Modular procurement is an acquisition strategy that breaks up large, complex procurements into multiple, tightly-scoped projects to implement technology systems in successive, interoperable increments. It is an approach that can help reduce vendor lock in, mitigate risk, and encourage the delivery of working software to users more rapidly.
The Alaska EIS-M project will employ a modular procurement strategy to modernize, and eventually replace, the state’s existing public benefit eligibility systems. To support this work, the product team has endorsed a number of principles to guide future procurements.
Ultimately, the state’s investment should be measured in working software, not phase documents or milestones. Only working systems are of value to real constituents. Based on that premise, teams are only able to measure the success of a waterfall project after most costs have been incurred, because that is the first time working software is delivered. This is a huge risk. Modular procurements allow the state to measure success at more regular intervals, and reduce the overall risk to the state.
We embrace the use of open source software, and share the code that is developed as part of this effort openly in public repositories. This will help us reduce overdependence on a single vendor, will help us build trust with the vendor partners that we work with and foster reuse both within the State of Alaska, and with other states.
We aim to break up the large amount of work required for the overall EIS-M effort into smaller, less risky, more achievable pieces. Our goal is to run multiple, smaller procurements in sequence and iteratively deliver increased value to those we serve. This will help us reduce risks, and deliver working software the end users more quickly.
We desire to reduce the size of proposals that we receive from vendors, by deobligating them from crafting lengthy responses to RFPs. This goes hand-in-hand with breaking work up into smaller pieces by reducing the overhead of responding to solicitations and fostering a more engaged vendor community.
We want our solicitations to focus less on prescribing specific business requirements and more on the solutions and outcomes we hope to achieve with our vendor partners. This will allow vendors to offer more creative, innovative approaches to the challenges we face.
We seek to foster collaborative relationships with our vendor partners, and to build an ecosystem of vendors that are skilled in agile software development, product thinking, human-centered design and DevSecOps.