Program Update July 30, 2021

July Product Demos

All this week the BEST Software Evaluation Committee members attended live product demonstrations with bidders who responded to the Request for Response (RFR) posted in April. Each bidder presented a full day of demonstrations, providing in-person views of their software and how it would be implemented in the Commonwealth. The goal of these demos was to give the Committee and Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) supporting the committee a high level overview of the software and the bidder’s approach to working with the Commonwealth. Selected bidders will be moving on to the next round of three-day, in depth product demonstrations and oral presentations which will be scheduled to begin in mid-August.

Next Steps

Following the second round of demonstrations, we look forward to working with bidders to set up a Sandbox for committee members and SMEs to deep dive into what it would be like to use the products. Users should be able to log in, navigate, perform simple business scripts, view dashboards and generally assess the product’s look and feel and ease of use. The Sandbox demos will be completed in September, and we anticipate having a decision on the software product by early October!

Stay Tuned!

In August we'll be providing further updates surrounding Phase 2 of Product Demonstrations as well as introducing a Meet the Team segment to our newsletters.

Our Program Management Office is a team of 10, made up of 9 functional leads and one program manager. The PMO team reports to our Executive Sponsors, A&F, CTR, and EOTSS. You’ve seen our faces popping up in zoom calls and our names in email blasts, but we're excited to tell you more about our individual roles on the BEST Team!