Technology Project Plan

Project Plan Overview

University of Phoenix

Dolores Garcia

MGT/573: Project Management in the Business Environment

Professor Terry Norris

February 26, 2007

Project Plan Overview

Los Angeles County Department of Public Social Services has been struggling to accomplish a well organized computer system that was supposed to minimize the work of the employees, minimize the consumption of paper, decrease the number of errors and make the service for the customer faster. The bid for a newer, innovative and technological system began at $1 million dollars in 1995 (www.articles.com) . Many contractors sought the opportunity to make the County's dream come true. In this paper, I will attempt to describe a proposed project that will enable the County to fulfill the need for a faster service, more accurate, cutting unnecessary paper work for the employees and the lowest possible cost.

The Los Angeles County Department of Public Social Services has attempted to develop a computer system that will connect to Federal Systems, State and local integrated systems to cross reference individuals across the nation. Bidding for the project began in 1990 where 10 contractors were chosen to debate a better cost efficient computer system for the County. Some of the competitors involved Unisys, Maximus and other private entities. Unisys was chosen to pick up the challenge. The proposal promised to have the system up and running within 1 year, minimizing error, expediting document turn around and cutting paper work for the employees. Three years later it was discovered by an undeclared source that what had been promised was far a way from reality and remained just that a "dream". What began at $1 million dollars, had escalated to 7 million dollars in the period span of 3 years. What makes this more incredible is that Unisys was nowhere near finishing the compounding task after the promised year. Two years later Unisys wanted to relinquish the contract to his runner up but it was too late. Los Angeles County Department of Public Social Services had already trained over 5,000 employees and 50 offices were scheduled to go up on line to test the system. The system was a night mare that created chaos for everyone. At the end of the project the County had used over $17 million dollars out of tax payer's money. The system was a total failure because it created confusion, more paper work (trouble tickets were written when the system failed to accept an entry) and management was forced to continue having the paper trail in order to ensure the employee and the customer were not at wrong.

The project I recommend is to implement different subcontractors that will do the paper work and all the data entry for the worker. This project will ensure quickness, accuracy, efficiency and less paper work for the employee. At the same time, it ensures that the customer will be happy when he/she receives his/hers benefits on a timely manner rather than having to wait for the worker to get to this customer's order and input the request in the system.

The Los Angeles County Department of Public Social Services mission statement declares that it is "to enrich lives through effective and caring service" by implementing a more accurate computer system, one that will be linked nationally, a customer can be better served.

I currently represent M&M Contractors and I have a proposal to give regarding the computer system to elevate the quality of work for the employees and the customers. The computer system that has been developed by my company, proposes a great deal of interface computer systems with three major computer screens, CMIPS, MIPS and WIPS (this will be performed by subcontractors giving the County workers, the chance to focus on other tasks and issues relating to their duties and daily tasks). This computer system has been designed to ensure that the information originally entered at the time the customer applied, is established in the three major screen systems. Since there are relationship issues with whom the customer lives, verification of income (and/or other income such as cash), number of household members (this number often changes as boyfriends move out, children are born, grandparents expired and the like), the system needs to be able to identify these relationships and cancel them upon a change. By changing the household composition the amount of the award-Welfare benefits will change. This system will prevent over payments and/or under payments. At the same time, it will begin the 5 year time limit according to Welfare Reform rules which were established in 1996 (www.laco.gov) . The computer system will automatically generate a notice to notify the customer of the given changes within the legal time line of 10 business days. Moreover, the system will nationally cross check this particular customer to ensure that he/she is not receiving awards elsewhere in the Country (Potential Welfare Fraud). These basic tasks are usually carried out by a worker. A worker usually carries a caseload of 200 customers. These customers report changes on a monthly basis. A worker is supposed to be aware of the potential fraud that can be committed if he/she does not pay attention to the documents that are needed to manually up date the system. It is almost impossible for a worker to tend to his daily responsibilities and still, manage to enter all the different changes customers request on a monthly basis. To avoid this chaos, my company proposes CMIPS; these issues have been discussed with the County's management and it has been understood that all the paper will be entered by a separate entity to assure proper entry.

MIPS is another system that will work together with CMIPS to ensure the proper identification number has been given by Medi-Cal, Welfare, Welfare to Work Programs, Cal Learn, to name a few. MIPS being less complicated than CMIPS but dealing more with policies and regulations and other non profit resources, promises accuracy, effectiveness and quickness. This system detects