Hundreds of RFP/RFQs are let on a daily basis. Most focusing on documenting decades-old business processes and system transactions in excruciating detail that invariably result in the same “usual suspects” bidders with the “same old software”.
These RFPs are difficult (and expensive) to develop, evaluate, negotiate and administer let alone deliver as a project.
Rethink your business through the lens of business outcomes and customer engagement as opposed to “this is the way we have always done it”.
DRIVING VALUE FROM IT
UNLOCKING PETABYTES OF ENTERPRISE DATA
TO DRIVE CHANGE
A Nationally Acclaimed State
Enterprise Data Analytics Initiative
Top 10 State
Opportunity
This State maintains more than 1,600 IT systems which span and address the needs of Health and Human Services, Business and Industry, Administration and Finance, Public Safety and Criminal Justice and Infrastructure and the Environment. These IT systems organize and support State Agencies in delivering services to the citizens and businesses of the State as well as serve as vital linkages between the public and the State to seek help and assistance, start and grow businesses, obtain services, work and live statewide. The use of State data assets to increase the well-being of citizens, their health, their property, security, livelihood and prosperity is essential.
In aggregate, these systems maintain a wealth of data and historically have been commissioned and operated expressly to serve the purposes of Agencies. Unlocking this data would allow the State to identify and drive meaningful social change to make a difference for the citizens of the State – fixing communities, restoring hope to those most in need, identifying inefficiencies, creating jobs and economic growth, adjusting policies, and predicting and preparing for otherwise unexpected events.
The challenge for our client was how best to organize this data into information, identify meaningful social applications and develop policies and programs to focus the State on what is most important to citizens. In realizing this challenge, there are several opportunities that present themselves that will require coordination, consideration and resolve to design and orchestrate a program that delivers results for our citizens. Better use of the vast data, analytical resources and talent pool in our university systems and across the State must be applied to pressing problems such as poverty reduction, job creation, infant mortality and bettering our environment.
In consideration of these State systems and the data they maintain, there is an extraordinary opportunity in performing sharing, unification and analysis of the underlying data sets by placing them under the lens of advanced analytical tools, data scientists, State program experts and policymakers that are now possible and commonly available across the State and the country.
Our Role
Slatethorn has collaborated with the Office of Information Technology, several cabinet Agencies and the Office of the Governor to identify and implement this profound opportunity to do good in the State.
We designed and implemneted a unique, cross-agency collaboration for a first-of-its kind procurement that includes: data sharing and privacy agreements, hybrid private/state cloud analytics platforms, and an innovative sourcing approach designed to contract with hundreds of eminent data analytics firms nationally to use State data for public good as well as to foster a next generation economic development engine.
Results
As a result of or work, the State enjoys a pool of more than 70 expert firms across a dozen categories of focus including: Life sciences; criminal justice; waste fraud and abuse; insurance and risk management; government process optimization; transportation; education; public safety and the environment to name a few.
In 2017 and 2018, the client launched more than a dozen data analytics projects, many involving multiple agencies with shared interest in solving societal problems such as infant mortality, the opioid crisis, combatting tax fraud and other statewide priorities.
BUILDING TRUST
BETWEEN GOVERNMENT AND CITIZENS
A Top 10 State
Enterprise Identity, Access Management
and Fraud Detection
Opportunity
In the wake of several data breaches effecting governmental entities nationally, Slatethorn conducted an analysis of several large Cabinet Agencies to better understand system capabilities to manage user identities, identify personal information and financial fraud origins and defenses and methods to better protect sensitive data maintained in the State’s IT systems portfolio. The goal of this initiative is to specify, design and implement a core set of capabilities as an Enterprise Framework to allow Individuals (citizens and businesses) and State Agencies (employees and State workers) to utilize secure, efficient, easy-to-use, and interoperable identity solutions to access State online services and applications in a manner that promotes confidence, privacy, choice, and innovation.
Our Role
In addition to the aforementioned analysis, Slatethorn engaged several Cabinet Agencies to identify meaningful pilot projects to implement:
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Definitive Identity Proofing for citizens and businesses using the State's licensing, revenue/fee collection and tax portals;
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Include 2 Factor Authentication (2FA) in these systems as well as within the State's ERP and trusted Cloud Infrastructure systems; and
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Implement a programmatic identity/access fraud analytics platform to help the State identify unapproved or inappropriate access attempts to State systems.
As part of the work, and in concert with developing the State's strategy and RFP for this initiative, Slatethorn engaged Cabinet Agency CIOs and business stakeholders to gain critical buy-in to the effort that will serve as the basis for all new systems deployments throughout the State.
Concurrent with the sourcing of this solution, the State decided to apply for a Federal grant opportunity issued by NIST for The National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace (NSTIC) to conquer different issues with digital identities, collaborate across state boundaries and leverage national standards in creating, managing and implementing trusted identities maintained in State systems.
Results
As a result of this $15M+ initiative, in 2017 our client has:
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Implemented Identity and 2FA in several of its most important public facing systems (Licensing, Gateway and Tax), and in 2018 implemented ID/AM for core ERP and Office Applications;
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Saved more than $5M / year as a result of moving to a cloud-based Identity Service Provider for Identity Proofing;
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Implemented a comprehensive Identity / Access fraud analytics platform (also cloud-based) to stop identity and password hackers in their tracks.
In addition, our client was successful in obtaining a $2.97M grant from NIST to accelerate this initiative and conquer different issues with digital identities - one of only 2 states to be acknowledged nationally for its work.
A Top 5 State
Unlocking Enterprise Agility While Protecting Enterprise Assets
NEXT GENERATION NETWORKS
TAKING THE GUESSWORK OUT OF SECURE NETWORKING
Opportunity
Our client approached us with a difficult challenge. Their world class network was the envy of their industry: connecting hundreds of offices domestically; the on/off ramp to major cloud infrastructure, platform and software providers; hosting thousands of websites and applications, some internal and some external. At issue for our client was how to turn this network into a competitive advantage to drive next generation business models such as Internet of Things, Mobile Applications and Blockchain/Distributed Ledger applications. The challenge was that the network was a patchwork of semi-managed segments, each implemented with different security standards, network equipment and supported by workers that were not equipped with modern standards and software defined tools. Every time the network was changed it involved a carefully rehearsed and manual set of processes that traversed more than 50 firewalls, multiple load balancers, various service providers both internal and external to our client. While a server could be provisioned in hours, making it “live” on the network took weeks. The net security hardening and posture was always “anyone’s guess” until a penetration/ vulnerability test was scheduled.
Our Role
We developed an innovative strategy to seek a managed network and security provider to create a “single pane of glass” to provide the definitive assurance that the clients network is pervasive, available, secure and seamless. The Managed Network and Security Service that we specified is designed to be the vital bridge between client locations, data center elements and a variety of public cloud application and service platforms with a “cloud of clouds” design element to foster secure networking regardless of where or how the client chooses to implement applications and services – on premise, hybrid, public cloud or via distant service providers.
Our managed network service design includes:
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Optimization of WAN paths between client-owned network and public cloud through a true software defined network;
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Implementation of a standards-based IP v4/v6 and Naming methodology that enables seamless on-premise and cloud compute across multiple autonomous internal customers and locations;
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Ensure optimal security controls by leveraging both client-owned network security operations and native public cloud-based security;
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Extending WAN to regional location to enable true edge compute and IoT “onramps”
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Establishing a methodology to quickly establish network paths to ensure easy on-boarding of new applications, services and trading partners.
On the security front, the service includes:
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Managed Intrusion Detection, Management and Prevention;
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Security Threat Analysis using Analytics and Machine Learning in addition to common white/black list methods;
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Security Emergency Response;
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Security Vulnerability Identification;
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Remediation Assistance Services;
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Improving coordination and communication when a cyber security event is underway and to bring all tools and resources to bear on the event; and
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Security tools that are applied and deployed in the most effective, efficient, repeatable and scalable manner and as to provide a maximal level of defense against inappropriate access to client assets.
Results
This service is anticipated to go live in late 2019 and will result in an industry first software defined networking managed service that drives cross cloud connectivity and transparency.
The service is designed around a NIST standards based implementation and all connected assets that communicate via the customers virtual wide area network to data centers and computing concentrations will be actively managed and monitored for intrusions 24x365.
As a result, this client will enjoy harmonized network and cyber security solutions for their enterprise, not as a collection of network elements, in support of all levels of requirements, new customer prospects, and as a model to their peers.
Two Top 10 States
MAINFRAME AS A SERVICE
TEACHING AN OLD DOG NEW TRICKS
Opportunity
Slatethorn were engaged by two very large clients independently in 2018 to develop strategies for their mainframe environments inclusive of core processing, storage, disaster recovery/alternative processing, OS utilities and licensed software. Each of these clients shared similar dynamics: fixed investment in the frames; declining, but still mission critical processing requirements for very large applications; variable processing requirements comprising batch and online; increasingly expensive OS and 3rd party licenses. Each client required in excess of 7,000 MIPS that support production and non-production multi-tenant environments. Both of these clients wanted cost effective and elastic solutions that scale capacity up (based on workload) and costs down based on efforts to modernize legacy of Mainframe applications into cloud and “as a Service” compute models. The fundamental goal of both was "how to sure that the last application on the mainframe is not stranded with unreasonable costs to operate?”.
Our Role
Slatethorn practitioners were engaged to perform a comprehensive review of each client’s mainframe environment, inclusive of: labor, operations, licensing, maintenance, security and networking costs. We also reviewed the long-term plans of these clients to replace, retire or continue to operate their mainframe applications into the 21st century. We determined that moving mainframe workloads to modern systems/infrastructures for these clients a non-trivial effort involving multi-year, multi-tens/hundreds of million dollar investments to support such transformational projects. Due to this effect, the mainframe environments in these clients were determined to likely remain as a requirement for the foreseeable future, however, the method of operating mainframes may lend itself to a Mainframe as a Service (MFaaS) offering to relieve CapEx and onerous licensing costs – both core to the “last man standing” issue both clients faced. We designed a comprehensive “Mainframe as a Service” (MFaaS) strategy to move these clients from a CapEx model to an OpEx model that provided elastic mainframe services on demand and moving to an “as a Service” model to liberate exposure to recurring maintenance, support, licensing and refresh costs for the declining mainframe assets.
Results
Slatethorn developed strategies for each of these clients to recast on-premise mainframes and associated Backup/DR as a pure “as a Service” set of requirements while complying with data protection laws and standards. As part of our work we included innovative leaseback/buyout of existing mainframe capacity and their removal from our clients fixed asset portfolio as well as the exposure to future capacity upgrades/reductions and tech refreshes.
We designed MFaaS contracts to “rightsize” capacity to leave no stranded LPARs or technical capacity as customers migrate to more modern systems at all times – and free up necessary capital to rehost/retire and modernize these applications. Additionally, we developed comprehensive requirements to optimize workloads, recompile executables and consolidate/retire LPARs to drive simplification of the client environments and reduce OS utility and 3rd party license costs. As part of the work, we included mainframe utilities and tools (e.g., CA, IBM, BMC and others) for consideration for standardization and consolidation, replacement / retirement as part of the solution as these are key drivers of “hidden costs” of operating complex mainframe environments.
One of our clients has reduced their overall cost of operations from $34M to $11.7M per year, and we anticipate the other one will enjoy similar savings when this work is awarded later in 2019.
eGOVERNMENT@24/7
ENTERPRISE eLICENSING
Top 10 State
Opportunity
Our client wanted to an Enterprise eLicensing system for the application, renewals, enforcement and inspections of a variety of professional and operating Licenses for the State's Agencies, Boards and Commissions across more than 700 professional and business licenses for nearly a million licensees administered by the State. As part of this initiative, the State wanted to dramatically increase the ease of use, features/functions and end user experience for licensed professionals and businesses statewide.
As part of this opportunity, the State determined that this was a superb opportunity to break from the past and leverage a modern cloud platform to move these systems into the 21st century and offer access 24/7 on mobile devices and tablets as well as traditional computer based access.
Our Role
Slatethorn's market research and strategy work positioned our client as one of the most individual/business friendly States in the country to start and operate a business or get licensed, and resulted in a flexible and easy-to-use licensing process from both the State’s perspective (operations and maintenance) and an end-user perspective (simpler, more efficient license filings and renewals). Our research and strategy included a comprehensive analysis of functional requirements and successes in the licensing space both from a platform and “as a Pure Service” perspective and resulted in the development of, migration to and use of a cloud (Software as a Service - SaaS) platform that resulted in standardization of the State’s approach to eLicensing based on a configurable platform; removal of "programming based" custom software applications to a more "configuration driven" approach that allows the State, to more efficiently design and deploy new License categories while migrating from the legacy application set.
Results
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As of June 2017, more than 11 boards have adopted and implemented the solution, with more agencies to come under quarterly agile-SDLC releases.
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A recent survey of more than 4,500 end-users (licensees) say the system is far easier to use and more responsive than the legacy systems it replaced and rank the State licensing environment on par with some of the best applications on the web. Almost than 85% of the users cited the online experience has highly positive and 90% were able to complete their transaction in one session. Nearly 90% said the new system was far superior to the system it replaced.
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State employees design, configure, operate and maintain the eLicensing platform. The State has set a live example for the public sector that validates that a SaaS/Cloud platform is a viable and sustainable development and operating platform for eLicensing needs for all Agencies with regard to time to market, agility in responding to new or changing requirements and cost effective from a development and operations perspective.
Leading State
Lieutenant Governor, Department of Taxation and Information Technology
Business Filing and Tax Gateway
MAKING STARTING AND GROWING A BUSINESS EASIER
Opportunity
Established in 2002, the Gateway established a long term vision to become the primary hub for business interactions with the State.
This State's Gateway is an online destination where 500,000 - 600,000 business users submit transactions and payments for 23 different service areas. In 2009, a revision to the system went live as the first major release and update to the original system.
Since 2009, transaction volume on the gateway has increased as more service areas have come online, foundational and user-facing technology has evolved at a rapid pace, and the needs of the Gateway's end-users and the state agencies have changed. These factors have contributed to the State’s desire to modernize the Gateway.
In calendar year 2017, more than $18B in state and municipal revenue flowed through the Gateway via billions of transactions for more than a million businesses.
Our Role
Slatethorn collaborated with State stakeholders to develop and execute an innovative sourcing approach that resulted in an innovative re-imagining of the Gateway with a singular vision:
Make doing business in easy and efficient by providing e-Government services that are simple and secure
Based on this mission statement, Slatethorn developed an innovative RFP that was designed to create a consolidated hub for business activities in the State. Our strategy and sourcing approach encouraged a focus on the end-user experience, while providing the flexibility to serve state agency partners in a more efficient way and supporting the following objectives:
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Implement a clear customer journey for starting, managing, and growing a business in the State
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Establish a unified front-end (Ux) experience across agencies and partners
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Decrease the amount of time business users spend on compliance with the State
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Extend value-additive tools and information to businesses operating in the State
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Create an adaptable and scalable cloud platform that integrates with differentiated back-end systems
Results
Slatethorn introduced a set of new procurement processes to the State that (based on Innovative Competitive Dialog processes) we designed to inform the vendor marketplace of the opportunity, objectives, design/development considerations as well as the very real stakes associated with redeveloping a business facing system with multiple hundreds of thousands of users and multiple billions of dollars in transactions flowing through the system.
Following a hotly competed procurement process, a systems integrator and business change management vendor were selected to design and implement this system within and across the State. This system is being developed on a leading cloud platform as a service and went live in 2018, with internal integration improvements scheduled for early 2019.
Safe, Secure, Convenient
... and Digital
Top 10 State
Department of Public Safety
Next-Generation Driver's License,
Identity Card (RealID)
Opportunity
Our client, Department of Public Safety, Bureau of Motor Vehicles (BMV) sought a solution for the origination, verification, issuance and distribution of its next generation driver’s license and identification (DL/ID) document system as to compete an 8+ year old contract, continue compliance with Federal RealID Act requirements and position the State to utilize next-generation digital credentials that are under development for official forms of identification. Further, as part of this strategy, the State elected to move to a Central Issuance drivers license model as to gain access to industry best practices as they relate to the chain of custody of drivers license data, card production and citizen convenience.
Our Role
Slatethorn was selected by the State and worked closely with the BMV Registrar to research best practices in the industry as they relate to Federal and State requirements, card counterfeiting, citizen convenience and emerging mobile/digital standards.
As part of our work, Stonyhurst researched more than 26 State efforts that preceded our client, national and international card production standards and developed an innovative industry first RFP.
Every major vendor participated in a fair and objective evaluation process that afforded them opportunities to differentiate themselves through innovation, timeliness/responsiveness and incorporation of next-generation card features that will position the State as a national leader in DL/ID credentials, while realizing critical RealID requirements.
Results
The sourcing effort received six qualified offers from leading industry vendors that offer AAMVA/RealID compliant cards and resulted in the following outcomes:
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Significant Improvements in the Security, Integrity & Quality of the DL/ID card
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Reduction of Future Risk & Costs associated with card data gathering, security, card production, card dissemination and replacement/renewals;
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An increase to the Privacy & Security aspects of the system and processes associated with card production for State Residents
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A marked Improvement in the Auditing & Accountability of system, data and processes
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Better positioning of the State to offer convenience to the Public through the use of emerging digital technology solutions in the future
The new service went live in July of 2018 and garnered national awards for innovation and security.
A Top 3 State
Driving Better Relationships with Customers Digitally
HIGH VOLUME PRINT / MAIL SERVICES
REPOSITIONING CUSTOMER ENGAGEMENT IN THE 21st CENTURY
Opportunity
Our client was printing and mailing more than 300,000,000 impressions a year under a complex, multi-departmental operating model that included routine customer correspondence, certified and time-sensitive mailings, complex forms and layouts as well as secure legal documents that contained a variety of confidential health, criminal, legal and contractual information. From an industry perspective, Print/Mail services are widely diminishing in lieu of online statements, digital notifications and “paperless” environments, but our client’s print volumes in the public sector have remained stable indicating a significant opportunity to provide and service customers via digital communications as opposed to paper/mail based items - a significant opportunity for our client to re-engineer its print/mail approach.
Twenty first century customers have come expect a digital experience from cable companies, utility providers etc., why should the State be any different? Most printed pages result in a printed response which needs to be (potentially) keyed, filed, archived, destroyed (long term) – paper drives inefficient processes on both ends – origination and transactions – and is a waste of resources beyond the cost of paper, toner and first class mail, overnight shipping and other “paper based” means.
Our Role
Our client engaged us to perform an end-to-end assessment of their print/mail operations from a functional, technical, platform and cost perspective. While the client was at or near market on paper and mailing costs, many time and quality critical SLAs were not being met. Internal stakeholders were unhappy with the overall service independent of price and were seeking not only better service quality, but also a reduction in situ page counts.
To help drive quality and service transparency, we worked with our client to develop an industry leading contract and governance model that provides print/mail users direct transparency in print/output management, SLAs, queues, etc. to provide a more direct view of their print/mail workloads as well as the tools and talent to aggressively digitize documents and incent the managed service provider to reduce print/mail production at all costs by partnering with print mail stakeholders to drive a digital relationship with their customers.
We developed an innovative “digital/paperless” strategy better align with expectations on a “millennial, always connected” constituency as well as sustainable/green initiatives with the strategic rule of thumb: if you are using paper or PDFs you are not digital.
Results
We designed an innovative managed service offering to initiate a “war on paper” – particularly for those workloads that are better addressed through digital print and document management solutions (render, index, workflow, sign and transact) solutions, or elimination altogether.
This “war” aggressively seeks opportunities via customer facing websites to redirect print output to a digital form in all evolutions web presences and digital interaction methods (mobile/tablet apps) and move to a paperless operating model.
As part of the service, end-to-end assessments of print (particularly stuff/sort/mail) output to eliminate unnecessary communications, or superfluous communique that can be construed by customers as “more junk mail” and move to a healthy and digital relationship with customers akin to commercial leaders.
Additionally, for cost sensitive customers, we included in the service assessments of opportunities to move to monochrome output as opposed to full color to “trade down” on the cost per page metric as well as to simplify the print production line.
Our client has just started a “digital customer engagement” strategy to augment their existing informational and transactional portals in concert with application modernization, mainframe replacement and other enterprise initiatives. The client expects to reduce their printed output on the order of 10-15% per year, every year for the foreseeable future
TRANSFORMATIVE PUBLIC ASSISTANCE
OFFERING A SINGLE PANE OF GLASS TO THOSE IN NEED
Top 10 State
State Department of Medicaid
Integrated Eligibility System
Opportunity
This State presented Slatethorn the challenge of attempting to modernize 30+ year old systems to address the Affordable Health Care Act of 2012 (“ObamaCare”) Medicaid requirements. As part of adopting this legislation, the State was able to receive a 90% Federal match on the systems implementation effort – with the proviso that key program dates associated with “go-lives” were met.
Our Role
Slatethorn practitioners engaged the State Medicaid Agency and Department of Job and Family Services in the late stages of functional requirements and RFP development. In a three week period, a 3rd party developed RFP was re-engineered to be market ready, commercially reasonable, and include key managed service, systems development and security/privacy elements in its scope.
Using Slatethorn innovative practices, the State was able to successfully negotiate and award a $310M+, 3,000+ page contract in less than 8 work weeks and qualify for a 90% federal match.
Further, Slatethorn partnered with the State to develop an innovative Organizational Change Management RFP ($40M+) designed to: elevate the Department of Medicaid to a Cabinet-Level Agency and ensure that all 88 counties in the State were prepared to utilize the system on Day 1.
Finally, in concert with rigorous Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) standards, Slatethorn sourced an Independent Validation and Verification (IV&V) firm ($7M+) to perform critical program oversight functions.
Results
As a result of this initiative:
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The State delivered the technology to enable Affordable Care Act eligibility and expanded Medicaid in record time.
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Via the Project, $2.5 billion in extra Medicaid funds from the federal government benefited citizens.
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1,790,914 Individuals applied for Medicaid Benefits through the system and now have access to healthcare services through new channels and systems.
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Workers are able to use the system to process applications on time and deliver medical services to individuals despite unprecedented demand on the State.
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1.7 million individuals converted from the legacy system - all expected legacy covered children and families-CFC cases (existing enrollees who are eligible under a Medicaid category) were converted.