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37DAA8CFF822753787258362006D4F2F Hearing Summary




PUBLIC
BILL SUMMARY For UPDATE ON TRAILS MODERNIZATION PROJECT

JOINT COMMITTEE COMMITTEE ON JOINT TECHNOLOGY COMMITTEE
Date Dec 13, 2018      
Location SCR 352



Update on Trails Modernization Project - Committee Discussion Only


12:53:58 PM  
Sarah Wager, Director of the Office of
Administrative Services in the Colorado Department of Human Services (CDHS),
Minna Castillo Cohen, Director of the Office of Children, Youth, and Families
in CDHS, and Herb Wilson, Director of Health Information Services and the
Colorado Benefits Management System in OIT, came to the table to present
an update on the Trails modernization project.

Director Wilson provided an update on
the current Trails modernization project status.  Director Wilson
spoke about the history of the Trails modernization project.  He explained
that the modernization project is a five phase project and that the first
four phases have been completed so far, as follows:

  • Phase 1: security requirements, delivered
    in September 2017;
  • Phase 2: human trafficking functionality,
    delivered November 2017;
  • Phase 3: licensing and monitoring, delivered
    March 2018;
  • Phase 4: large release, including intake
    functionality for the hotline and referral; assessment functionality for
    safety and risk and development and trauma screening; case content for
    eminent risk; and fiscal content, delivered July 2018.



Director Wilson explained that the releases of the first three phases went
relatively well, while there were significant issues with the release of
phase 4 due to its scope.  He described the schedule of hot fixes
to remediate issues that were identified in the phase 4 release:

  • August 5, 2018, remediated 9 defects;
  • August 12, 2018, remediated 21 defects;
  • August 19, 2018, remediated 6 defects;
    and
  • August 24, 2018, remediated 4 defects.



In addition, Director Wilson spoke about service packs that were released
on September 16, which remediated 65 defects, and November 16, which remediated
97 defects.  Director Wilson spoke about counties' desires for the
department to deliver fixes faster, and in response, the department has
returned to a hot fix schedule, with fixes scheduled for release twice
per month, including on December 2, December 16, January 6, January 27,
February 10, February 24, March 10, and March 24.



Director Wilson spoke about the current status, including 74 identified
and prioritized items, including one critical priority item, 33 high priority
items, 35 medium priority items, and five low priority items.  Additionally,
32 other reports are currently under investigation.  These items are
prioritized and scheduled for remediation in cooperation with county trails
user groups, subject matter experts, program area representation, OIT,
and the vendor.




Director Wilson continued the presentation by discussing the corruption
that the reporting database experienced in October, which resulted in Trails
reports not being available for an extended period of time.  He spoke
about several lessons learned from this experience.  Additionally,
Director Wilson spoke about a coding mistake that was made during one of
the fixes released on November 7, related to referrals that mistakenly
included assessments.  He spoke about process changes being made to
prevent this from happening again in the future.  Finally, he spoke
about several issues that have occurred this fall related to outages of
the myCDHS portal.




Director Wilson discussed a communications plan review undertaken in collaboration
with counties, including strengthening internal communication, improving
access to existing materials and resources, creating more targeted and
digestible communications to meet various stakeholder needs, further defining
roll clarify between CDHS and OIT, and finding additional ways for Trails
users to get assistance.



Director Wilson discussed a request by OIT for $300,000 from the Technology
Advancement and Emergency Fund, which was granted and will be used to upgrade
the Trails database, hire a contract senior developer to assist in the
remediation of defects and the ticket backlog, and hire a contract analyst
to assist in categorizing, organizing, and prioritizing the ticket backlog.
 Director Wilson described that as of this morning, there are 3,263
tickets that need to be addressed.

01:08:16 PM  
Director Wilson responded to questions
from the committee related to the data scripting error that impacted assessments
and what safeguards have been put in place to ensure this doesn't occur
again.  Director Wilson described the change control process being
implemented, including having these scripted data fixes included in a change
management process where a change advisory board reviews the request and
the change.



Additionally, Director Wilson responded to a question related to the budgeting
for the additional FTE he described earlier and the fund being used.  



Director Castille Cohen and Director Wilson responded to additional questions
from the committee, including issues related to the hot fix related to
collateral contacts that is scheduled to be released on January 6, and
the anticipated timeline for reducing the ticket backlog.