The California Victim Compensation Board (CalVCB) is a three-member Board dedicated to assisting victims of violent crimes. CalVCB administers the Victim Compensation Program, which provides reimbursement for crime-related expenses to victims who suffer physical injury or the threat of physical injury as a result of a violent crime. CalVCB also administers the Restitution Recovery Program, the Good Samaritan Program, and the Missing Children Reward Program. In Fiscal Year 2021-22, CalVCB received 39,015 applications and paid $40.3 million in compensation.

CalVCB pays benefits as a payer of last resort for medical and dental, mental health, income loss, relocation, residential security, and other such sub-categories. In some instances, CalVCB receives returned benefits for a variety of reasons, including returned checks, settlements, and overpayments. Returned benefits must be credited to the claimant’s benefit limits for potential future disbursements. CalVCB has an application maximum benefit that includes sub-categories of benefit limits. 

CalVCB currently uses a labor-intensive, manual process to adjust a victim’s benefit limits for returned funds. Multiple CalVCB business units are required to adjust the various sub-accounts that pertain to a victim’s benefits.

An example business process scenario: CalVCB pays $11,000 in income loss and $6,000 for funeral expenses for a victim killed in a car accident. Subsequently, a court ruling orders the at fault driver to pay all funeral expenses and $4,000 in income loss to the spouse of the victim. CalVCB will be reimbursed for $10,000. When the reimbursed money is received, CalVCB manually updates the funeral expense and income loss sub-accounts so that the victim’s spouse may still receive additional benefits.

Specifically, current challenges include:

• Lack of a single system of record – information being housed by several different units in different systems and file locations, resulting in longer processing times.
• Inability to automatically adjust sub-accounts (for benefit sub-categories) for returned funds.
• Inability to obtain real-time information about available funds until the manual adjustment process has completed. 

This new solution will result in the following outcomes: 

• Allow for CalVCB to better review data and provide answers to record requests efficiently and succinctly
• Synthesize information received from multiple inputs and create a uniform way to retrieve information and communicate updates
• Provide prospective applicants and staff an easier and more user-friendly way of obtaining the information they need

This new solution will meet the following minimum requirements:

• Automatically adjust accounts and sub-accounts when funds are returned
• Allow CalVCB to review data and provide answers to record requests efficiently and succinctly
• Synthesize information received from multiple inputs and create a uniform way to retrieve information and communicate updates
• Provide prospective applicants and staff an easier and more user-friendly way of obtaining the information they need
• Provide regular and customizable reporting
• Ability to migrate historical data
• Create and develop clear workflows and process automation for the most common scenarios
• Meets accessibility standards
• Must integrate with enterprise system (.NET)
• Allow future API and data integrations

Expected outcomes:

• Freed-up staff time for providing more services to victims. Improved customer service to constituents, providers, and victims.
• Improved data integrity, resulting in accurate and transparent benefit reporting
• Enhanced data security architecture with a single system of record
• Adherence to standard accounting practices

Vendors will be expected to provide the following services and resources to accompany the Service Enhancement Solution:

• 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 Proposed Qualifications: 

• Experience working with California government agencies and/or authorities

Preferred Proposer Qualifications: 

• Experience providing public-facing applications to government agencies
• Experience with government benefits payment systems
• Leveraged procurement agreement with the State of California or contract vehicle with the State of California