ALC-Review
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- October 2, 2026
Unknown speaker
1:32
Members it's almost time to start if you'll take your seats please
Members please get your seat call the meeting to order. thank y'all
Speaker 6
3:27
coach errry have anything OK Katty you go right ahead. thank you. thank you madam chairir.
Speaker 8
3:33
good afternoon members. Katty Walden bureau of Legislative Research fiscal division at the very beginning
Speaker 9
3:39
this morning or this afternoon we have a supplemental agenda item
Chair
Unverified
3:49
that was brought by theconomic Development Commission and madam chairir has some comments
on that without objection we need take up the supplemental agenda no objections good all in favor say aye polls say nay thank you. uhpresentative
Vaughtugt, do you have a motion
Representative DeAnn Vaught
Unverified
4:30
you're recognized thank you madam chairir. I move that we move this item to full ALc on Friday. the motion is that this
will be moved from here to full ALC on Friday yes ma'am thank you do I have a second? Second all in favor sayy aye pose say nay. all right we're going to move that to full Alc on Friday. Katty with that do you want to start with item A thank you madam chairir. The first item
Speaker 9
4:58
for the subcommittee's review today is a
contract that was rereferred to this subcommittee last month in Arkansas legislative coun. it is item A one in your packet this is an out of state contract it is amendment3 to an existing contract with DHS DCFS with a vendor called Evident Change. This particular amendment adds375,000 dollars to the contract and it also revises the scope of work and revises the performance indicators to continue quality improvement reviews of programs
there are some handouts to go with that if you'll hand the get the staff to hand that out please. yes ma'am
and while we're doing that if we'll go ahead and have the agency and the visitors from evident change to come down to the table because I know that
there are questions. and when you get to the table will you please introduce yourself for the record.
Speaker 23
6:14
Good afternoon Tiffany Wright, director for the division of Children and Family
Speaker 25
6:17
Services Sarahcunningham officef of procurement with DHS. Good afternoon Doctor Angy Wolff
Senator Mark Johnson
Unverified
6:30
with evident change. good afternoon. I'm Kathy Park. I'm the CEO
Evidentange. Thank y'all for being here appreciate it. And Katty if you want to there's that's all we've got to say
right members I know we have some people that have some questions if you want to get in the queue we'll just get right
Representative Ryan A. Rose
Unverified
7:02
into the discussion RepresentativeRos you're recognized thank you madam chairwoman thank you both to DCfS an evident change joining us at the table grateful that I want
to make sure the committee knows grateful to both groups for reaching out. We had some really informational video
conference calls over the last week and I want to say thank you for that for the benefit of the committee a couple of things I want to say and then I'll follow up with a few questions firstly I think my overarching concern is that there is seemingly a a kind of a vertical integration taking place with evident change inside of DCfs and this contract amendment is an expansion of scope
and a continuation of a growing influence and reliance that the state has on an out of state vendor so my concern is that there's not an off ramp plan in place and that the vendor is becoming more and more necessary so that DCfS can utilize the services that they are providing us and then grading from what I understand the
relationship with this contract began back in 2018 when evident change was under a different name and is since I think in202 become evident change can we in short form discuss the scope of evident changes work with DCfs and how that has changed since 2018. Yes
Speaker 39
8:43
so they'll work with evident change started as the
structured decision making tools and safety organized practice. So implementation of how the agency utilizes tools to make informed decisions to provide some consistency statewide around assessment of child safety as well as a continuation of services throughout a child's or family's life in when involved with our agency including around permanency and how we know and how we utilize tools to ensure safe reunification and case planning.
also the work with Eident changege includes the different reports and the data a data system that DCfS frontline caseworkers can log into see realtime work that's happening related to their caseload as well as allow a DcfS program management as well as executive staff to pull out data and extract it and have reports to present and provide information around our specific data related
to caseloads visits maltreatment types all different scopes some of what you all see when we come and present to committee more recently they we
Speaker 40
10:03
were approved to lead the that we were approved by the Children'sureau to lead a state led children in service family review CFSR and part of that is because of
Speaker 39
10:14
the work that we have been doing with evident change in order to have a quality review they are utilizing the same tool in which
Speaker 41
10:24
the childrenldren's bureau would do if they were to come to Arkansas and review our system
Representative Ryan A. Rose
Unverified
10:32
as well. follow up continuation y so director or to to the vendor at when we had a a phone call this week the the vendor said to me is that they want to put their clients in a position to fire us essentially we want to we want to do such a good job that
you no longer need us I don't see evidence of that my my
concern is that since 2018 the contracts continued to expand and with a a look through our government transparency website it looks like we have spent since 2018 roughly 2 $8 million. the contract values have have been higher doesn't look like we've executed those total dollars but where we're at this year through about five months' worth of contracts look like this year could be even more than last year which was 8.3 million
my concern is that it's growing we we've not hit an apex and now we're expanding scope and our child protection in the state is now relying on somebody other than ourselves and so I guess maybe the vendor could speak to this since they are the ones who said hey we want to put ourselves in a position where we're not essential it feels like the vendors becoming more and more necessary and that we are more and more reliant and so my concern is at what point does DCfS become
sustainable on their own or are we always going to have to rely on this vendor
Speaker 45
12:13
I just wanted to s pop in real quick the contract in front of you today is for continuous quality improvement and that was actually bid by RFP in2023 so just to kind of put that out there to point that out that from 2018 any work that evident change has done
this contract is was awarded from a competitive bid at that point in 2023. and can I get some clarity in terms of what you think is the expansion of scope so just so that we understand amendment3
Representative Ryan A. Rose
Unverified
12:46
says should I answer that is that I'm fine too but ok amend to add funding revised scope of work revised performance indicators and from what I read when we inquired about a month ago it had to do with overview of Hotline
Fidelity or investigative fidelity what I understood was this is scope that the vendor has
not had previously, which sounds like an expansion. is that correct? so
Speaker 37
13:17
that is correct so we are adding the point of this amendment is to add
Speaker 39
13:22
additional CQI to understand what is happening at the hotline as well as narrowly what is happening around child maltreatment investigations in
our state the current scope of the current work that they're doing related to CQI is around requirements that we have to have for our children in service CfSR our child and familymilyervice
Speaker 50
13:43
review process and so I see some other questions have hopped in
Representative Ryan A. Rose
Unverified
13:48
so I would like to allow the vendor to to discuss the you know plan for an off ramp and then hop out so others can can jump in but as I understand there's not there's not an off ramp plan we say we would like to have an off
ramp but what is happening is we're continuing to grow and spend more. Certainly
Speaker 26
14:13
appreciate the question and I just have to take a moment to share my appreciation with you Representative rose for bringing some of these issues up and giving us an opportunity to talk about this important work and this important partnership with the division we're very proud of the work that we've been doing since 2018 and look forward to producing more good work for the department so that
so that the director can use our work to implement changes in policies and or actually look at accountability issues and training issues and other sorts of things that the department needs to focus on so that children don't fall through the cracks. this extra amendment that we we were asked to produce a proposal to do an additional scope of work that takes the continuum of the cases that we are looking at and includes
hotlines and investigations. So currently the department has several bodies of work that we are now looking at including the most recent report that is I think to be short shortly to be disseminated that includes cases of youth that had ive or more referrals through the hotline had open cases but did not receive services from the department so that's obviously
something that the department wants to address and see what's happening there this a new amendment it's a natural progression of that work to include the front end so we are the department is getting their arms around what is happening in the middle and the back end they need to be armed with information to direct them to what they need to be looking at at the front end of the system. I wanna let I want to let another question hop in and I'll get
Speaker 53
16:06
back in the queueification I actually do have a question
myself. so since you've been doing this work since 2018
can you tell us some of the recommendations that you have made that DCFS has been able to implement I I think that's a better question
Speaker 26
16:26
for the department to s it's up to them whether they take our recommendations and how
Speaker 37
16:35
they implement them I would say so the CcuI work began in 2022. so that's
Speaker 39
16:42
where we've been getting recommendations and so the current work is part of our areas area reviews and so we get a review back from evident change and then we convene the leadership teams in those areas and set goals so evident change alongside leadership within DCfS at the a level down to the county level they set goals and improvement and so some of those have been increasing family time and connection to parents honing in on safety and following so we
set the goals and they support that through the continued reviews and then following up on those goals that we've done and so what you see is in the next review did we improve or did we not improve and why and what do we need to continue to do and so when you get recommendations like obviously continuing to support the workforce is a huge one as well as supporting decision making leadership supporting decision making then as well as just improving the continuous quality of what we're doing so when we're out engaging
with families are we utilizing the tools appropriately and engaging with families are we just making a referral or are we actually walking the family through that referral and what does that look like versus just pushing a piece of
paper and with these recommendations that they've given you that in the ones that you've implemented have you seen a change? do you see an improvement in those services and how are
you tracking that improvement so when we get
Speaker 23
18:10
the so the areas are on a
rotating schedule for review and so when we're getting those reviews back like the second time they
Speaker 39
18:19
come back to review in that period they're looking at what was recommended last time and did you set the goals and then where are you at now? So like we have one area of the state who actually did achieve 100% on two metrics that they had not been doing well on before. and so we can we watch that and then also take into consideration what's been going on in that specific county. what is you know have we had turnover? have
we had an increase of kids in foster care? What does it look like overall and then balancing those out as we set the next round of goals.
OK all right thank you. I appreciate that uhsenator Bryant you're recognized thank you madam just want to go back
Senator Joshua Bryant
Unverified
19:00
a little bit to the 2018 obviously different leadership at the department was
the reason for this is because we
didn't have enough staff and we wanted to make sure we were training our our people right out in the field and then we built off of
that or did we just want to see where we were and what we
Speaker 39
19:23
needed to improve on at that time so the work in 2018 was more of the data management work and then it evolved into rolling out what we call structured decision making so prior to 2018, Arkansas had what will they believedle they implemented with structured decision making in years prior. I actually got that original
structured decision making training in 2015 or 16 and it wasn't actually what structured decision making training is and now we've implemented what is structured decision making and that work started in 2 in that early 2020 period of time and so what we did was we actually gave our staff an evidence-based model of safety decision making versus what was happening before all across the state and what we previously
had thought was structured decision making but it was not. can
Senator Joshua Bryant
Unverified
20:20
you expand on that does that start from the time the hotline is called for somebody claiming there's a issue of child negligence or welfare issues and then that takes you all the way through to try to put that child back into the
home or to the foster system or just expand on the
Speaker 40
20:40
actual tool for me so the actual what we where we started in Arkansas was with once an investigation iss
Speaker 39
20:49
assigned to DCfS and using those tools and so we started implementing that work and utilizing the tools and we also had to go back and get safety organized practice, right? So putting safety in the mind while we're in our minds while we're using structured decision making tools and so we started that work and then COVID happened and we had to pivot some of that to online then we had a massive workforce shortfall and then we've just kept plugging away on finishing implementing and so
now we have the entire what you call suite of tools um, which includes the case planning tool I'm sorry the reunification tool and additional tools that go along with that so now it is holistically the whole system and then there's also a hotline assessment tool that was implemented and used there's a hotline tool that was implemented and that's what we're asking for now is to get that CQI on the hotline tool
that was implemented as well as just investigations alone because what the current CQI is on is once a fa like it's just picking that family and that life of that family's involvement from maltreatment report until what the case closes or whatever happens with that family for permanency, right? and so we want to get the rest of the the system which we don't have CQI on currently and so this was really about changing our
practice. who who who is DCfS? what do we do? how do we keep kids safe ensure their wellbeing but also ensure permanency and that's what these tools are about and then how do we make sure that I'm implementing the tools I'veled my team to implement the tools appropriately and that's what we're trying to do and so you know there is I know that there's concern about an off ramp of this but like CQi does take time and systems changes take a long time like so where that we've been doing has
been historically happening since 2016 and it's taken a long time and I know several of you are in here like it's not perfect and you're right it's not perfect and we still have work to do and we're wanting to do that work it just helps to have a outside view of our system to show us what we're doing because what happens is you get lost in the day to day work like I get lost in the day to day crisis sometimes of what's going on and forget we have to lead a system too and that's hard to do when you're dealing with kids and families.
Senator Joshua Bryant
Unverified
23:25
agree and I also know this is something that it's a societal issue that we're not going to be able to phase
out this kind of activity in our society but I guess to a concern that I thinkpresentative hose brought up is are are we are we asking the same vendor to grade their own homework is that a concern to you to say hey we we've designed this tool and now we're gonna see how effective our tool is and you're gonna pay us to do that is that a concern? no
Speaker 26
23:50
it's not a concern because we are not actually evaluating the outcomes
of the tools we are evaluating and assessing and auditing how well the department is following their own practices policies including our tools but how well they're implementing the our tool work work as well as their other manuals policies and state law so and and madam chairir you pull me back when
Senator Joshua Bryant
Unverified
24:14
you're when you see two man in
the queue I'd say I've got three experiences with DCFs as far as constituents one is it's worked the child was removed
from a bad situation and put back in. One was it didn't work that the child was never removed and should have been removed and the other is the child is removed and shouldn't have been removed now that family has to fight the judicial battle to fight the errors of their ways is that stuff that is monitored through evident change because because if if they've been around since 2018 and these are issues I've got a called a month ago about a child taken from a home. that I I agree with the family they shouldn't have been but now they're in a in a legal fight against the state to put that
child back where I think the child needs to be but that's not up to me that's up to the judicial system but the state started that path is that something that SDM marked that territory for and and cause DCfS
to remove that child? I would say no I
Speaker 39
25:14
would say that's an example of how we have to continue to evaluate and understand how we're appropriately using the tools and what hap like it's hard because I don't know I don't know that any of these maybe one or two of these specific cases
that you're referring to but I also think those are the things that we hope to see when we're getting the CQI so we're like addressing do I have a person issue? do I have a practice issue? do I have a whole state issue? do I have an area issue and so that's what we always are working to glean to improve and so I would not, I would not put that on evident change. I'll get out of the queue and get back in. Senator Johnson you're recognized so I'll start
Speaker 90
25:54
with I guess Do Wolf how how many states do
y'all work in besides Arkansas goodness3 states in the
Senator Mark Johnson
Unverified
26:01
in 20 I'm gonna say 23 states I'll clarify if that is not correct. We
Speaker 26
26:07
also work in several other countries including New South Wales, Canada, like a certain territories and those countries as well. is it in DCfS specifically
Speaker 94
26:18
that you work in child welfare sector yes so how integrated are you in
Speaker 90
26:28
those other states it varies for states I
Speaker 26
26:31
think we're talking here today about our SDM tools and where we have a components of those. we also have a variety we have other like justicefocused tools and assessments that we provide clients speaking just about child welfare. some some clients are interested in a couple of our tools and some are interested in full suites. some are interested in our data management services and how we're supporting jurisdiction's
decision making by regular ongoing access to data and answering you know administrators questions on a regular basis about what is what what
Speaker 96
27:12
they're facing what's the face of the other 20
Speaker 90
27:17
se states that don't use you how how do they provide the services that you provide without
Speaker 26
27:32
they may have be seeking support elsewhere they may have homegrown tools that they are using I I don't know that I can be in a great position to answer what all of our what folks are not when folks that are not we're not
Speaker 90
27:47
working with or using so in the states that you're working with are you helping ourdcFS create those tools that you are are you just want them to be dependent on your tools
Speaker 26
28:02
we do not want anyone to be dependent on our work like our work is just a kind of across the spectrum is about supporting the jurisdictions themselves to do better practice so that they no longer need user our data management services and some of our you know our SDm suite of tools we do have clients that have used our work for a really long period of time and have been really happy with us and find that we provide a costeffective service that they need on an ongoing basis.
The CQI work I would expect this to be us to be able to provide the entire spectrum of kind of evaluation of what's going well in the system and what's not going well in the system you know once or twice and then have the department be able to implement changes and assess whether those changes are having the intended impact so at the end of the day they're not kids falling through the cracks. So how many employees have you got
Speaker 94
29:01
in the state of Arkansas we have 11 employees in the state of
Arkansas. many will you have if this I I don't know
Speaker 94
29:15
this and I'm sorry I think I misunderstood your question. I don't
Speaker 26
29:21
envision adding I don't know the answer to that question. I think we have we have 11 employees currently in the state of Arkansas. We do like to have a strong connection to any jurisdiction that we're
working with and having folks very familiar with that
Speaker 90
29:43
system. Does, does, do you have other employees you know in your system that work on these things sure we have employees that work on
Speaker 26
29:55
the safe managers, the data management services data analytics most of those folks are based out of the idwest so Miss Wright the
Speaker 90
30:10
so best I could pull up is we have just over 1,1 is that pretty close yeah that's pretty close so and and and I know the turnover has hopefully gotten better is is that accurate? I don't,
Speaker 107
30:30
uh, have an answer for that yet we're watching I think we're trying to
Speaker 40
30:35
be strategic before we say yes or no on the turnover probably in the next couple
of months be able to really understand how the pay plan imple impacted turnover. how much one
Speaker 90
30:49
on one interaction with those 1100 employees do you have with the foster I think we have like3500 in foster in can you say that question one more time? I'm sorry one on one I mean with those 1100 employees how much of those are dedicated to you know the
Speaker 40
31:22
100 in our main office downtown, probably most of our work is the staff across the state and the county offices doing the
Speaker 90
31:32
work. so administratively do you think that that you can take the best practices that is is given through evidence change and and inhouse inhouse this because I think you've got almost 250
positions that are not filled could you foresee in the future doing this yourself rather than having a $228 million eight years I don't think I can
Speaker 37
32:10
answer that right now currently today I have 101 vacant budgeted positions
Speaker 39
32:19
those almost all of those are out on the front lines. the reviews the review team would have to be in our main office and right now that team does review some investigations some foster care cases but they're also managing programs and contracts so I don't think I can give you an answer on that right now but I wouldn't want to say no. I just want don't know that today I
Speaker 116
32:39
can answer that. right thank you Representative rose you're recognized thank you madam
Representative Ryan A. Rose
Unverified
32:49
Chair. first I want to say appreciate the committee. I know not everybody's
been deeply entrenched in this until recently so I appreciate the patience uhrector Wright also appreciate your work your sincerity in this. I know this is deeply personal and I kind of wanna pivot to that for just a minute as it has become deeply personal for me more so since
we first started having some of these conversations over the last couple of months I've had numerous families and concerned individuals organizations reach out just about the work that they're doing or children that are in danger or similar to what Senator Bryant said families who may have had children taken incorrectly from their homes most recently I spoke to family members of the children involved in that Baxter County case. and
family members of that child who was abused over the course of 11 years and then parents of siblings of that child who was also sexually assaulted by the same abusers in a committee meeting a couple of months ago we had a a very good discussion that led I think you guys did some great work discovering in addition to that Baxter County case there were341 other similar cases and at least 8 of those
have been referred out for investigation or law enforcement or something along those lines I think what I am concerned with is we have found and see that there are cracks in the work and we are saying we've got this vendor who each year we continue to spend more money with more services more scope,11 employees in the state and we are in a situation where they're assessing the performance and
the fidelity of systems that they help build that they help improve or they help implement or they help train and we continue to give them more money and nobody ever says maybe we should look at our own division mayberector Wright and her team have the answers. and my concern is we'd been we've been funding this vendor we've discovered this issue we're digging into it but maybe it could be a lapse in the system that we're utilizing. maybe it needs to be something
done internally because I think the problem and this is the question I want to go to at what point does the division in our state's reliance on a single out of state vendor become a risk to institutional dependence and then capping ourselves internally
Speaker 39
35:57
I think that well so one part of that question is we have to continue to ass assess but also pivot when necessary. I think that what's one thing with child welfare is it's continually evolving societies continuing to evolve the families we're serving are complex. They it feels like families are continuing to become even more complex and so
how do we continue to serve and what does that mean and so I think that's where together we continued to evaluate what is happening what information we have and how we pivot the system as appropriately as things continue to change and evolve we have I'm sure some of you all are aware but there's a new rules that are coming from the childrenldren's bureau or the
administration of Children and familiesmilies and so we're going to have to pivot and understand what those rules are and evaluate where those fit into Arkansas that there's a lot of happening right now also most recently representative umentley had her ISp passed and I think that will also be pivotal to the work but I think the CQI will enhance that work as well with that representative bentley got approved last week at committee so
I just think it's a conti it's never a conversation you stop child welfare continues to evolve it looks different and so how do we continue to evolve with the system as the system changes and I don't necessarily know if I'm answering your question entirely but I I I can't say in six months from now maybe we're saying we gotta go a different direction and we got to figure out how
Speaker 120
37:52
do we pivot that and so how do we balance that out? and and I appreciate that and you know last year
Representative Ryan A. Rose
Unverified
38:05
we we spent 8.3 million with evident change and that was data medical consulting and consulting and this is what is listed on the amount spent for 2025 under transparency.arkansas.gov.ir, we don't actually provide the medical
Speaker 26
38:28
there are we we appreciated this question was brought up to us earlier in the
week and we have checked our records. The department has paid us since 2018 approximately 1el million. All I can say is
Representative Ryan A. Rose
Unverified
38:44
I'm looking at a copy of proof of service contract valid through May31 of2026. and it's on our government transparency website. so if there's even confusion in who we're paying and what we're paying for that may be a whole another
rationale to to press pause while we look into that. I I don't know but I can say with authority that our transparency website for the state lists 8 million plus for last year so if there's something haywire there we should figure that out too but that's what's listed amount spent so whatever the number is again my growing concern is that we're continuing to lean on
somebody other than ourselves and we've been doing it for quite a long time and we are seeing the circular accountability which leaves a lot of room for holes because we're not judging evident changes work they're judging our work. and that's concerning I'll hop out and let somebody else jump in thank you I'm over here maybe I
Senator Bart Hester
Unverified
40:08
needs to go to evident change again how many people do what you
do I mean are there are there50 companies in the country are there3? how many people do this
Speaker 131
40:25
type of work? we are the developers of structured decision making and safety organized practice and team decision making. so we have we are the only organization that provides those specific services as well as
safe measures which is the subscriptionbas data reporting. analytics service. so if we did an RfP you were the only person that bid I
Senator Bart Hester
Unverified
40:46
don't know how therfP was written. I don't
Speaker 131
40:50
recall that if that was more generic around that service we had a service that we felt was responsive to what was outlined in the RfP and so submitted a response. Good OK uhrector Wright the
Senator Bart Hester
Unverified
41:02
if if if we came to you in the fiscal session I said hey I'm gonna give you 20 new positions
to do this work can you do this work or is it something you think is necessary to have a
Speaker 37
41:19
third party doing the review? in my opinion the thirdparty review helps because it's a outside view looking
Speaker 39
41:24
into the system at all the moving pieces of the system going on I mean I can review an investigation but they're going to look at the whole picture and I value that we get an outside perspective just like when you all just like when I come to committee and I'm
presenting you all data reports and you asked me about specific data and it's I get a good question that I hadnn't completely thought of I go back and process through that right and so
Speaker 116
41:52
I think that leads to continuing to grow how we think and evolve as an agency. that's all
Speaker 26
42:01
I had thank you just to add to that my understanding was that we were one of three organizations that responded to the RFP on the CQI work and we that that there was a peer review process associated with
that. and just for clarification forres representative
rose, both DCfS and evident bothbas both show that they have spent 1211.6 million
or about $12 million. So I don't know where the disconnect is with the transparency. So I've
asked staff that if they will look into that and tell us where the difference is at. So hopefully they'll be able to get that to us but for what they're able to show and what the company shows
is $12 million. so there's some disconnect in the transparency so they're going to get that information for us just for clarification. senator Bryant you're
Chair
Unverified
42:52
recognized thank you madam madam chair do you know
Senator Joshua Bryant
Unverified
42:55
how quick that information might be available they're they're working on it now
so hopefully by tomorrow we'll have that information by Friday for sure we'd have that information you think I'm just gonna go on my my concerns
Senator Joshua Bryant
Unverified
43:15
probably mirror a lot withpresentative rose on the contract's
just become the beasts of their own and they just you have to keep feeding that beast and the beast has to figure out how to become relevant and to continue to grow the beast I think that's proof that like any good organization they they hire lobbyists to sway the legislature on their interests I've gotten calls from that for this and that is again my concern is we don't have an off ramp. if if the answer is we're going to use this
software and this team and perpetuity until the new annexed governor makes a systematic or sweeping change in how the state ofarkansas does business that's the answer I want I don't want to see us continue going back to the well for more money for the same vendor to do the same things that may or may not be working because I got constituents to say the system doesn't work I've got colleges with employees calling me telling me that they are part of the DCFS tool and it is not working and it is just a a machine that
perpetually feeds itself in the interest of preserving jobs in the market. And so I again, I would like to know madam chairir if if the answer is 12 million over six
years and the answer is 25 or50 million over six years because that's a that's an impactful number. senator
Speaker 149
44:34
Bryant they're working on that like I said
we'll have that hopefully by tomorrow if not for sure before Friday. uhpresentativeladyman you're recognized
Representative Ryan A. Rose
Unverified
44:47
Representative rose you're recognized you don't want to say it I appreciate
everybody at the table taking the time to speak with me prior to and enduring today's committee meeting. I'm sure this went longer than most folks would like my overarching the I think has been expressed in my encouragement to this committee would be for the first time since we've entered into this contract since 2018 that maybe it's
appropriate to just press pause instead of expanding and say let's give DCfS the option to look internally to their team to their qualified professionals uhrector wright you've obviously been promoted through the ranks you've done the work from the bottom to the top you've got the confidence of the secretary of DHS to maybe resolve these issues and find these problems pausing or or or not implementing this contract doesn't remove the evident
change vendor from the work they're already doing but it is my opinion based on last several months that maybe it's not the best thing to continue expanding and so I will just leave it at that and say thank you madam chair for the liberty today. thank you members do we have any other questions seeing none I have a
motion to pass senator Bryant you may have a I guess since the
Senator Joshua Bryant
Unverified
46:20
motion's on substitute motion to hold this to the end of the meeting to see if those numbers come back if somebody of staff is working on that. OK, so you're wanting your motion is to
hold it until Friday or even hold it till the end of this meeting
Senator Joshua Bryant
Unverified
46:32
to see if those numbers come back they won't have it by the end of this meeting. my motion would be to
hold it till Friday. we have a substitute motion which is to hold it until Friday do I have a second got a second all in favor sayy
aye opposed say nay the ayes have it this will be moved to Friday's agenda. thank y'all for coming. with that we're going to go down to item B methodthods of finance thank you
Speaker 9
47:07
madam chairir itemtem B in your packet are the methods of finance on the first page you'll see a cover letter submitted from Mr Daniel Brassert of DFfa Office of Accounting presenting seven methods of finance for your review today on the next page
you'll see a summary scheduled staff created of these methods of finance and I'll go over them with you quickly now.umber one and two are both with AU Jonesboro. The first one is for a library chiller renewal. they state they want to fund this project with renewal replacement educational and general funds and they estimate the original cost to be $836,000. Number two also with AU Jonesboro. this is for Paviliion American Disability Act improvements.
this is increasing in existing method of finance to $833,000 using university reserves.umber3 HU this is for track restoration project it is a new MOF for $850,000 and they will finance this project using tuition fees and auxiliary profits. Number4, you haveA Fayetteville. this is the Oakridge Trail extension. This is a new method of finance to create a paved concrete trail between it to trail the wooded hillside
between razorback Stadium and the Arkansas Union they're using a grant from the US Environmental Protectionaggency and they estimate it'll cost620,000 dollars initially. Number5,6 and7 are all with UAMS. for various projects.umber5 is for a central endoscopy procedure room renovation. this is to increase this existing facility by350 square feet. they estimate it'll be $1 million using UAMs revenues.umber6, this is for
operating room renovations. This is estimated to cost4.6 million dollars. also using UAMS revenues. the last method of finance with UAMS is for the spine institute first floor neurosurgery and sppine clinic renov ation This will be for about4,200 square feet. they estimate it to cost $1.9 million and they will use revenues and foundation and donor funds. These are the methods of finance for your review today. thank you. Any questions members
on B123,4,5,6 or7. seeing none do I have a motion for review? motion second second all in favor sayy aye poll say
nay. congratulations we're going to move down to item C which are going to be discretionary grants. Thank
Speaker 9
49:44
you madam chairir. Ite C1 is one discretionary grant we received from
Speaker 162
49:48
the department of healthalth This is a federal grant for $831,000 to the Arkansas Foundation for Medical Care.
this is for implementation of the personal responsibilityucationgrame which is for atrisk youth in schools and those in transitional services it promotes abstinence, healthy relationships and STI education. this is the discretionary grant
Chair
Unverified
50:09
from the department of healthalth. members any questions seeing none you want to move to
C2 please? Yes ma'am. itemtem C2 are the discretionary grants we receive
Speaker 9
50:20
from DHS for this month. There are30 here for your review but several of them are for like
purpose. so if it's ok with the subcommittee, I will group those for you. The 1st 8 grants are with DHS division of agging, Adults and Behavioral healthalthervices. these
Speaker 162
50:38
are all a shared federal state grant allocations and they are for it's to distribute funding between senior citizen center swap funds and senior citizen center restricted reserve funds for programs and services that improve the quality of life of older Arkansans in various locations throughout the state.
Speaker 9
51:00
so this is discretionary grants one through 8. so that takes us to item C page four and we'll begin at number 9 the next grant is for DHS division of Children and Family Services this is a federal grant for3 million dollars to recruit and retain resource parents and to provide tangible supports to children and families impacted by foster care and this is to a grantee called the contingent.
the next group is also with DHS DCFS this is going to be grant's 10 through
Speaker 162
51:38
15 and these are all federal grants that are for evidencebased services to children and adults who are experiencing human traffic trafficking
Speaker 9
51:47
in the state that takes us over to page se in item C and we begin with grant number 16
Speaker 162
51:55
through 26. these are all discretionary grants from DHS division of Medical Services and these are
for rehabilitative day programme assistant grants this assists adults with serious mental illness with long term
Speaker 9
52:11
recovery and self sufficiency by promoting community integration helping them build connections and engage in their local communities so that's grant 16 through 26. and that takes us over to item C page10 and number 27 we had DHS division of youth Services with Sanofa Learning Academy. This is
a federal grant for academic enrichment support to academically atris students in the Glenview community? Discretionary grant number 28 DHS division of youth Services withile Educational consulting. this is a30,000 dollars grant for assistance at for students at Dunbar Middleiddle School with leadership, emotional intelligence and conflict resolution skills.umber 29dhS DYS. This is a30,000 dollars grant for a job readiness program targeting atrisk youth
and also for college and career readiness activities and finally number30 with DHS DYs withbow reading consultant. This is also a30,000 dollars grant and it pairs adult volunteers, older students and elementary readers to strengthen literacy skills, build positive relationships and reduce risks.
Speaker 162
53:21
These are the discretionary grants from DHS madam chairir. thank you umener Bryant, who's your question for? division on aging
adults can we have someone come down from the
department please and if we would introduce yourself for
Speaker 168
53:45
the record Jay Hill, director for agging and
Speaker 170
53:56
Adult services with DHS. go ahead senator thank you thank
Senator Joshua Bryant
Unverified
54:01
you sir for being here. I just I think I might call William is increased on adults with disabilities
and I'm just I'm just reading when I read this report amend that funding in these accounts for older Arkansas and adults with disabilities. can you tell me and and what the title being
area aggency on agging so when I'm telling them to refer to them for state services that that name does not come into my mind then when I saw adults with disabilities can you tell me the definition that the agency has the purview to funds or help assistance for say a 45 year old with a disability like a
Speaker 172
54:40
yes so those are two different things the funding that you see here go to the or or to support senior centers this is a $2 million restricted reserve request and then the first500,000gR that is swept from the agency at the end of each fiscal year supports senior centers that's a statutory allocation that's that goes back to the center so these funds support the activities such as meal services transportation services social ization in local senior centers
the services you're I believe you're referring to are the for instance the waiver services the home and communityba type services that we offer through programs at the division that are medicaid programs
Speaker 173
55:21
is that in my I think it's more of a broad question if I were to
Senator Joshua Bryant
Unverified
55:27
get a constituent that has a an adult with disabilities in the home and there's not enough bed space being built or or being utilized to provide services is this an avenue that they could go request services from through
Speaker 172
55:42
the area centers of agging yes there are some services that they provide these the tripleA's do fund for instance personal care they do find some services that they assist some of our tripleA's can assist our beneficiaries with some of the the furnishings the appliances they may need in their home transportation to medical appointments absolutely there are supportive services under the Title3B as well as family services under re under title3E that do support individuals in the home that do have needs ok and that's in
Senator Joshua Bryant
Unverified
56:13
addition to the medicaid services or medicare services in addition to
Speaker 172
56:16
separate from and I'm happy to help make connections if you have individuals in your area that you'd like to connect I would appreciate that all right thank
Senator Joshua Bryant
Unverified
56:23
you thank you madam chair thank you any other questions
members seeing none I need a motion for review of one and two have a motion second all in favor say aye poll say nay congratulations we're going to move down to itemd now which are going to be the service contracts
Speaker 9
56:45
thank you madam chair in itemd portion of your packet, these are the contracts and RQs submitted for your review today on the first page you'll see a letter we received from the OsP director Miss Jessica Patterson. She states that all the contracts and
Speaker 162
57:01
RQs presented today were reviewed by her staff and were found to be procured correctly and and under law. Also as requested by legislative council they identified two contracts that were previously procured using the traditional
Speaker 9
57:16
or the most advantageous proposal method and I want to bring to the committee's attention the second one that is mentioned here in the table with the department of Military. They contacted us prior to the meeting and requested for this contract to be pulled so it is not under consideration today and you'll see that later in the packet I'll point out to you so technically the only one that you'll see today is the UCA contract with leapfrogtechnologies. Also in this letter you'll see that they provide an update about their their review and creation of the revised rules in response to
section 19 of Act782. they state that that they have completed their work with acasso to review and revise portions of the procurement rules and that the governor's office is reviewing them and once the governor's office reviews those final rules, OsP will begin the promulgation process. moving to the RFQ for this month that's under item D1. we have one for this
Speaker 162
58:12
month. it is with disability determination Social Security Administration this is a $1.2 million RQ for medical consultant services for
case processing and reviews. that's the onerfQ
Chair
Unverified
58:23
for your review today. any questions members See none? Do
I have a motion for second? all in favor sayy aye poll
say nay congratulations we're going to move down to d2 construction related contracts. thank you madam chairir. on page four of
Speaker 162
58:44
yourd packet you'll see the construction related contracts for your review today. There are7 of them
The first one is with Arkansas Tech with Miller Boskas and Lack architects. This is a new contract for onca architectural services for the university.2 Department of Health withbatson incorporated. this is a new original contract for professional engineering and architectural design services for a Department of Health.umber3 with Northwest Arkansas Community College with core architects. This is amendment one to an existing contract to increase and add time to to this contract for schematic design services design development and
construction documents ber 4 on the next page also with N wack this is a contract with rossland Construction. This is a new contract for7.1 million dollars and this is relating to renovations on the Nwack Benton County campus to provide repairs and renovations from the May2024 tornado. Also number5 with Nac with SCM architects this is an architectural services contract
for schematic design services design development and construction services.umber6 with the University of Arkansas with core architects. this is amendment one to an existing contract this is increases this contract by $8.4 million and it is for full design services for the Maplehill Northudent housing project number7 with University of Arkansas withEals struction incorporated. This is amendment 2 to an existing construction contract for services provided with the Arkansas School for Mathe ma tic s Sciences and artts and
this particular amendment is relating to infrastructural improvements that the school needs to make this includes concrete paving, stormwater structures and road widening. These are the construction contracts madam chairir. thank you members who have any questions seeing none to have a motion for
review. Second, all in favor say aye polls say nay. congratulations. now we're going
to move down to item D3 intergovernmental contracts thank you madam chairir. there is one intergovernmental contract for your review today
Speaker 162
1:00:54
it is between the Ua LittleRock and Arkansas Tech University. This is an original contract for65,000 dollars and it is for provision of entrepreneurial and small business services to the designated geographic territory. This is federally funded by the US Small Business Administration is for the Arkansasmallusiness and Technology Development
Chair
Unverified
1:01:13
Center. This is the intergovernmental contract. thank you members any questions see none to have a
motion to review second all in favor sayy
aye poll sayna all right thank you we're going to move down to item D4 which is out
Speaker 162
1:01:33
of state contracts. thank you madam chairir. The first contract in out of state contracts is for Arkansas teacher retirement with State Street Bank andrust Company. This is ammendment1el to an existing contract and it expands the scope of this existing contract to provide for the extension of four foreign markets in the management and attendance services trade settlement safekeeping and reporting of
domestic and international securities for the teacher retirement investment system ber 2 Department of Commerce with AEDC with Michaelbaker International. This is ammendment one to an existing contract it increases the contract by3.6 million dollars. This is for professional services for broadband grants systems and services ber 3 Department of Education with the college entrance exam boardard. This is amendment one to an existing contract and it is to provide for Arkansas schools to offer
the PSAT to selected grades if chosen by students for the spring of 2026. Number4, Department of Health with Waystar incorporated. This is amendment3 to an existing contract and this is for clearing house services provided by Waystar this includes verifying claim eligibility transmitting EDI information compliant claims and management.umber5 with DHS and deloitte. this is a new special procurement
contract it is originally established at $110 million and since this is a special procurement and it's the first time the committee's seeing it we provided
Speaker 9
1:03:11
this special procurement justification letter in your green packet today so you'll see that attached to your packet And this is
Speaker 162
1:03:21
to establish a contract with initial term of three years for the maintenance and operation of the Arkansas integrated eligibility System for DHSumber6 DHS division of
agging Adults and Behavioral Health with Medsphere Systems Corporation. this is another original special procurement so you'll see these letters second in your green packet. this original contract is to initiate an agreement for the state hospital electronic healthal records and patient billing system ber 7 d h S withdCFs premier biotech incorporated this is amendment4 to an existing contract for drug screen confirmations and drug challenges for Fy27. Number 8 DHSDCfS with Timothy
Hill Children'sRanch. This is an original contract for a qualified residential treatment program.umber 9 DHS Division of Medical Services with guidehouse Incorporated this is amendment 10 to an existing contract to add funds for the assistance with preparation training and review of the completion of centres for Medicare. Number 10 on page 12 of packetd we have DHS division of medicaledical Services with
guidehouse incorporated this is also a special procurement that you're seeing for the first time so they're the third set of letters in your green packet is about this guidehouse contract. This contract is originally established at $2 million and is for the assistance with preparation training and review of the completion of the Centers for medicare and Medicaid Services. Number 11 DHS DmS with healthal Manystems this is amendment one to an existing contract for automated data matching systems. Number 12 DHS Division of Medical Services with healthalth Managementystems is is
ammendment2 to an existing contract and this is for the Arkansas healthalth Insurance premium paymentymentgrame. Number 13 DHS DmS with verrita incorporated. This is for nonmedical nonemergency medical transportation services in the selected service region. this is amendment one to the existing contract and it increases it by6.3 million dollars.umber 14 DHS with division of Provider Services and quality assurance with public partnerships LLc This is
for counseling and financial management services for self-directed independent choices programs. Number 15 DHS with handle informationtechnologies this is with the division of youthervices this is for the deployment of thertrack system where DYs and its service providers around the state connect remotely to the righttrackx system and this is for the entry of information as well as providing for placement and billing
data.umber 16 Department of Public Safety division of emergency Management with Motorola Solutions. This is amendment one to an existing contract and it is for site equipment and installation services for the Arkansas wirelesswork. sites. As I mentioned previously contract number 17 with the Department ofilitary was pulled so we'll move to number 18 Department of Transformation and Shared ServicesBuilding Authority with Yibanez Enterprises incorporated this is amendment6 to an
existing contract for janitorial services for the arris for the hendrixx building at616 Garrison in Fort Smith, Arkansas. Number 19, Department of Veterans affairs with Health dimensions consulting incorporated this is for healthal auditing services at the North LittleRock and Fayetteville eteran's homes for medicaid reporting. Number 20 Department of Veterans affairs Superior Linn Service. this is a new original contract for linennervices at the Fayetteville Veterans Home.umber 21 Northwest Arkansas Community College with SHI International.
this is an original contract for tracking of all noncredit learner data ber 22 University of Arkansas with deloitte consulting. This is amendment two to an existing contract. This is to support institutional data conversion reporting analytics integration development and post implementation support of theorkdayudystem platform. ber 23 U a with Fort Hill Associates. This is for an audit of all the construction services that are provided on the Ua campus.umber 24 UCA with
leapfrog technologies. This is an original contract for coarse leaf which is catalog information curriculum and syllabi management platform services.umber 25 with UCA is with payyer matrixx this is ammendment one to an existing contract and this is for addresses prescription drug costs for specialty drugs by dealing with alternative funding programs accessing grant programs and other related services. These are
Chair
Unverified
1:08:07
the out of state contracts thank you
Senator Joshua Bryant
Unverified
1:08:11
Senator Bryant you're recognized thank you madamir. I got a few that I'd like to call up starting with the department of commerce AEdC for item number 2 some from the agency come down please.
Good afternoon. my name's Edward Bailey. I'm with the Arkansas department of Broadband department of commerce state broadband officef I'm the deputy
Speaker 183
1:08:49
director I go by lane my middle name. thank you for being
Senator Joshua Bryant
Unverified
1:08:55
here. I'm right over here just curious on this contract, can you give us kind of an idea of where we are with the grant program and and the area's covered and then the last statement says total projected cost remains the same as original bid we're talking about this contract we're
talking about all contracts related to implementation of broadband this
that refers to this contract only this contract is with Michaelbaker International. it ' s actually a partnership also the other partner is a company called Ready.net. Michael Baker International is the engineering firm that we send out to inspect the construction of these broadband networks that we're funding so Michael Baker does the inspections of the construction
work and they also do the hands-on review of the receipts and all the finances before we make any reimbursements ready.net provides our software our mapping software and our grants management software it's all in one package so this is a a contract a partnership that covers all of that work and yes we're still within the original amount that was awarded two years ago and this is a 2year extension of that as
far as the overall program goes we are on target. we were one of the first states for the beed program the billion dollar program to to have final approval from the NTIA the US Department of Commerce and where we are right now that final approval was received on December4th and we'll have6 months now to get that through here through Alc which the earliest we could
bring it to lc would be February we're looking at either the February or the March when we will present all of those broadband projects to lC for appropriations approval once we get if we get that approval then we will look to get all of the subgrant agreements signed with the various I think it's about 20 different ISps to build the remaining
Speaker 183
1:11:09
broadband projects that's about77,000 homes and so this contract puts them in front
Senator Joshua Bryant
Unverified
1:11:17
of the icePs to make sure they're doing it appropriately and their seats are there that answered my question
Senator Terry Rice
Unverified
1:11:32
thank you. Thank you you Senator reicher recognized this one too
don't run off too quick and I'm sorry I got distracted on the front part of your testimony does this your contract today cover the final round of funding that's coming from the feds
so so that's got to be completed within the next
Senator Joshua Bryant
Unverified
1:11:54
two years. no the contract we're in the we're wrapping up
Speaker 183
1:11:57
the second year of a contract that can be extended up to7 years but you were this
Senator Terry Rice
Unverified
1:12:03
contract will take it out to the end of the bid. this next large round of fed I say the next it's probably the last landlord trying to finish up
Senator Joshua Bryant
Unverified
1:12:15
the bee program all of the projects have to be completed
within4 years of sub of signing of the sub grant agreements and the those subgrant agreements had to be signed within the next6 months. OK but if
Senator Terry Rice
Unverified
1:12:29
you're going to be there this is for two years I'm sorry I didn't look at it yes sir it's for two years so we will need another two year extension need for supervision over to to finish the program right? OK. ok that's what I was covering there's gonna be future need too and and y'all y'all didn't get to come in on the the first part that we wished you had been
there when when there were some problems and and I do appreciate y'all coming in and and getting started on that. I wish we'd had you back earlier
Speaker 196
1:13:00
when they did have problems appreciate that yes sir we will have to come back for another extension in a couple of years. thank you
Speaker 183
1:13:07
Represervative Richardson who's your question fordHS we are done with you this time.
thank you can we have somebody come down
Speaker 199
1:13:22
from DHS what part of DHS? item number5 and 15 both. can someone
come down from the agency please. it's division of youth Services is 15. And number5
if I can get to it isdHS and if you introduce yourself for the record please
Speaker 204
1:13:54
good afternoon Kim Gardner officefice of Information Technology DHS. michael Krupp,
Speaker 205
1:14:01
director of the division of youthervices Mary Franklin director
Senator Joshua Bryant
Unverified
1:14:08
of the division of county operations for DHS thank you you're
Speaker 210
1:14:15
recognized p re s ent ative Richardson thank you madam chairwoman so thank you so much for being here. I know we talked earlier about item5 and and you
provide a lot of information that was very helpful and so I I really appreciate that the last question that I have remaining on this particular item it still revolves around sooce and I know we kind of hit on that a little bit. I did get the letter from the procurement that the approval letter and appreciate that but I still come back to the same element the the letter itself stipulated that because
this was created by them that it made sense for them to continue to maintain it essentially and and although I I don't necessarily disagree with that mentality my concern is around the state having systems that can't be maintained by other vendors and so I I guess if you could help me understand why we feel like that this is the only vendor that could provide those services it would help me feel a lot more comfortable about this particular contract thank you for your question
Speaker 204
1:15:32
we did a lot of research as we were preparing to just to just determine which procurement strategy we should go and we actually looked at some of our neighboring states as well as some other states that were also using this platform with Deloitte and we had seen examples where they had tried to move to a different M&O vendor to support their platform and they were not successful and so we did not want to create a situation for us here in Arkansas we wanted to mitigate that risk especially looking at some of
the upcoming changes that we had in front of us and so that was one of the drivers for making that decision to stick
Speaker 213
1:16:10
with deloitte so the idea was because other states were not
Speaker 210
1:16:16
successful with other vendors you felt like that we wouldn't be successful primarily using
Speaker 204
1:16:21
theexen platform that we are using with Deloitte we looked at two other states specifically Texas and Connecticut who had that same platform and tried to move to a different vendor to support it they were not successful in
those efforts and so yes we we thought it best to consider maintaining a relationship with Deloitte
Speaker 214
1:16:42
for M&O. just for clarification purposes, the software that we're using wasn't special built for the state it is a provided software as a service through that particular vendor is that correct? That's my understanding
Speaker 204
1:16:54
and we've customized it quite a bit we've enhanced it since we implemented in 2022. so migration to another vendor
Speaker 214
1:17:05
would mean a requirement of a new software correct and the customizations to go along with that. Correct. OK. all right thank you for that one madam chair do you want me to go on to my other question on the other item or I don't know if is there any other questions on this one get back in thank Senator Bryn has
a question. Senator Bryant you recognize you I guess same question I I
Senator Joshua Bryant
Unverified
1:17:31
was elected to the house in 2021 in a bill that I
ran when Mr. White ran DHS was dealing with this system and it's development and how excited they were I think the argument I had was we're going to pay for it and it's gonna get developed and then we're gonna own it and maintain it so why jump into a contract with I think it was Equifaxx that was saying hey I I can do what As is gonna do but we can do it differently and we can implement and cross sector with different federal agencies and it'd be a better product and I remember this agency
pushed back on that saying give areas a chance but now I'm seeing here four years later that we are going to do hundreds of millions of dollars in perpetual care and maintenance for this system. so is it is it possible that the agency can look and say hey yes we've we've downloaded a bunch of money in the system but it's gonna cost us x amount of millions of dollars a year regardless of the system we choose and maybe there is a competitor or a 3rd 3rd party vendor that can do this because I think agencies as a whole have a problem spending millions of
dollars on software and then trashing it. and so not saying that what we're gonna ask is new but is it possible we look at to see what what we can spend as a third party versus a system that we have just some pride in Senator
Bryant, thank you for the question. I I'm gonna try to answer it I can
Speaker 223
1:19:00
tell you one thing I have learned throughout the process of design development and implementation for the Ari
system the Arkansas integrated eligibility systemste this system integrates the rules for all the programs we administer in county operations medicaid eligibility rules, SnAP eligibility rules the the transitional employment assistance rules as well asumm EBT now that it's a new program that we've added and the systems are very complex. We you know the contract, the actual work on the contract started in 2019 and I would say
we had it fully implemented during 2022y of 2022 and we did not you know the system is not an end of life it's still fairly young and these systems you know, the recommendation is to look at what do you do you know 1el to fi5 years down the road so we did not want to replace anything we feel like we need to we needed longer to get our return on investment it is costly to build a system like this that's integrated we
retired for other separate systems that our team was using in order to get to the place where we have Aries and we don't have staff entering information in more than one place for the same client and and we did also not want to take the risk of an increased cost should we go out for comp et it ive procurement in or the possibility of a new vendor coming in and that not being successful given things that we
knew would were going to be on our plates or in that are on our plates now and I can tell you you never really finish building an IT system. There there is always a rule that needs to be changed or a process that you've determined there's a better way to do it we can make this change in the system and become more efficient and do work more quickly or more accurately so it it is you know we went this route and it even included
federal approvals to do it this way including you know the state plus federal approvals basically to get us the best the best dollar for you know the best bang for our buck, the best stability moving into the you know future while we continue to use the system and make sure we get our return on investment before we consider making any changes or rebuilding a system I hope that helps guess it does but like what what's the
Senator Joshua Bryant
Unverified
1:21:44
cost we've spent so far?s2019 was kind of the initial
Speaker 204
1:21:50
contract where we are on our current contract with total projected costs is a little over400 million but that includes DdI so that portion of DdI then how far we are into maintenance and operations but we also had some other work that we did around the pandemic we added to the total projected cost of this contract to help support the business operations when they
had some staffing shortages so that I believe is around the the estimated total projected costs to date is dollars
Senator Joshua Bryant
Unverified
1:22:23
on their million for the
Speaker 223
1:22:26
existing contract that comes to end of life at the end of this month and this new contract for M&O to continue maintenance and operations is that is the number you have in front of you the
Speaker 211
1:22:39
25 9 million so it is significantly less than
Speaker 223
1:22:42
what we have spent the first7 years because of the big
lift of design development and implementing this entirely integrated system with rules engine that has the policy built into it to help us make sure we do consistent determinations so
Senator Joshua Bryant
Unverified
1:23:02
how long will that $259 million take us before you're back needing more The259 is
Speaker 223
1:23:08
the total for the seven if if the sevenyear total projected cost that's the three years the first three years is is the 110
OK, so 250 million dollars,259 million
Senator Joshua Bryant
Unverified
1:23:23
dollars for seven years of a439 million dollars system. so I guess it goes back with the agency entertain any other vendors to come and say you can do that for 10 million for 20 years. and it's
the same product or is it we're committed into this system for seven years that's sounds like that's what the agency wants to do. OK thank you
have a question when you were talking about that you built this system to combine four
into one because they were enter it in four different places. how much money did that save us to have one provider versus those four
Speaker 223
1:24:10
did that save us any money? Well I don't I don't have those
Senator Joshua Bryant
Unverified
1:24:14
numbers today I I can tell you we retired the system we called answerer we we it got us off mainframe it also retired
another system that did Medicaid only it was called urum so maybe it was if you can just get
us those numbers by Friday just send it to staff so they can send it out OK uhpresentative
Representative R. Scott Richardson
Unverified
1:24:38
Richardson you're recognized thank you madam chairman ga in
Speaker 210
1:24:43
so just just to be clear I know I asked this question already but I want to go back to it just just to be clear the system itself the software underlying that we can figured
Speaker 214
1:24:55
that we made our own that software is only provided by this vendor. so
Speaker 234
1:25:02
theexen was developed by Deloitte. What they have built
Speaker 236
1:25:05
here belongs to us and it's been they they use NextGen as the base platform and then built it out to our specifications and continue to make changes to it as we determine necessary or we need to implement new rules so we
Speaker 214
1:25:26
underlying software the primary underlying core software I know I'm trying to get into this just to make sure
Speaker 210
1:25:33
that I understand again I'm coming back to the same question that I've had before we go to a sole source as if there are no other companies out there and if this is their software we're committed to their software we have no choice but to leverage them to continue to maintain this and and provide us updates it is what it is I would have objected in 16 when this was first considered but if this is
a if this is we're locked into this vendor because this is only their software and we cannot other than go to a different software we have no other recourse then that's a separate statement so I I guess I'm just trying to understand are we locked into this vendor are there any other opportunities at all for another company to come in and provide the same services on the existing software that Arkansas I guess owns at this point so
Speaker 236
1:26:29
a competitive procurement was an option that we considered so I think to answer your question we could have done a competitive procurement to see if another vendor bid and qualified to maintain the system but in in our research and in our weighing of the pros and cons and ultimate costs we felt like the best direction was to request approval for the special procurement at the state level and at the federal level and worked and were ultimately
approved both at the state level and and by the federal partnerscms and FNS to move forward with this special procurement contract. so just to I'm going to restate what I
Speaker 210
1:27:12
think I heard you say that there are other vendors that could provide us the exact same services but because of the nature of the relationship and existing knowledge we chose to not go and and do a competitive bid just to stay with the same one. yes sir that's our understanding
would you like for me to move on to 15? No if you'll hold on just a second,
Senator Joshua Bryant
Unverified
1:27:45
Senator Bryant has one more question then you can get back in en der Bryant you're recognizecog got one quick question who who is the end user of Aries? what what state employee keys in the data that would give us a thumbs up or thumbs down that it was worth the439 million dollars we spent because 243 years ago plenty of state employees were not thrilled. I'm curious now
that time has passed with those answers would be
so the main users of the the main end users of the system would be our clerical staff for scanning and registering applications and incoming work and then our caseworkers and supervisors out in the field that determine eligibility. OK, so your field workers are then down the road here on Capitol
Boulevard here yeah we have an office on Martin Luther King here
in Pulaski and we have an office in
Jacksonville and we also have an office in baseline and offices in every county of the state but you're you're your staff office that does it
for directly for the agency not not the front line is is here on the complex or is it we have staff all over that all use the system
Speaker 238
1:28:52
OKok all right thank you you're recognized thank you madam Chair.
Speaker 210
1:29:04
so on 1f jumping to that one just a
couple of quick questions one that this amendment is to revise the the scope of work in this particular contract what got revised so it's my understanding with
Speaker 204
1:29:25
this contract we are just bringing together a single payment mechanism for this vendor so it is I'm not I do not think that we changed
the scope of work of what Handel is doing for DYS just simply pulling together two separate contracts to put it on 11 contract so it's the same
Speaker 210
1:29:51
exact scope just pulling together other contracts. Correct so what is the original the original scope I I read the the right track implementation building out the network and the connectivity. what is the the scope is
Speaker 208
1:30:09
so so the scope if I may it of this contract it's
Speaker 205
1:30:14
our case management system for youth services statewide that both my staff our residential providers our community based providers around the state utilized to keep track of all the juvenni's records their education, their therapy, billing all of those things nothing in the scope has changed the separate piece was that piece that allowed us to if we needed to create something new in the system for example we we had something a couple of years ago to track some information we
collected for the federal government to be able to do that it's we needed to put this all in one contract because and had the I person sitting here next to me I'd be able to explain it a little better than me but when we want someone to change the system and build something new handles the only entity that it's there proprietary system so that we needed to be able to do that rather than have two separate ones it was the decision was made to put that all into one and I didn't you know just to have that opportunity if the
funding is there and if there's a need in the future to be able to build something new in
Speaker 251
1:31:16
the system what we're building something new in the system obviously would be a change of scope right
Speaker 205
1:31:23
a new report or something of that nature not necessarily changing the scope so to give an example my team that tracks therapy and all these things for the the youth that are in our custody. we have a treatment plan that is followed every juvenile that comes in our custody they they have a treatment plan after
they're assessed that dictates what type of treatment they're going to get while they're in custody we at one time had intended to build a treatment plan into the system rather than have something separate on paper or on spreadsheets or something of that nature so it would still be within the same scope of what they're doing with tracking juvenile justice and case management it would just be paying for that work to be done to develop something new within the same scope if that makes sense what is
Speaker 210
1:32:08
this amendment I don't see how long the
length of this amendment is for just another year. Yes. Is that correct? Yes. Correct. so we paid 840 so far and now we're going to pay another 274 for one year how much of this system is implemented at this point the system is implemented we've been using it for I've been in DYS
Speaker 205
1:32:37
for seven years and we've been using it since well before I came here the Righttrack
system that handle developed so I believe the 84,000 piece is is the authority to be able to make any of those changes if we need to I know the ongoing costs for this contract is the 200 and some odd 1000 per year that's the that's the amount we've been paying every year for several years and it includes a staff member from Handle that's on site that helps us maintain if there's any kind of problems with the system maintain maintain and make sure that it operates properly. so we have a s just to make sure
Speaker 210
1:33:14
I understand we have a software that is proprietary in nature that we had built for us that we are stuck with if you will with no ability to migrate to another vendor to help us with maintenance and operations because we've created a a proprietary environment and a proprietary connection I believe that we wouldu I mean if we've
Speaker 205
1:33:38
tried in the past we did I believe6 years ago we attempted to procure a new contract. We put the
procurement out there with all of our things that we needed for a new system when that procurement went through the bids that came back were considerably more expensive than this one so the decision was made to let's just stick with what we have get it up to date because some of the system things were changing some of the Microsoft changes with silverlight at the time so the decision was made to stick with this because it was considerably less expensive than the other companies that bid Handled did not for for that particular project was not even they weren't bidding on that one
so rather than increase the amount that we're going to be spending per year considerably the decision we made was to stick with the handle righttrack system that we already had in place so so if I understand what
Speaker 210
1:34:28
you're saying since we're locked into this system we're locked into it for at least the foreseeable future with no options to do anything else. well I believe if we if we thought there
Speaker 258
1:34:40
was other systems out there that could do this
Speaker 205
1:34:43
exact same work as Will or better than what the system does
we would be able to put that out for procurement at any time if we decided to do that to try to get another system. I'm not aware of anything anybody that can do it for that same price or less but in the future I don't believe that we're locked in don't have the ability to reprocure we could do that if we chose to last
Speaker 214
1:35:06
question I appreciate the latitude very much madam chairwoman lastst question for you guys and I appreciate you being here again
Speaker 210
1:35:12
and answering all these questions do we own the underlying source code for this particular
element? I'll need to take that back representative
Speaker 204
1:35:21
and double check what how how we wrote that contract when we initially began the relationship with Handel. I would like to think that we do but I I don't want to say yes and not be sure thank you very
Speaker 211
1:35:32
much for sure I have a question one thing that
you said in your conversation was that you were combining some contracts so there'd be one pay sourcece is that so what contracts did you
Speaker 204
1:35:47
combine? we had we had one sole source that we have in front of us that only included development the development work and then we had a a separate that was exempt by law that covered our maintenance and operations for Handel and so this will combine the two. OK and where are we at on that one that you're combining? iss
that contract done? Where's it at? it it's this one so this will turn out to be the only one
that you have for them OK thank you for the
clarification. represent I mean Senator Bryant you're recognized Y p re s ent ative Rrie is the question for them OK Representative Ry you're recognized thank
Representative Johnny Rye
Unverified
1:36:33
you madam Chairman. May I show this and this may be a hard answer to come up with real quick but even if you did have another company that was as good or better even if you did what would be the startup cost just to transfer all the information
from your system now to that system that you would be in do you have any idea you're welcome
Speaker 267
1:36:56
yeah that's I I don't know exactly what it
Speaker 208
1:36:59
would be. I think that was one of the things when we when we attempted to do this before the initial
Speaker 205
1:37:04
startup cost was going to be extremely expensive and then we also looked at the ongoing yearly cost was also more than what we were paying currently under this maintenance and operation so it was it was a matter of both those things were going to cost us considerably more and if we were to do something if we did find something that we thought might work, you know because our
communitybased providers our residential providers, group homes around the state you know there there's a lot of different entities that that utilize this system to track what's going on with the juvenile who's in DYS custody it would be something that we would be very deliberate about because we don't want to lose all the historical information that we have in the system it's very important to hold on to that so it's something that we would have to do a lot of research we do think about those things and look around from time to time if we do find something at that time we would be very deliberate about doing this it's not something we
Speaker 254
1:37:52
would do quickly thank you sir and thank you madam chairman. I think we're done
Speaker 269
1:37:59
with y'all. I appreciate it so much. Sandra Bryant, who do you
Speaker 270
1:38:05
need item kansas. OK we have someone down you
have a and it will come down and introduce yourself for the record please.
Speaker 271
1:38:27
melissa icest University of Arkansas systems thank
Senator Joshua Bryant
Unverified
1:38:32
you for coming down just looking at item 22 funding to support institutional data conversion, reporting analytics that started in 2021. is there a is there an end date to this
contract or are we getting close to ending it or are we gonna just perpetually increase it no sir we're
Speaker 274
1:38:50
we're close to ending that several years ago, the University of Arkansas system decided to implement an
enterprise resource planning system or an ERP system so that we could get all of our campuses on the same human resource system same finance system and same student information system and so at that time we selected after a lot of research we selected a company called Workday for the platform for for HR finance and student information system we selected deloitte as the implementer or the consultant to help us implement
excuse me the platform and so this particular contract was for the implementation of the third piece of the work of the ERP system which is anything and everything that has anything to do with our students. For instance, financial aid student accounts, academic advising everything scheduling and all. that was this third piece was the student information system and so deloitte has been the consultant that we retained for that purpose. this amendment
is amendment 2 which takes us to April1st, basically March31st of next year and so it's a $2.3 million amendment to an existing contract that we should be fully implemented on the student information piece at the end of March. We were fully implemented on HR and fully implemented with respect to finance. this is the last piece and then so to your knowledge do you
Senator Joshua Bryant
Unverified
1:40:27
expect the university to come back and ask for a
operations and maintenance contract for deloitte to allow the system to continue to operate the system that we bought.
Senator Bryant, I'm not aware, I'm not aware
Speaker 274
1:40:42
of such simply simply am not aware no sir do you do you suppose we own you
Senator Joshua Bryant
Unverified
1:40:48
u of a will own the system that was created and formed their own updates and maintenance to it I don't
want to mislead you in in response, you
Speaker 274
1:41:00
know to your question. I don't know that I
can tell you that I know that definitively. I just simply I know what I've shared with you, you know, which is you know that we we will be fully implemented within a few months on the system now obviously there may be updates you know, I would imagine you know to a software system, you know and all but this particular contract is specific to the implementation of the system there was prior contract obviously for selection of the software vendor which is different obviously
Senator Joshua Bryant
Unverified
1:41:35
than than deloitte and do you know if we do we
own the code do not know that sir I do not right thank you yes sir thank you thank you for coming. Members any other questions seeing none do I
have a motion for review motion second all in favor say aye polls say nay thank you we're going to move down tod5 which is instate contracts. thank you madam chair Instate contracts begin on page 18 of yourd packet
Speaker 162
1:42:11
There are 18 for your review today. The first two are with Arkansas State University, the first contract is with business communications incorporated this is an original contract $225,000. This is for webxx migration which is migrating over to web-based phone services for Arkansas State University.umber 2 also with AU withalmer Solutions. This is a new original contract for IT advisory and M365 Man services also for the university ber 3 Department of Corrections division of
Community Corrections with Safehaveninistries. This is to provide comprehensive community-based treatment in a 23 bed female reentry facility reentry facility in Clarksville, Arkansas. ber 4 Department of Energy and Environment Division of Environmental Quality with Julianestster. This is for janitorial services continuing an existing contract. then we have contracts number5 through 10. these are all with Department of Human Services division of agging Adults and
Behavioral Health Services. This is for various providers throughout the state for therapeutic counseling services and you'll see each provider covers a very specific set of counties
Speaker 9
1:43:23
that takes us all the way over to itemd page 21 contract number 11 is also with DHS division of
Speaker 162
1:43:32
agging Adults and Behavioral healthalth Services. This is with western Arkansas counseling and guidance. This is also for therapeutic counseling but it is for persons without insurance or
any other payer source for medically necessary services.umber 12 with DHSdivision of Developmental Disabilities with Ethan Leonard. This is for dental services at the Jonesboro Human Development Center ammendment3 to an existing contract.umber 13 DHS Division ofedical Services with Arkansas Foundation for Medical Care. this is the final original special procurement that you'll see for this month. so this is the last set of letters in your green packet. This is a7.6 million dollars contract for
prior authorization and medical review services number 14 DHS Division of youth Services with Edward Sherrill. This is dental treatment services for youth residing in the care of DYSumber 15 Department of Human Services with DYS with KA Lancaster incorporated this is for pharmacy consultation services for DYSumber 16, Department of Transformation and Shared ServicesBuilding Authority with BrW Incorporated this is for janitorial services at their building at 900 West
Capital ber 17 and 18 are both with the University of Central Arkansas number 17 is with Blue advantage administrators of Arkansas. This is for a third party administrator services for UCA's self-funded health insurance and then similarly number 18 with UAs with US A. this is for dental claims administration for their self-funded dental benefit plans. These are the instate contracts madam chair and thank you members any questions seeing none I have a motion for
review motion second, all in favor say aye poll say nay all right we're going to move
on down to item number E1 which is service contracts and amendments without change.
Speaker 9
1:45:30
thank you chair the last three items or the last few items for your review are the reports
Speaker 162
1:45:36
and communications there are3 regular monthly reports for your information, they are the contracts that were approved without a material change. they're also the minor executed
contracts that's E2 and number three is critical emergency procurements that occurred during the month and those are the reports
madam chairir. any questions seeing none motion secondcond all in favor sayy aye rightice thank you it's passed. seeing no other business we're adjourned.
Agenda
A. Call to Order - Comments from Chairs - Items Held from Previous Meeting
B. Methods of Finance
C. Discretionary Grants
D. Services Contracts for Legislative Review/RFQ Approvals
E. Reports and Communications
F. Other Business
G. Adjournment
Documents
| Title | Type | Pages | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Agenda — ALC - REVIEW, Dec 16, 2025 | Agenda | 2 | Official source ↗ |
| A.1 - Contract Held from November DHS-DCFS Evident Change | Exhibit | 1 | Official source ↗ |
| B. 1-7 Methods of Finance - December 2025 | Exhibit | 3 | Official source ↗ |
| C. Grants | Exhibit | 11 | Official source ↗ |
| D. Contracts | Exhibit | 24 | Official source ↗ |
| E.1. Reports - PCS_TGS Previously Review No Material Change Report | Exhibit | 9 | Official source ↗ |
| E.2. Reports - PCS TGS 25000-350000 Minor Report | Exhibit | 4 | Official source ↗ |
| Supplemental Agenda | Exhibit | 9 | Official source ↗ |
Speakers
Representative Frances Cavenaugh Chair
Unverified
Speaker 6
Speaker 8
Speaker 9
Chair
Unverified
Representative DeAnn Vaught
Unverified
Speaker 23
Speaker 25
Senator Mark Johnson
Unverified
Representative Ryan A. Rose
Unverified
Speaker 39
Speaker 40
Speaker 41
Speaker 45
Speaker 37
Speaker 50
Speaker 26
Speaker 53
Senator Joshua Bryant
Unverified
Speaker 90
Speaker 94
Speaker 96
Speaker 107
Speaker 116
Speaker 120
Speaker 51
Speaker 127
Senator Bart Hester
Unverified
Speaker 131
Speaker 149
Speaker 162
Speaker 168
Speaker 170
Speaker 172
Speaker 173
Speaker 183
Senator Terry Rice
Unverified
Speaker 196
Speaker 199
Speaker 204
Speaker 205
Speaker 210
Speaker 213
Speaker 214
Speaker 223
Speaker 211
Representative R. Scott Richardson
Unverified
Speaker 234
Speaker 236
Speaker 217
Speaker 238
Speaker 208
Speaker 251
Speaker 258
Representative Johnny Rye
Unverified
Speaker 267
Speaker 254
Speaker 269
Speaker 270
Speaker 271
Speaker 274