Pursuant to Chapter 854 of the 2019 Acts of Assembly, Item 119, Paragraph C, this report provides a preliminary plan to replace the current information technology (IT) system, including the licensing system, used by the Department of Professional and Occupational Regulation (DPOR).

Replacing DPOR’s current IT systems is a multi-year effort that begins with gathering and documenting the business requirements and process flows necessary to develop the scope of work. The primarily objective is to replace the three current mission-critical systems with vendor-supplied, cloud-based solutions for functional and technical improvements, leveraging the marketplace for post-production system support rather than relying solely on in-house IT staff resources.

Estimated funding is unknown until a scope of work is developed, although an assumption ranging from $5 million to $10 million during the project does not seem unreasonable based on the EAGLES project alone and recent similar IT projects in other states.

DPOR is utilizing a hybrid approach to meet current IT staffing requirements, with staff augmentation and VITA services for short-term needs, and permanent/long-term systems support handled by 3-4 full-time employees in the IT and Business Development division (which also includes the transfer of IT-related responsibilities for EAGLES and technical aspects of website management, records management, and electronic forms from the licensing division).

In order to initiate the requirements analysis and business process documentation necessary to begin the replacement project, two systems analysts and two business analysts are needed. In addition, a database administrator and at least one, if not two, application engineers are required to work with the current DPOR team and VITA on the scope of work.