questions & answers
Get answers to frequently asked questions.
In April 2024, the state of Washington, and Washington Technology Solutions (WaTech) as the lead agency, launched the Washington Resident Portal Challenge to invite visionaries with a passion to improve how the public engages with their government, to submit proposals to develop a roadmap which defines the vision and direction for an unprecedented Washington State resident experience. The resident portal aligns with Goal 1 of the State of Washington Enterprise IT Strategic Plan that speaks to connected government and a resident portal that connects data and services and presents an inclusive, equitable, accessible front door to the residents of the State of Washington.
WaTech will award one winner up to $550,000 to develop the roadmap over the course of three months, beginning in July 2024.
WaTech welcomes applications from individuals, teams, and organizations or entities that have a recognized legal existence and structure under applicable law (State, Federal or Country) and that are in good standing in the jurisdiction under which they are organized with the following restrictions:
While individuals/entities outside of the US are not eligible to apply as Lead Participant, they may serve as part of the team on an application. Eligible Lead Participants are welcome to collaborate with nonprofit organizations, companies, foundations, schools, colleges and universities, government agencies, individuals, and other entities to develop the solution. Refer to the Rules for a complete set of eligibility requirements.
Please review the application to better understand the submission requirements and the Guidelines & Resources to learn about the portal project, as well as the scoring rubric to learn more about what constitutes a strong application. To participate in the Washington Resident Portal Challenge, you must first register no later than 5:00 PM Pacific on Thursday, May 9, 2024. Registration is a simple two-step process. First, create a username and password, then check your email inbox to confirm your registration. Next, complete the online registration form. Once you are registered, applications are due no later than 5:00 PM Pacific on Tuesday, May 21, 2024.
Once the submission deadline passes, the Washington Resident Portal Challenge team will perform an administrative review to confirm each submission meets the rules and submission requirements before advancing to Evaluation Panel Review. All reviewers will use the scoring rubric.
The Selection Committee will review top-scoring submissions and request additional information as needed to select one winner based on the Evaluation Panel’s recommended rank order. The Selection Committee will make the final determination of the winner who will receive up to $550,000 to develop the roadmap.
You may only complete one submission as the Lead Participant. A participant can serve as a partner on a team for multiple submissions as long as each of those submissions proposes a separate, distinct solution. This means each project can only be submitted once, and we leave it up to each team to designate their eligible Lead Participant.
For regional or location-specific branches of larger organizations, as well as departments, schools, and nonprofits within or based in a college/university: You can each register and submit separately as the Lead Participant if the proposed solutions are separate and distinct. There should be no overlap in team members. The intent of this rule is to help ensure that each team is concentrating its efforts on a single complete submission that reflects the scoring criteria.
Innovative teams are invited to develop a roadmap that provides platform, functionality, data, architecture, cost and agency digital service integration recommendations. The roadmap will enable the state, in a follow-up phase, to procure a platform and develop the portal foundation and the initial set of service integrations. The components of the roadmap, as well as the core principles of the resident portal, can be found under Guidelines & Resources. Please note: This challenge is focused on creating a roadmap for the resident portal and is not for building the portal itself.
Please note: This challenge is focused on creating a roadmap for the resident portal and is not for building the portal itself. It is not expected that the roadmap project will provide actual content for the portal. We expect the winner to build a robust, platform agnostic roadmap. It is expected that the roadmap will provide recommendations for what to look for in an actual solution, not to define what solution will be used.
Within thirty (30) days of being identified as an Apparently Successful Vendor (ASV), Vendor must be licensed to conduct business in Washington State, including registering with the Washington State Department of Revenue. The Vendor must collect and report all applicable taxes. The Vendor must submit Vendor’s Unified Business Identification (UBI) number within 30 days of being identified as the ASV. For additional information, review the Rules.
All participants who submitted an application will be notified of the results of the challenge in late June 2024. WaTech will work with the ASV to execute the contract. Any services performed for the Competition Sponsor under the resulting Contract shall be documented in a Statement of Work established between WaTech and the Vendor. WaTech will negotiate the SOW with the ASV in parallel with the contract and shall be incorporated into the contract. The SOW shall memorialize the scope of work, deliverables, timeline and how and when the ASV will be compensated. Compensation will be documented in the SOW and likely be deliverable-based. There will not be a partnership as a result of this competition.
The contract will begin in July 2024. Roadmap development is scheduled to take three months and conclude in September 2024. The $550,000 award is for developing the roadmap only and is a one-time project to be completed within the three-month period.
Please contact us with any challenge-related questions, requests for help with accessibility and special accommodations, and technical support.
Once you have registered and throughout the challenge, we will send important notifications to the email address associated with your account, as well as the primary and secondary contacts listed on your registration form. There are three critical steps you can take to make sure these messages are received promptly:
Each application must include a brief video of no more than 90 seconds that showcases your solution. This DOES NOT need to be a professionally produced video – a video shot on a smartphone is acceptable.
The following are instructions for recording and uploading your video on YouTube:
For more information about video guidelines, review the submission requirements. If you need technical support, you can email us.
No, the winner for the roadmap is not precluded from bidding on any future opportunities related to the portal.
All inputs and deliverables from the project to-date will be shared with the winner on the first day of roadmap development, including survey results and data, interview recordings and synopsis, user groups, personas, and some (not complete) user stories based on data collected to date (see Guidelines & Resources). WaTech will also provide non-functional requirements, some functional requirements, and a state Solutions Architect to consult with the winner. Integration requirements will be documented in non-functional and functional requirements, but WaTech does not have strict architectural documentation or requirements – this is part of the scope of the roadmap vendor. We are not able to provide examples or inputs to participants in advance.
WaTech supports including AI where it makes sense to utilize this technology to improve the resident experience.
All state authenticated applications and services are in scope of the resident portal, although they will be prioritized for implementation and integration.
The target audience is residents of Washington and, as such, the majority of the interactions will be local. However, businesses and residents interact with Washington state government from across the world, so there is no limitation to access.
The resident portal will provide frictionless experiences. It will be easy to navigate, accessible, absent of duplicate information, and will minimize the number of places that a resident will need to go to receive the services they require. The WaTech team can describe known frictions on initial engagement, with the understanding that future research and engagement will uncover additional frictions.
While many government organizations are on a similar journey, most have not yet reached our intended vision. Washington’s vision is to provide the nations’ easiest government engagement experience to its residents. Part of our current work is to conduct peer interviews with government organizations who are on a similar journey, and those interviews and/or the results will be made available to our roadmap partner.
The successful vendor will be provided all the existing enterprise services and platforms that the state has available for integration with the portal such as security services and integrations with the CIAM platform (new platform procurement in process).
The successful vendor will be provided known third-party integrations with systems, platforms, and data as part of the roadmap development process. The roadmap should specify which third-party systems are important for the portal to integrate with based on the proposed solution.
Additional research is encouraged. The roadmap outline on Guidelines & Resources describes the components we expect in the roadmap, but if additional components are recommended or if some components do not make sense at this stage, we will consider recommendations.
This is correct, agencies will still have their own websites and online services. The ultimate vision is that any authenticated interaction with government services will happen through the resident portal, however, this will be an iterative and flexible project.
No, we do not currently have a preference. We are looking at the roadmap to describe the requirements and technology platform options.
The timeline for implementation of the resident portal has not been fully defined. This is the top state IT priority, and the roadmap should deliver a plan that allows us to define an iterative and agile implementation timeline. This project is fully resident-centered and residents have been engaged, and will continue to be engaged, throughout the implementation. We are looking to our roadmap partner to complete a market analysis to inform budget.
In regard to the online application, the solution is referencing the Resident Portal roadmap.
After the award of the ASV, vendors can make a public records request for challenge records including other vendor’s submissions.
The roadmap outline (in Guidelines and Resources) describes the components we expect in the roadmap, but if additional components or content are recommended or if some components do not make sense at this stage, we will consider recommendations.
WaTech uses ServiceNow for ITSM, however, there are many ITSM systems around the state.
WaTech encourages OMWBE entities to submit responses. If your team is invited to participate in any future phases of this competition, you may be required to provide your certification numbers as a minority-, woman-, and/or veteran-owned business, if applicable. See omwbe.wa.gov for more information.
WaTech does not intend to host on-prem, but rather is looking for a cloud-hosted solution.
