Thinking about financial planning for your project, what needs to be considered for project success and sustainability?
Comments & Events
Katrina Hansen
This is a great topic and very relevant at this time/point in my project. We are looking for a new surveillance system (going out to bid) but need to retain our legacy system as we go through this transition. Surveillance system transition periods can vary, but often take ~1-2 years. So that means we will have parallel contracts and that is costly! The faster we onboard the new system, the more we are saving funds by ending the legacy system sooner. On the other hand, it may cost more to onboard the new system faster. I would love to hear feedback/suggestions from others that are working on similar projects. What are you thinking in regards to data migration (that costs $$)? How fast do you onboard a new system? What is the right balance?
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Erica Smith,Deputy State Epidemiologist, DE
We are going through this right now as well... Our general timeline was about 8 COVID months (meaning... this could likely have happened a lot quicker if it didn't overlap with the Delta and then Omicron surges) for business requirement gathering from all the various programs that will use our new NEDSS (infectious disease, COVID, STD, HIV, Lead), 2 months to get the RFP out to bid, 2 months for the review team to review proposals (this is what we just completed), we are told contract negotiations will take 2-4 months and the vendor we have selected to negotiate with has a 12 month implementation timeline (although some of the vendors we didn't choose had up to 2 years for implementation). Our current system is homegrown so we don't have to have 2 parallel contracts, but we basically have paused any unnecessary development on our legacy system until the new one us up.
If you want to discuss further our experience in DE I'd be more than happy to talk offline!
ERICA E. SMITH, PhD, MPH Deputy State Epidemiologist (she/her/hers)
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For my project one of the issues related to sustainability is having staff time to regularly review and update the information that will be included in the resource guide I'm creating for new on-call epidemiologists. While the costs there are more hidden than for something like a new surveillance system, it can show itself when this type of work is not prioritized/dedicated time for staff is not made available.
There are similar concerns for my project as Roza's. I am "donating" a bunch of my time to it as part of this program, but under normal circumstances data governance work would not be part of my workplan. We've talked a bit about who will be the point person after my LEAD year is complete, but this is probably something we should starting planning more concretely for in the coming months.
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Kelly Walblay,Senior Epidemiologist - Healthcare Program
I second what
Roza
said! For both my project, and many others within the department, time seems to be the most important factor for sustainability. Project update meetings continue to be cancelled or pushed later due to time constraints and competing priorities, specifically from leadership, which makes it difficult to progress.
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Nicole Stone,Senor Enteric Epidemiologist
Kelly
and
Roza
those are both great points! We frequently encounter this issue when trying to keep SOPs or other routine documents updated. These documents or plans never make the priority cut and continue to be pushed back until they're virtually unusable due to how outdated they become.
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Natalie Marzec,Zoonotic Disease Unit Manager, CO DPHE
Ugh. This is such a constant problem for me! My project is looking mostly for guidance from LPHA partners to strategize how we should be doing investigations going forward. But depending on what solutions are suggested it may be hard to implement them if we need additional funding.
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Lisa McHugh,Assistant Bureau Director, Bureau of Epidemiology
I went into my project knowing there wasn't funding to implement outside of what might be in existing grants for education and travel. We were able to include my project as something that supports ELC project A so some funding may be available from that. I feel in general that education and training budgets are lacking in government and while some place do a decent job with making course offering available they are often for global areas (e.g., software training, management training) and not focused on some of the scientific training needed. We have been trying to be more thoughtful in including and education fund in some of our grants that give some flexibility for us to determine what employees needs are.
If you want to discuss further our experience in DE I'd be more than happy to talk offline!
ERICA E. SMITH, PhD, MPH
Deputy State Epidemiologist
(she/her/hers)
Delaware Department of Health and Social Services<http://dhss.delaware.gov/dhss/index.html>
Division of Public Health<http://dhss.delaware.gov/dhss/dph/index.html>
Jesse Cooper Building
417 Federal St. Dover, DE 19901
Office: (302) 744-4737
erica.smith@delaware.gov<mailto:erica.smith@delaware.gov>
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This message may contain confidential information for the use of the addressee's above and may contain legally privileged information. If you are not the addressee, or the person responsible for delivering it to the addressee, you are hereby notified that reading, disseminating, distributing or copying this message may be prohibited. If you have received this message by mistake, immediately notify us by replying to the message and delete the original message immediately.