Approve second amendment to Agreement No. 18-142 with Northwoods Consulting Partners, Inc. to extend the term of the agreement through June 30, 2024; add funding in the amount of $66,327 for 2023-24 for a new contract maximum of $1,505,847 for the period of July 1, 2018 through June 30, 2024; and update and clarify language in the agreement, for the provision of lobby management and customer appointment scheduling systems. (No general fund impact) (Sullivan)

Approve second amendment to Agreement No. 18-142 with Northwoods Consulting Partners, Inc. to extend the term of the agreement through June 30, 2024; add funding in the amount of $66,327 for 2023-24 for a new contract maximum of $1,505,847 for the period of July 1, 2018 through June 30, 2024; and 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.

The contractor has been providing services to the County since 2010. 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.

Staff recommends approving this amendment as these services 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.

Approval of this amendment will continue allowing the Service Center branch to serve both walk-in customers and customers with scheduled appointments in an orderly and efficient manner. This system is critical to operations.
 

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. In 2002 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's Employment & Human Services Division (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 non-renewal of the agreement would have on the current application backlog; 2) the service center would need to re-engineer 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.