A look at California’s eWIC project
Published: March 19, 2013
Contract AwardsSocial Services
California is undergoing a major initiative to implement a new Women, Infants and Children (WIC) electronic benefit transfer (EBT) system, titled eWIC. The goal of eWiC is to establish a solution tailored to the state’s technical and operational needs, while focusing on minimizing costs, complexity and business process changes at the state, retail food store and local agency level. The state’s legacy WIC management information system (MIS) – an integrated statewide information system (ISIS) – was developed in the early 1990s and implemented statewide in 1996.
The state released a request for offers (RFO) in October 2012 to secure a vendor who could help determine how and when to implement eWIC in California. Highlands Consulting Group was awarded a contract to provide these services in February 2013. The contract has an 18-month base and expires August 30, 2014. Other vendors who submitted proposals were Granite Solutions, Sunrise Technologies, and Quantum Consulting Services. Part of the contract includes a feasibility assessment on using the existing WIC MIS system in conjunction with a new WIC EBT process. The contractor will be expected to identify technical modifications and augmentations of the WIC that would be needed to make it eWIC-ready.
Apart from the feasibility study, the contractor will also be responsible for preparing an alternatives analysis and cost-benefit analysis to supplement California’s implementation advanced planning document (IAPD) for the project, which will be submitted to Food and Nutrition Services (FNS).
Stay tuned next week for another update on WIC EBT across the states. In the meantime, be sure to check out the WIC vertical profile application. Not a Deltek subscriber? Click here to learn more about Deltek’s GovWin IQ database and take advantage of a free trial.