The Delta Stewardship Council ("Council") is seeking a robust, user-friendly and comprehensive database solution to streamline and integrate all facets of the Council's fiscal, administrative and reporting operations. A transparent, comprehensive data collection system to track acquisitions, projects, funding streams, collaborators, and resources is needed for our internal council staff, sister agencies, oversight partners and contractors.

The Council is a State agency created to advance the State’s coequal goals for the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta (Delta) – a more reliable statewide water supply and a healthy and protected ecosystem, both achieved in a manner that protects and enhances the unique characteristics of the Delta as an evolving place. The Council is responsible for overseeing implementation of the Delta Plan, the long-term, comprehensive blueprint designed to achieve the State’s coequal goals for the Delta. The Delta Plan was developed as a necessity to unite and focus the many federal, State, and local agencies involved in the management of the Delta toward a set of common goals. The Council’s Delta Science Program is charged with providing the best possible unbiased scientific information to inform critical issues surrounding water and environmental management decisions for the Delta. As part of its mission, the Delta Science Program supports scientific research and fellowship opportunities. To date, the Delta Science Program has supported hundreds of research projects that address key knowledge gaps and fundamentally advance the understanding of the Bay-Delta’s dynamic social-ecological system. The Delta Science Program, in collaboration with stakeholders and independent scientists, has identified high-priority topics for scientific research in the Science Action Agenda. 

Delta Stewardship Council: The Council administers the acquisition of goods and services requiring purchase orders and contract agreements which are accomplished through both competitive and non-competitive methods.  The Council collaborates with other funding partners to regularly solicit for proposals that address the high priority management needs and actions. The most recent example is in 2021, when the Council partnered with the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation and the State Water Contractors to award over $10 million for new science to transform our understanding of the Delta. The Council also initiates non-competitive research and other important core operational contracts.  

The Council uses the State’s Financial Information System for California (Fi$Cal) as it’s official financial management system for a high level of fiscal transactions, but the Council does not use Fi$Cal for its internal quality control and development of critical custom queries related to acquisitions, ad hoc data reports, project budget forecasting, administrative and project management tracking. 

Currently, the Council tracks fiscal and acquisition related resources manually, using a series of excel spreadsheets to provide specific critical data across Divisions. Many separate lists of funded acquisition projects exist and are maintained by different Divisions, programs, and units within the Council organization. The Council requires one centralized database that is the source of all activities that cross Divisions as a shared resource pertaining to contracting, invoicing, reporting, and budget, and project forecasting. Continued manual entry, the lack of a cohesive system, and disparate tracking leads to the following issues:

• No system to track all aspects of the life cycle of projects from end to end
• Current efforts are overlapping and redundant, resulting in inefficient use of staff time
  • Lack of version control and real-time information
• Manual data entry increases risks of imprecise or incorrect records
• Inconsistent processes across Council Divisions

Planning, forecasting, tracking, and reporting project progress requires a transformational, innovative data solution that improves coordination and performance across participating organizations. With a solution that addresses the Council's Challenge Statement, the Council hopes to achieve the following outcomes:

• Streamlined communications, and consistent tracking across all Divisions 
• Centralize acquisitions, budgets and accounting data entry processes
• Integrate real-time project management with planning components
• Through effective change management, involve all team members in process and workflow optimization and reform that encompasses all aspects of the Council's operation

Technical Requirements:

• Ability to interpret and implement cyber security requirements 
• Data migration from existing system (Smartsheet/Excel) 
• Workflow/BPM (e.g., communication, approvals, documents)
  • Access and permissions customizable to each specific function
• Ability to track and forecast resources along many funding sources and many fiscal years (prior, current, and future fiscal years)
• Project/contract management tool
• Robust reporting functionality (both canned and ad-hoc)
• Interface between Council and contractors to request/receive invoices, reports, contract materials, etc.
• Ability to interface with Delta Science Tracker
• Ability for enterprise content management system
  • Archival of past contracts and project plans/budgetary information 

Preferred Solution: 

• Ability to push data to a Drupal-based web application (Delta Science Tracker)
• cloud-based, low-code/no-code environment

Support Requirements:

• Implementation Lead
• Project Manager/Project Management support
• Resources for analysis, design, development, testing, and deployment Knowledge Transfer Plan
• Testing plans (e.g., AT) Training materials
• Maintenance and operations support 

Minimum Proposer Qualifications:

• Experience providing public-facing applications to government agencies
• Experience working with California government agencies and/or authorities