The City of Boston engaged DELTAWRX to develop a comprehensive Strategic Technology and Implementation Plan for its Police, Fire, and Emergency Medical Services Departments. During this engagement, DELTAWRX reported to the Mayor’s Public Safety Cabinet, the Chief Information Technology Officer, and the Chiefs of the Public Safety Departments.

Key tasks for this engagement included conducting a benchmarking and market trend assessment, developing current system and business needs assessments, and creating a comprehensive strategic and implementation plan to guide the Department of Information Technology and the public safety departments as they modernized their public safety technology portfolios.

Based on DELTAWRX’s recommendations, the City established a multi-year funding plan in excess of $15,000,000, created a new support organization dedicated to shared public safety systems, replaced the Computer Aided Dispatch (CAD) system used by the Police, Fire and Emergency Medical Services Departments, better leveraged an existing Fire Records System and implemented a new Police Records Management System (RMS).

To assist the City with implementing the new CAD/RMS system, DELTAWRX created a change management plan that documented key business processes, identified process changes that would occur with the implementation of the new system and developed an action plan to address these changes. DELTAWRX also worked with the City to create an IT support plan that included a delineation of agency and central IT responsibilities, develop detailed job descriptions, and identify gaps in current skills sets.

The City subsequently retained DELTAWRX to provide consulting services during the RFP development, proposal evaluation and selection, contract negotiations and implementation phases of the project. DELTAWRX worked with the three public safety departments to develop a comprehensive set of system requirements and interface specifications for inclusion in the RFP. We worked with the City’s purchasing and legal departments to write and release the RFP, facilitate a pre-proposal conference and respond to vendor questions. DELTAWRX facilitated the proposal evaluation process, working with a team consisting of representatives from all three public safety departments as well as the Department of Information Technology and led the City’s efforts to negotiate a contract with the selected vendor. During the implementation phase, we provided project oversight, on-going technical advice, and change management assistance.