The California Employment Development Department (EDD) is seeking seeking to engage a firm that collectively possess extensive experience and expert-level knowledge in the definition and adoption of Master Data Management principles and who can deliver a service to to the EDDNext project which recommends and assists in the establishment of a comprehensive, flexible, and enterprise data management strategy that includes data management practices, data governance, and data standards. This functional area will encompass all aspects of the EDD Next project. The goal is to ensure the development, population, and maintenance of authoritative information catalogs, identification of information owners, and establishment of data quality management processes for our system integration vendors, the EDDNext project, and for our department.

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.

One significant objective of the EDDNext project is to create a seamless and consistent user experience across all of EDD’s different benefit programs and channels even through 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.

In order to achieve improvements, efficiencies, and uniformity across multiple program areas, EDD is going through transformation processes that incorporate several planning initiatives, standardization efforts, foundational changes, and input from multiple programs.

 Currently, EDD operates multiple disparate data governance structures involving many stakeholders. This disparity introduces complexity and segregation of solutions amongst EDD business programs. The EDDNext project aspires to establish a singular data governance model supporting a primary data governance structure that will become the enterprise-wide standard, and will evolve, adapt, and mature as the project progresses.

As a results of these data standardization changes, we foresee the following challenges: 

•  An absence of existing data standards across multiple business programs
• Establishment of a unified data governance model and vocabulary across the programs and enterprise
• Potential delays in data governance reviews and approvals due to the volume of processes and concurrent / conflicting timelines
• Potential risk of data duplication across benefit programs
• Current lack of a singular, unified customer record across the benefit programs
• Inconsistencies in data dictionaries and catalog management across systems
• Senior stakeholders are stretched thin as they must often participate in multiple data governance structures
• Lack of consistent data formatting and editing controls for impending requisite data migrations and interface processes
• Absence of a comprehensive data management lifecycle
• Inconsistent data quality management

EDDNext seeks respondents who possess the following capabilities:

• Establish an enterprise data management strategy that includes, but not limited to, data analysis processes, designing of the future MDM, and the establishment of a data governance model. 
• Perform data migration, data cleansing, data conversion and also assist in data structuring and organization.
• Assess existing data governance structures and determine if modifications need to be applied, or if additional data governance committees need to be established
• Assess and develop data driven business rules management
• Establish a data governance framework for EDDNext which reflects our guiding principles of enterprise approach, standardization, and data quality.
• Coordination with the EA/BPR service guiding principles to be applied in the data governance framework and processes for decision making.
• Extensive experience and success with large and complex public agencies.
• Ability to manage and prioritize competing activities as well as reconcile overarching decisions that result in unforeseen upstream or downstream implications.
• An understanding of how to triage and escalate decisions within a multi-level governance structure

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

1. Establish an enterprise data management strategy that includes, but is not limited to, data analysis processes, designing of the future master data management (MDM), and the establishment of a data governance model.​
2. Assessment of existing data governance structures and determination if modifications need to be applied, or if additional data governance committees need to be established.​
3. Assess and develop data driven business rules management.​
4. Establish a data governance framework for EDDNext which reflects our guiding principles of enterprise approach, standardization, and data quality.