[Renee Vordeaux (Consultant to AOT)]: Thank you. We

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: dragged okay. So we got through through the first two paragraphs of your memo?

[Jada Morse (Director of Administration, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: Yeah. If you could talk a little bit

[Rep. Bram Kleppner (Member)]: Back we go. On a few more. Okay. So we've covered the component of

[Jada Morse (Director of Administration, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: the gap analysis with Federal Highway Administration, the cognizant agency. FHWA is the cognizant agency for us. We do plan to bring their resource center in. They have about a six month lead time right now, given all of the resource constraints at our federal partner level. So we have worked with our district administrator at Federal Highway to say we have this project. We're ready to get going. We'd like to set up a meeting. So our first meeting with them is going to be this Friday, and then we'll be planning from there on who needs to be involved from the Federal Resource Center and how do we connect them with the project team and when is the right time with our project team of digital services, AOA, all of the the consultants and contractors that are working on the project to be able to wrap that into the project schedule. So we've had really good experience working with our Workday partner with Guidehouse and not we haven't worked as closely with a team, but we've spent a lot of time with them in the last couple of weeks getting to know each other and starting the planning for what's next cause they would be our partner through the gap analysis. The rest of I'm I'm I'm using your term, Lisa, what comes after the gap. What we what we've said of is our gap analysis, and then the outcome of that is the continued analysis of a deeper dive into our requirements and where we might need to look at our business processes differently. So I had included a little bit on when STARS was implemented, And if we wanna talk about the history of that, we have Renee who was here with the implementation of STARS at the very first

[Lisa Gaughan (JFO IT Consultant)]: time it was implemented. So she knows all of

[Jada Morse (Director of Administration, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: the things about our products, both MAPS and STARS. We do feel that the the two year time frame is aggressive, but with the right resourcing and the commitment from the partner agencies and our contracting and vendor team, digital services, and AOA, I do believe it can be successful. I've worked on incredibly aggressive technology projects in my past life, and we can do it if we set our mind to it and if we make the commitment. So I have every confidence that we'll be successful with delivering this project as well. Costs of our current systems. So, I can't speak to the cost of the future system. It's not my wheelhouse, but our current systems, we're paying about $50,000 a year to sustain the MAT systems, and that's just our ABS time. And then we're looking at a little over 1,000,000 annually for STARS to keep it alive as well. And that's a combination of contracts and I guess, contracted services as well. So we have some contracted services through digital service and a couple of staff members that are able to provide technical support. And then we have Renee. The coding of that is an or I don't wanna say archaic because I feel like that may be it's not accurate, but it's it's is a term that is Integrative. Yes.

[Renee Vordeaux (Consultant to AOT)]: Yeah. Starz was actually the program itself was written in 1974. And it was implemented in July 1993. I started with the state in 'ninety two, so I grew up with this. And it is a complete mainframe system, as you can imagine. There's no cute little icons that you click. It's all function keys and update. It's archaic in today's world, in today's modern world. But it has, I think the original cost of stars was around 4 or 5,000,000. Pretty good return on investment for 30. We were able to actually modify it from the state's FEMA system prior to vision. We were able to modify SARs to meet the new vision system, meet the vision upgrade 9.2 and also the VTHR which is another fairly significant modification for STARS. Then most recently was the VT5 system in which we integrate back and forth with as well. That was a pretty fairly modification to STARS II. And we went through a FHWA. They made a significant modification to their FEMA system about eight, nine years ago that STARS had to meet the requirements as well. But it is completely table driven. It is run now a database and natural program, which

[Rep. R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: is,

[Renee Vordeaux (Consultant to AOT)]: Kevin, ADS can attest is quite old and archaic. Not only are you losing AOT's STAR's institutional knowledge, people are retiring out. I came back specifically to work on the BT Bias and ERP project for AOT. But you're also losing ADS support, programming support, because those languages are just hard to find people who could support those programming languages nowadays. So, that's another factor I think that weighs into all this as well. It's a really big risk for us. It's a really big

[Jada Morse (Director of Administration, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: It's the resourcing and the support. Lifting along is a reality for us and we're doing everything that we can to pursue the ERP system as well as alternatives. I think the last paragraph kind of touches a little bit more on one thing I didn't mention yet. Although we have looked at all of the requirements of the mats and the star systems, we know that there might be some functionality that we use in the mat system now that does not translate to workday. And I had a whole list in the back of my head, and now I'm kind of drawing blank on it when I'm sitting here at the table. There's some equipment and equipment tracking. There's our job order contract tracking. They weren't intended like, that functionality isn't intended to be part of an ERP solution. It's something that was specifically built with our three state DOTs to meet the functions of our maintenance asset tracking system. So we are looking at where we can put some of the other functionality. One of the systems we've been looking at is VMS or Vermont Asset Management Information System. We're using that now for our highway system. My team uses it for tracking our facilities. AOT has over 450 unique facility structures across the state. So all of those assets are their assets as well. They're in our Vermont Vermont Asset Management Information System or VTrans Asset Management Information System, depending on how you wanna take the beat. And this could be a place for a little bit of the functionality that we're using for our maintenance asset tracking system to go into as well. And then we'll look at BT buys or Salesforce. There are other products that we have or something else, but those conversations are are part of what's next for us. They're they're what's happening this week, next week, the rest of May, June, July with our partners and the project team to understand exactly where we need to parse out and what can we keep in the future workday. That's that's the the bulk, I think, of what I have to share. I'm happy to answer any other questions. Lisa? So

[Lisa Gaughan (JFO IT Consultant)]: I think that that obviously, the case for stars and VARs at labor, very compelling and that's in the need to replace that. That was never anything I questioned in my analysis or saw any reason to. So the question I have is really where where this analysis sits in the timeline for making the determinations of what's a gap and what's not between the systems that you have and the functionality that you require and and Workday, and like you said, the plan for using other existing state systems. So originally, this was described to us as something that would be available at the end of a four month business process reengineering effort that vendor was doing, the first vendor. And then it was it was pushed back and we still haven't been able to see that. We had developed an agreement for ongoing oversight risk responses for reporting back on, you know, what's the alignment look like? What do you what other new integrations do you need? How do you think you'll get to that? And what the plan is? And that timeline was getting pushed back. So what we're after, and I know there's new contract negotiations going on, I think at that time what we would like to see is when will you know on on what what that alignment is? And I know it's a question for you, but also for for ADS. So we're very interested in what that timeline will be and what that looks like because it we thought it would be delivered. We're told it would have been delivered by this time, and it hasn't. So that's that's the concern.

[Renee Vordeaux (Consultant to AOT)]: So

[Jada Morse (Director of Administration, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: I'm not sure how to answer your question.

[Lisa Gaughan (JFO IT Consultant)]: Yeah. So I I guess we we will hear about the new timeline when the contract negotiation is done and when that information will be available.

[Kevin Vanyo (Agency of Digital Services)]: You're talking about moving from a multiphase approach to a single go live approach, that timeline?

[Lisa Gaughan (JFO IT Consultant)]: Yes. Will be when you're in negotiation.

[Renee Vordeaux (Consultant to AOT)]: I'm sorry, didn't hear the It'll

[Kevin Vanyo (Agency of Digital Services)]: be after negotiations. So when the amendment is drafted and ready to sign, it will be well as written under I think it's under statute now. We will do within three days of those changes, and I would like to make sure that the committee chairs have access to it and does while before driving your signature. So you would have visibility.

[Renee Vordeaux (Consultant to AOT)]: Thank you. Yeah.

[Rep. Bram Kleppner (Member)]: Is this, project on your dashboard? I don't didn't see it in there.

[Kevin Vanyo (Agency of Digital Services)]: It is ERP under AOA.

[Rep. Bram Kleppner (Member)]: Oh, under AOA.

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: Additional questions, comments, thoughts? Yeah. I'm

[Renee Vordeaux (Consultant to AOT)]: just curious about how many people this involves in in your department. Like, do you

[Jada Morse (Director of Administration, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: have embedded project team members? So we have about 470 employees that use these systems on a daily basis. As

[Renee Vordeaux (Consultant to AOT)]: far

[Jada Morse (Director of Administration, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: as the project team, I've been representing the agency on the steering committee, and then we have PLT or project leadership team members. We have two, one for each work stream. And when I say work stream, I'm talking human capital management and financials. So our CFO is involved, and then we have somebody that's working from one of our other teams as our HR lead. And then we have a couple of other folks engaged. As far as out throughout the entire organization, as with any change, we have change agents that are we're looking at two or three from each department. So the Department of Motor Vehicles, and then we have four divisions that are part of the organization. Five divisions that are part of the organization. We just split up district maintenance and fleet. So as we're looking at at the impact of this, we need more information before we're gonna start really bringing a lot of people in, but there has to be buying for for a change like this. So as we're looking at messaging, we look at myself as the the leader within the team, our project management, and our PM team and PLT members. This may change as we go forward. You know, I don't know what the structure is gonna look like, but we've been at the table having some conversations with AOA, with ADS, with our guide house and the team partners, and and Workday. And we'll do whatever is needed. We have anyone that's entering time could eventually be a change agent for this. Anyone that's involved leadership wise from a deputy at one of our divisions to our CFO to the finance manager at DMV, they're all engaged and and part of the conversations about how are we gonna make this transition and what does it look like for us? What are our questions? What are our challenges? How can we help? You know, how can we be involved to make sure that this is successful? Because I'm not the only one that's sitting here saying this is a problem. Our entire finance team of 42 people is saying, how are you going to help me get into the new future? And how are you going to get me a new system? And they all wanna be part of the team. So when when we're talking about, you know, what does it look like, I think what it looked like for the last couple years is going to be very different than what it looks like going forward because we are going to commit the resources that are necessary for the success of the project. So if AOA or ADS comes to us and says, you need to commit this. This is the org chart that we have for our project team, and you need to find these folks within your organization, these types of of of people to perform these types of functions. We will find those people, and we will make it happen. It's so important to ask with that. Like, this Federal money is at risk for us, and that is more than 50% of our budget. So it's and this is a nonnegotiable project as far as I'm concerned.

[Renee Vordeaux (Consultant to AOT)]: And that's why you also need that backstop. At the

[Jada Morse (Director of Administration, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: same time, you have a shadow backup Yeah.

[Renee Vordeaux (Consultant to AOT)]: That you need to also devote the help to.

[Jada Morse (Director of Administration, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: Wow. Bram Baylor?

[Rep. Bram Kleppner (Member)]: Have you looked has another state done all this already?

[Jada Morse (Director of Administration, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: So Georgia DOT has done both human capital management and financials. And then a couple of other states, I think we're at nine, that have done human capital management and two or three. I'm looking at ADS. I'm sorry.

[Renee Vordeaux (Consultant to AOT)]: I'm not being told directly at you.

[Jada Morse (Director of Administration, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: Fine. Verify that that so I've had conversations with Maine, with Georgia, with a couple of our Midwestern friends that have have implemented components of Workday or done the full system, and it's it's game changing for

[Renee Vordeaux (Consultant to AOT)]: them. Yep.

[Rep. Bram Kleppner (Member)]: So you will be taking their input or looking at their systems and saying, let's we need this.

[Jada Morse (Director of Administration, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: I'm meeting with Georgia DOT tomorrow as well just to find out what we don't know yet now that it's been we have regularly scheduled check ins with Georgia, so I meet with them, like, every two or three months, depending on what our our schedules allow.

[Rep. R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: So you mentioned that Maine is using Workday already. Did did you say that? Yes. They're not paying. That's the main transportation of Maine, DOT, whatever that whatever it's called.

[Jada Morse (Director of Administration, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: I think it might be statewide for them to use Houston Capital Management.

[Renee Vordeaux (Consultant to AOT)]: Yeah. And

[Rep. R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: New Hampshire, which New Hampshire

[Jada Morse (Director of Administration, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: New Hampshire is still on the Mats product for now as far as I know.

[Rep. R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: No. Don't know what their plans are. Because the three states had were sharing the old system.

[Renee Vordeaux (Consultant to AOT)]: We have. Yeah. Yeah.

[Kevin Vanyo (Agency of Digital Services)]: In New Hampshire, their ERP system is running out of a different office. They are sticking with the state platform that they have today, which was, I think just an upgrade for them. Their transportation requirements are managed outside of their ERP system.

[Renee Vordeaux (Consultant to AOT)]: Good morning.

[Rep. Christopher Morrow (Member)]: When did your agencies first start looking at upgrading or changing this system given its antiquated nature?

[Jada Morse (Director of Administration, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: So for masks, I'm gonna predate myself in my current position. I work for VII when VII, Department of Innovation and Information, existed. And at that time, we were looking at a VAPS upgrade. It was still part of the Tri State partnership. We were trying to move VAPS into the the online version of maps so that it would be accessible in a different way instead of just on your physical computer wherever you went. And then we ended up pulling out of that. So we've been trying to upgrade where are we talking about? I'm thinking it was maybe February. I'm terrible with dates when it comes to where I was at a particular time, but somewhere around that.

[Rep. Christopher Morrow (Member)]: And the STARS program?

[Renee Vordeaux (Consultant to AOT)]: So STARS, at least twice. We looked at it in twenty fifteen-sixteen, is where our requirements came from that we met with ADS Guidehouse. Prior to that, we did a look at in 2009 when we upgraded to VTHR systems at the time to remove it. That's the year it was for meds. And I don't know what the year on the STARS, complete STARS replacement would have been before 2009. Yeah. Sorry.

[Rep. Christopher Morrow (Member)]: Yeah. Just checking in. So the the requirements for STARS you're using currently are from ten years ago. Is that what you just said?

[Renee Vordeaux (Consultant to AOT)]: We use that as a basis and then review that and update it with any current processes that we are using now. We started at that. That was our starting point. Thank you.

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: I really appreciate your coming out of retirement to help with this.

[Renee Vordeaux (Consultant to AOT)]: I question this answer.

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: Yeah, so do I. And your institutional knowledge is so helpful. I just I am gonna share a story. I can't help myself. I just keep remembering this. I was on a summer task force for, you know, this vital piece of education funding widgetry, maybe five years ago, and we were in testimony and trying to figure out the deep, deep origins of something. And an amazing JFO analyst came out of retirement and found it in a cardboard box in her barn. And that was just so vermonte. I thought, you know, it was just amazing. And she came and, you know, we have the info we need, which is something along the lines of, well, you know, somebody suggested two and somebody suggested four, so the legislature picked three, which is

[Jada Morse (Director of Administration, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: Sounds great.

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: Yeah. Sounds about right. So alright. Any additional questions, anecdotes, stories from the past?

[Jada Morse (Director of Administration, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: Thank you very much for having us today.

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: Great, thanks so much. We have labor, VDALs coming in next week, I think, A similar convo. Alright, we can go offline. We've got a

[Rep. Christopher Morrow (Member)]: vote