Approve third amendment to Agreement No. 18-142 with Northwoods Consulting Partners, Inc. to add funding in the amount of $5,940 for 2023-24 for a new contract maximum of $1,511,787 for the period of July 1, 2018 through June 30, 2024; and to update and clarify language in the agreement, for the provision of lobby management and customer appointment scheduling systems. (No general fund impact) (Sullivan)

Approve third amendment to Agreement No. 18-142 with Northwoods Consulting Partners, Inc. to add funding in the amount of $5,940 for 2023-24 for a new contract maximum of $1,511,787 for the period of July 1, 2018 through June 30, 2024; and to update and clarify language in the agreement, for the provision of lobby management and customer appointment scheduling systems.

On May 30, 2018, the County entered into an agreement with Northwoods Consulting Partners, Inc. for the provision of lobby management and customer appointment scheduling services. These services are critical to the core operations of the Health and Human Services Agency (HHSA) Service Center Branch for providing vital services to HHSA’s welfare service programs.

On June 25, 2019, the Board of Supervisors (BOS) approved an amendment that increased funding in the Agreement allowing for HHSA to make IT upgrades that enhanced customer service experience. These enhancements allowed for a migration of compass servers, SQL servers and test/development servers from Windows 2008 to Windows 2016. The funding also allowed for an additional ten capture stations for document imaging and content management system. HHSA has made significant financial investments in this system.

This system is critical to operations and are necessary to manage the large volume of customer appointments. The system serves as the primary appointment scheduling program for the Service Centers branch. Extending support for this highly developed legacy system is needed to allow efforts to enhance and develop functionality of the integrated CalSAWS replacement system and subsequent business processes.

HHSA recommends approval of this third amendment which will add additional funding to provide professional services, inclusive of server migration services of Compass Appointments from the County’s existing server to new server featuring Window Server 2019 and Microsoft SQL Server 2019, software upgrades, and system testing.

Performance Measures included in this Agreement are as follows:
The Performance Measures were included in the underlying Agreement and are not being revised at this time (see Attachment B Performance Measures).
HHSA confirms Northwoods Consulting has performed satisfactorily under this agreement. The system was utilized to schedule over 16,000 appointments and provide walk-in services to over 15, 000 customers.

County Counsel has approved this Agreement as to form.
Department of General Services, Procurement Division

The Contractor was selected by the County through a Request for Proposals issued on November 8, 2010 for Content Management professional services. For Lobby Management services, the County piggybacked on Contra Costa County Award Letter #1130 to the Contractor, issued after its selection through Contra Costa County EHSD RFP 1130. 

Services will continue under a single source approved by the Procurement Manager.

Procurement reviewed HHSA’s request and determined that it was in the best interest of the County to renew the agreement, based on satisfactory service/reasonable prices and to avoid the interruption of County business. Without sole source approval and renewal of the agreement with the vendor, the County would lose the ability to serve customers efficiently. Factors considered but were not limited to:

1) the effect nonrenewal of the agreement would have on the current application backlog; 2) the service center would need to reengineer business processes and workflows to use alternate tools that will not adequately fill the department’s needs; 3) the loss of critical functionality re data for appointments and lobby management; 4) the loss of data used to track and monitor employee performance. Without approval services to customers will be severely impacted.