EIS Modernization Wiki

We’re glad you’re interested in our project!

We’re developing a new way of working with the vendor community. We want to collaborate with vendors as a cross-functional product team, working on smaller modules, in the open, to iteratively improve the services we provide to Alaskans. That means we will not be pursuing a stand-alone, multi-year, monolithic contract that would take a long time to compete, and a long time for the vendor team to deliver working functionality.

This won’t be a panacea, and it will take us time to work through this new approach, but it will be a great experiment in trying a new way to incrementally build software that works for the vital users of the system.

With that said, Alaska are working towards a transparent procurement process in which smaller vendor teams compete for different modules as we define what’s needed to continue building the product. Some of the work will be done concurrently by different vendors, through different contracts. Some of the work will need to be done sequentially. But all of the work will be done in the open, to ensure a smooth transition of well-documented code among the different vendors that are working to assist Alaska. We have a continually reviewed and updated roadmap available to the public. ARIES Product Roadmap

So, what does this mean for you?

We intend this public GitHub repository to be the source of information as we move forward in our planning and implementation of this new vision. We will do our best to keep this repo updated as decisions are made or if we need to pivot in our plans as we learn. We also want to hear from the vendor community if you have any comments or questions - we will update this with specific instructions on how best to do that in the days ahead. We’ll do our best to respond to your questions as they arrive, but we also can’t guarantee we can answer every question.

Thanks for your interest!

We hope you’ll join us in this. If you’re interested, please send an e-mail to our contracting officer, Matt Meienberg, on matt.meienberg@alaska.gov. Better yet, get engaged by adding an issue in our GitHub repo.