Help make constituents’ interactions with the Commonwealth of Massachusetts faster, easier, and more meaningful!
Massachusetts Digital Service (Mass Digital) is seeking vendor partners to improve digital services for constituents. Bidders will have a chance to create data stories, like visualizing the opioid epidemic for agencies and policymakers, to simplify complex government services on Mass.gov, like child support and starting a business, and to collaborate with agencies like the Department of Transitional Assistance (DTA) to better understand churn in SNAP recertification so that no participant is ever surprised by a lapse in food assistance.
Mass Digital uses modern software development methods: We update roadmaps each quarter, and we continuously reprioritize work as requirements shift. We partner with government agencies to improve data sharing between agencies; visualize and analyze data; and create secure, modern data environments. We’re looking for partners who can provide professional services for web development and operations, data work, user experience and design, and who are comfortable adapting as projects evolve.
The upcoming Request For Quotation (RFQ) will be aimed at vendors who are already part of the Commonwealth’s ITS-74 contract. If you want to be a part of improving Massachusetts’ public sector digital ecosystem, take a look at the following categories — bids can cover more than 1 of the 6 work categories below. ITS-74 vendors are welcome to submit bids that include partners and subcontractors.
Category 1: Web development
Government organizations want to modernize and build web applications that make it easier for constituents to access services and information. Vendors in this category might work on improving the functionality of search.mass.gov, creating benefits calculators using React, adding new React components to the Commonwealth’s design system, making changes to existing static sites, or building interactive data stories.
Category 2: Drupal
Mass.gov, the official website of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, is a Drupal 8 site that links hundreds of thousands of weekly visitors to key information, services, and other transactional applications. You’ll develop modules to enhance and stabilize the site; build out major new features; and iterate on content types so that content authors can more easily create innovative, constituent-centered services.
Category 3: Data architecture and engineering
State organizations need access to large amounts of data that’s been prepared and cleaned for decision-makers and analysts. You’ll take in data from web APIs and government organizations, move and transform it to meet agency requirements using technology such as Airflow and SQL, and store and manage it in PostgreSQL databases. Your work will be integral in helping agencies access and use data in their decision making.
Category 4: Data analytics
Increasingly, Commonwealth agencies are using data to inform their decisions and processes. You’ll analyze data with languages such as Python and R, visualize it for stakeholders in business intelligence tools like Tableau, and present your findings in reports for both technical and non-technical audiences. You’ll also contribute to the state’s use of web analytics to improve online applications and develop new performance metrics.
Category 5: Design, research, and content strategy
Government services can be complex, but we have a vision for making access to those services as easy as possible. Bidders for this category may work with partner agencies to envision improvements to digital services using journey mapping, user research, and design prototyping; reshape complex information architecture; help transform technical language into clear-public facing content, and translate constituent feedback into new and improved website and service designs.
Category 6: Operations
You’ll monitor the system health for our existing digital tools to maintain uptime and minimize time-to-recovery. Your DevOps work will also create automated tests and alerts so that technical interventions can happen before issues disrupt constituents and agencies. You’ll also provide expert site reliability engineering advice for keeping sites maintainable and building new infrastructure. Examples of applications you’ll work on include Mass.gov, search.mass.gov, our analytics dashboarding platform, and our logging tool.
Once posted, we will tweet a link to the full RFQ from our @MassGovDigital twitter account and email all ITS-74 vendors to let them know the RFQ has been posted.
If you have questions about this RFQ, please send them to EOTSSPCOteam@mass.gov.
We look forward to hearing about how you want to make government digital services more useful, usable, and used!
Help make constituents’ interactions with the Commonwealth of Massachusetts faster, easier, and… was originally published in Massachusetts Digital Service on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.