Safe Harbors Steering Committeemeetingsummaryjune 18Th, 2015

Safe Harbors Steering CommitteeMeetingSummaryJune 18th, 2015

Time: 2:30 p.m. – 4:00 p.m.Location: Seattle Municipal Tower; Room 5882

Safe Harbors Staffing – Patrice provided the Committee with a Org Chart for the Safe Harbors team. The intent was to hear what is going on at the staffing level with Safe Harbors in order to see how the structure and workload impacts the ability to get work done.

Patrice brought the committee’s attention the three Agency Support Representative (ASR) positions. One ASR position is currently being hired now and is vacant. Target date for hire for the Agency Support Rep position is July 2015. The other position that is currently vacant within the Safe Harbors staffing structure is the Help Desk position. Currently Safe Harbors has a lack of funding in order to hire for this position.

Patrice then brought to the committee's attention the Safe Harbors Program workload so that the committee can see the team’s priorities and Strategic Work Plan. Leslie asked if there would be consequences for not having HUD TA on the list of priorities. Patrice said the committee has talked about visiting the HUD TA action plan on a quarterly basis. There is constant progress on the HUD TA plan and although Safe Harbors has limited staff, they are actively working on everything on the work plan. Patrice will make sure to report back on the HUD TA progress to the Committee as promised.

The question was then asked to the Committee “Given the charge of the Steering Committee, what further information do they need to understand Safe Harbors capacity to achieve work plan priorities.” Nicole began by asking questions about special initiatives such as the Long Term Stayers project, Data and Evaluation performance standards and where they fit on the Safe Harbors list of priorities and work plan. She asked specifically about the continuum-wide special projects and how they are prioritized. Kate agreed and felt it was also important to see and give input to the Safe Harbors priorities list in order to assure that the ongoing needs are not forgotten on account of the one-time projects. Josephine asked Patrice who helps Safe Harbors prioritize their work plan, special projects and one time requests? Patrice said her supervisor assists her in prioritizing the work load when needed.

In terms of one time projects, Sara asked if some of those projects have relevant information that in the future others in the continuum might ask. Are what they are asking so unique that you have to start from scratch? Patrice said yes many times they are. She added that on the reporting front, having Susan Kinne assisting Safe Harbors in the interim and the new Reporting Analyst hire Bryan Davis has helped filled a big vacancy gap. Karen suggested adding an announcement to the report inventory that something new has been created, with what components and what fields. She felt that different agencies and funders might be able to use those same reports.

Lastly Sola added that Patrice and herself will be looking at the Safe Harbors overall budget, the staffing and funding patterns over the last several years and prepare to bring back some of that information to the Committee. Nicole added that having a better understanding of the revenue sources, such as what is federally or locally sourced money can be beneficial as well.

RFQQ Update–Patrice provided the committee with an update via email. Patrice asked that the Committee’s attention be placed on bullet 3 where it states the following:

• Revisions to the process and schedule are as follows:
• We will take an extended amount of time in Stage 2 “Evaluation and Due Diligence” phase. This phase will include the following components:
• Data Integration testing
• User Acceptance testing (e.g. User group and SH staff testing)
• Further reference checking including site visits
• Vendor selection date has moved to September 1, 2015. This new date incorporates the extended time and enhanced due diligence process as described above.
• No apparent vendor will be named until the end of the “Evaluation and Due Diligence” process.Previously, Commerce planned to announce the top two vendors in the process. No vendor will be announced until the end of the process.
• The contract negotiation windows shortens, but the start of the HMIS contracts remains the same: January 2016.

Patrice stressed that the whole reason for this schedule date change is because the vendor selection committee wanted to take more time to due diligence in the area of User Acceptance Testing, DI testing, further reference checks and possible site visits. Sara had concerns as did other committee members about the updated timeline. Now that stage two has been extended to go up to the fall, will this take time away also from our time in doing contract negotiations? Sara stressed that it really only gives us three month for contract negotiation and this doesn’t include all the holidays. She worries this will be a risk. Patrice was not clear how much of a risk that would pose. She will review the timeline again in greater detail and bring back any concerns.

Action Item: Patrice will review timeline for contract negotiations and bring back any concerns on whether it will delay, or if we will need to build a contingency plan for it.

Data Integration –At our last meeting we discussed Data Integration not being functional and what those impacts were. Patrice reminded the Committee that we proposed putting together two letters. One letter was to be sent to Commerce stating that we would like a solution to this DI problem to become top priority. The second letter was to Adsystech in discussion of a smaller contract and putting pressure on the vendor informing them of the DI impacts. Patrice would like to move forward with these two letters as discussed. She will draft both letters.

Patrice highlighted some efforts Safe Harbors as put into Data Integration Testing. They include:

• Data Integration testing is moving forward and will involve the vendor and system administrators at Commerce. Adsystech has provided a detailed work breakdown of the anticipated testing schedule. Older test scripts have been brought up to date for this purpose.
• Safe Harbors has added our System Administrator to join Commerce on our side of the testing. Joint testing began in early June and are scheduled through July.
• Safe Harbors is working with local Data Integration agencies to begin testing our local data.

Sara asked that we calculate financial risks and monetary costs in a broader sense. She’d like for us to also think about consultants or other external staff that will need to be paid to assist us on some of these work load priorities because DI is not working. Josephine suggested adding “ETA’s” on the contingency plan in order to make sure things get done on a timeline fashion. Target date to send these letters are within the next week.

Action Item: Patrice will draft letters to Commerce and Adsystech and send to Sara and the Committee. She will include the impacts to our federal funding to the letter. Patrice will create a contingency plan timeline and add the McKinney Application and AHAR.

Gates Automation Project– AmandaThompkins’s provided the committee with and overview about the Gates Automation Project. Some highlights include:

Background: The Gates Foundation and Building Changes, through the Tri-County Family Homelessness Initiative, sponsor a workgroup (Gates Data Solutions Workgroup) to support King, Pierce, and Snohomish Counties in building a culture of data-driven decision making around family homelessness. Workgroup is two-pronged with a large team incorporating input from many stakeholders to set direction, and a small staff workgroup to realize that vision.

Approach:Gates Foundation, Building Changes, King, Pierce, and Snohomish Counties partnered with Vitric to improve data access and utility. Co-created a process to extract Safe Harbors data, perform automated calculations of HEARTH measures and other relevant metrics in SQL, and pipe into Tableau. Currently in the process of integrating coordinated entry data for full end-to-end system reporting.

Next Steps:CEHKC will use the new tools as the basis for a comprehensive system of system-wide reporting. Building Changes is planning for additional scope around data work; we have a Tri-County meeting on Monday where we learn more.

Ali added that she feels everyone is on the same page and things are moving much faster. At the same time they are validating the CSV data. Ali let the Committee know that we are currently in stage 2 of 3 of the project and are currently working on project type code clean-up. Safe Harbors is currently looking for someone to take the lead on these for the specific population areas. Leslie alerted the Committee that she is aware of Debbie Knowles taking the lead on the family side. Karen wondered how this project work will transfer to the new vendor. Amanda replied that because we made decision to go with CSV process, if we decide to go with a new vendor, the CSV export should be standard between the two and should give us minimal impacts to this project.

Action Item: Patrice will send an email to Carrie, Debbie, Cheryl and Gretchen in CEH on this. Kate will also support these efforts.

Coordinated Entry & Database Leadership Update- Updates since last month’s meeting include:

1. Vets ONE LIST added to CEA HMIS and administered by Safe Harbors Starting in June
2. VI-SPIDAT 2 assessment tool, chosen by SA Vets population, will be available in CEA HMIS in late June
3. CEA Database Leadership group discusses system improvements to the current CE database to improve efficiency.
4. CEA Database Leadership Group Discusses HMIS vendor Selection and timeline Reports

Future recommendations for the Steering Committee involvement are forthcoming.

The next meeting is scheduled to be held in the Seattle Municipal Tower, Room 5882 on July 16thfrom 2:30-4.