Chair – Don Currie

Member – Mandeep Mahanger, Tom O’Brien

nextGen valueBC

The RFP for Next Gen was posted to BC Bid on November 1. For anyone interested, you can read the full RFP at http://www.bcbid.gov.bc.ca/open.dll/welcome

Some of the conclusions reached by the team as they worked through the process were:

• the core assessment processes that we do now are the right processes and they are done well

• weaknesses with the current systems are primarily related to many manual steps either within or between processes

• many other assessment organizations are struggling with the same issues we are and many of them have systems that are far less supportive than valueBC

So for all its flaws, ValueBC seems to be a relatively effective system to support the work of BC Assessment. It has served us reasonably well and should continue to do so for a number of years.

The RFP for Next Gen closes on January 17 and will be followed by an evaluation of submissions and short listing of the top 3 vendors. Following that, it is expected to take another 12 months to finalize a vendor and start the project to produce Next Gen.

Desktop Review (DTR)

The latest incarnation of DTR is ramping up. Street front photos are nearing completion in The Fraser Valley, Kamloops and the Okanagan. The photos along with the aerial imagery will be in place for the start of the project in January 2014. Temporary employees will be set up in The Fraser Valley Office and in the new Okanagan office for the duration of the project.

Customer Connections (UCCX)

Despite hopes to the contrary, UCCX is still not compatible with Citrix. This means users will still need to toggle between Citrix and no-Citrix desktops during the upcoming inquiry period. This also means there will be no auto-population of valueBC viewers through UCCX, at least not this year. Hopefully a third monitor will be provided to all those answering UCCX calls. This was a common request from last year’s users.

The province wide migration to the 1-866- ValueBC number was scheduled to roll out earlier this fall but was delayed due to technical problems. The solutions are nearing completion and we should see the migration proceed in the very near future...get those email blocks ready to go.