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AGENCY TESTIMONY
Enhancements to Passport e-procurement system and decommissioning of HHS Accelerator
0:12:24
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Lisa Flores outlines the significant improvements made to the Passport e-procurement system and the process of decommissioning the legacy HHS Accelerator system. She highlights the challenges and benefits of this technological transition, emphasizing its impact on efficiency and transparency in the procurement process.
- Introduced Passport Vault for secure document storage and management
- Implemented subcontracting functionality in Passport to streamline approvals and payments
- Decommissioned HHS Accelerator through a planned, phased approach over five months
- Increased Passport user base to over 13,000 while improving system functionality by 40%
- Acknowledged challenges in adapting to new technology and committed to reaching complete stabilization
- Dispersed over $3 billion in advances through Passport in FY '25 to alleviate cash flow issues for providers
Lisa Flores
0:12:24
Alongside and in support of these successes, MOCs has diligently worked to keep pace with the rapid enhancements being made in technology that allow us to build out the workflow to further these legislative milestones and automate processes.
0:12:37
Improvements to our end to end procurement system, Passport, have required challenging but necessary actions to finally dismantle and modernize broken procurement system while providing a level of transparency and efficiency that is long overdue.
0:12:49
In September 2024, MOX rolled out its latest release, which included two new enhancements to our e procurement platform, which deliver on key recommendations from the joint task force to get nonprofits paid on time and the rebuild, renew, and reinvent blueprint.
0:13:04
The first of these enhancements is Passport Vault, which provides secure document storage and management, allowing seamless sharing with other Passport users and automatically linking documents to relevant business processes, which was a beloved function that existed in Accelerator.
0:13:19
Users also gained access to subcontracting functionality in Passport, which finally brought the paper process of approving subcontractors into the digital age while also augmenting accountability now that these approvals are connected to contracts all the way through payment.
0:13:34
And as a result, this new functionality has streamlined approval and payment actions while supporting MWBE utilization goals.
0:13:41
As we were making important improvements to our groundbreaking e procurement platform, MOX took the necessary and responsible step of decommissioning our legacy system, HHS Accelerator, which had been dangerously left exposed for years.
0:13:54
MOX conducted the decommissioning and the migration through a planned phased approach over five months to allow sufficient time for each agency and the respective nonprofit provider community to get informed, trained, and acclimated.
0:14:07
However, it can't be denied that what I call the great migration of HHS Accelerator has been massive change management effort that moved over 15,000 contracts and 30,000 budgets into Passport.
0:14:19
It's important to acknowledge the challenges that come with adapting to new technology tools and the impacts those actions have on our users remain a focus of our change management team.
0:14:28
We weathered those choppy weathers, and with our core principles of ensuring broader access to New York City's procurement opportunities while increasing accountability and improving effectiveness as our North Star, we drove dramatic growth in our user base to over 13,000 while simultaneously adding new features and improving system functionality by 40% over the past two years.
0:14:48
These enhancements made to Passport, coupled with the increase in users, has resulted in a 70% increase in our service desk submissions, impacting MOX's ability to provide timely responses and resolutions.
0:14:59
I want to emphasize that the impacts and concerns expressed by our providers has not fallen on ears.
0:15:04
Your concerns are of the utmost priority of my office, and we are committed to reaching a state of complete stabilization and doing so with the highest level of transparency and accountability.
0:15:14
So far in FY '25, the city has dispersed over 3,000,000,000 advances through Passport to help alleviate cash flow issues many of our human service providers are facing.