Child Care Administrator’s Improper Payments Information Technology Guide

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B. Preparing for a Procurement

State Agencies must adequately prepare for the procurement of IT products and services in order to mitigate risk and avoid cost overruns. The following section discusses important steps to take to prepare for procurement, including defining the business or service needs, identifying solutions and constraints, and deciding on the most appropriate procurement method.

1. Defining Business and Service Needs

The first and most important step in the procurement process is defining and clearly stating the business and service needs. Even if the State executes all other aspects of the procurement process flawlessly, misstated needs can lead to a less than desirable outcome. The development of information technology products follows a disciplined and structured path that begins with a clear definition of business and service needs. This needs gathering and assessment effort requires involvement by many different stakeholders to ensure meeting all of the States’ needs. Once the team articulates and prioritizes its requirements, a formal “statement of needs” document can be created and referenced throughout the development effort. A useful needs statement focuses on desired outcomes rather than technical requirements, incorporates both short- and long-term goals for the requested solution, and defines the criteria on which a State bases its acceptance or rejection.

The next step in the process is developing user requirements, which transform business objectives into statements that describe a system condition or capability. System design follows the user requirements phase. After the system design phase, product development occurs, followed by testing and implementation. The industry commonly refers to the above phases the system development life cycle.

Taking adequate time to define the business or service needs pays off in the long run. The cost of making changes increases as the project moves through the system development life cycle. For example, adding a new requirement (e.g., adding functionality to the eligibility determination system to determine whether an applicant is currently receiving Temporary Assistance for Needy Families [TANF] or Food Stamps) after system development and testing is significantly more expensive than making the change to the user requirements at the beginning. Changing a requirements document may take minutes or at most hours, while changing the systems design document, software code, test scripts, and user manuals could take days or weeks.

Involving multiple stakeholders in a structured needs assessment process facilitates the development of an accurate and comprehensive statement of needs. A stakeholder is any person or organization interested in or impacted by the project. In general, it is better to cast a wide net, include as many stakeholders as possible, and then prioritize needs. For projects that support child care subsidy or quality programs, key stakeholders include at least the following: end users (e.g., local child care staff, child care providers, financial management staff, subsidy recipients, and fraud workers), State program and policy staff, IT business analysts, and an information security officer.

Effective methodologies for assessing needs include Joint Application Design (JAD) sessions, structured interviews, job shadowing, prototype review and comment, and surveys. JAD sessions should be led by an experienced, skilled facilitator, and include as many stakeholders as possible. While it is important to include representatives from as many stakeholder groups as possible, it is not necessary (and often not desirable) to hold JAD sessions with all stakeholders participating at the same time. For large projects or those that have many stakeholders, it is common to run multiple JAD sessions.

Structured interviews may be effective for senior management, including the Chief Information Officer (CIO), Division Director, and Commissioner/Secretary, to help clarify their expectations and identify any other planned policy, program, or enterprise technology changes that may affect the design and implementation of the system.

Survey research helps capture the magnitude of opinion, something not captured by having representatives participate in a JAD session. For example, a local child care worker representative participating in a JAD session may express a need unique to the experience of her Agency. A survey of all local child care workers across the State may reveal that the articulated need is not universal.

When defining needs, it is important to limit the scope to articulating the specific business objectives and avoid making decisions about how to meet those objectives. For example, there may be a need to track time and attendance of each child in subsidized child care. When expressing this need, it would not be appropriate to name a solution such as a web portal for providers to record time and attendance or a card system for use by parents or providers.