The California Employment Development Department (EDD) is seeking seeking a firm that will collectively possess extensive expertise and expert-level knowledge on a service to recommend and assist in the establishment of a comprehensive, flexible, and agile Quality Control and Assurance framework that will encompass all aspects of the EDDNext project. The goal is to ensure comprehensive requirements are gathered and approved for solutions, processes, and contractors. In addition, the firm in this role will provide a level of review and validation of technical designs, implementation activities, and project deliverables to confirm that they meet the standards established by the architecture review board, address all approved requirements, and represent practical designs and solutions at each stage of the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) or agile development methodology for our our EDDNext project.

The Employment Development Department (EDD) in California administers one of the nation's largest public benefit systems with over 21 million claimants and 63 million claims being filed for Unemployment Insurance (UI), Disability Insurance (DI), and Paid Family Leave (PFL) over the past decade. The EDD organization also supports many auxiliary business functions for hundreds of thousands of employers, medical providers, and other stake holders. Through the EDDnext project, the state will engage with communities across California to help design and implement systems and services that are easier to use and adapt to changing circumstances.  

The challenge is to create a seamless and consistent experience across EDD’s different benefit programs and channels even though each program has vastly different processes, technologies, legal requirements, and customer needs. From the customer’s perspective all services come from EDD and so interactions and experiences should be consistent across programs and channels.

Various EDD programs are in different stages of automation, from manual processes and paper to a more seamless digital experience. Additionally, the programs have different degree of standards and controls. Each program has its own distinct set of operations, technologies, databases, and interfaces. Moreso, each program has its own policies, regulations, rules that manifest in unique eligibility standards and processes. In spite of these differences, this service is seeking to create a seamless and consistent experience for our customers across all of our programs and channels.

As a results of these differences, we see the following challenges: 

• Customers have a disjointed and inconsistent experience across different channels and programs resulting in frustration and inefficiency
• Lack of automation results in time-consuming, manual, duplicative processes that impact the accuracy of claims processing and timeliness of payments
• Lack of language translation standards and use of multiple language translation solutions 
• Lack of cost effective solutions and methodologies for quality management
• Inconsistent Key Performance Indicators across multiple programs
• Lack of real-time Quality Assurance monitoring and validation for claims processing, customer service, product delivery, data, processes, etc.
• Misalignment and difficulty in adoption of market standards, industry standards, and best practices on existing products and tools

The project will improve the service by focusing on five strategic objectives:

1. Establishing an EDDNext quality management plan that clearly defines project objectives and how quality will be measured.​
2. Creating quality standards for a customer-centric service delivery model that includes customer experience, usability experience, and accessibility standards.​
3. Implementing public dashboards that reflect key performance indicators for EDD’s programs and for EDD services overall.​
4. Developing a repository for functional and non-functional system requirements that will guide quality standards for software development and testing.​
5. Reducing software testing timelines by streamlining test environment management and expanding test automation coverage.

EDDNext seeks respondents who possess the following capabilities:

1. Experience developing and implementing quality standards for large organizations that serve diverse populations with varying accessibility needs.​​
2. Experience supporting quality standards for complex IT modernization projects where existing documentation around systems, rules, and interfaces is limited.​​
3. Knowledge of federal and state benefit programs including laws, regulations, and reporting requirements.​​
4. Experience configuring, implementing, and supporting the adoption of application lifecycle management and quality management tools.​​
5. Experience establishing quality standards for customer experience and usability.