NYC Tech Forum

Tech Valley Talent (TVT) is a NYS and NYC Woman-Owned Business Enterprise focused on providing innovative and right-sized technical solutions to the public sector. Our approach to any technical solution is to consider the business process and its context first. In this way, we focus on providing a better product, and not simply an existing process ported to the Internet. We strive to bring control and administration to the business owner, ensuring that technology is the tool supporting the process and not a source of constraints that limit change. TVT encourages early and frequent feedback and improvement, so that the team and the solution grow together.

In 2022, for example, TVT partnered with a NYS authority to streamline and improve the authority’sdata collection and evaluation processes. The primary goal was to ensure that data provided by hundreds of contractors statewide would be collected only against the most recent set of rules, and that data collection fields, calculations, and error checks were standardized across the half-dozen program areas using the process.

Our team began with an in-depth data analysis of the collection worksheets to identify the commonalities between data collection processes, standardize business rules and error checking processes, and develop a workflow that could be used across program areas.TVT developed a consistent web-based framework with optional steps for program-specific information and added configurable measures, business rules, and error checking to the data collection. This resulted in a significant improvement in data accuracy and a significant reduction in the frequency of forms being returned to contractors for rework.

The solution involved a custom-built .Net Core/MS Azure application with serverless Azure SQL and Blob storage, developed iteratively to allow for improvements and enhancements throughout the engagement.The web-based interface collected and validated data and saved both partial drafts and completed forms for subsequent processing.

Key benefits for the authority and its customers of the transformed process include:

• The ability for a form’s rules to be based on the application start date; that is, if an application was initiated prior to a change in legislation, the old rules would apply, while new applications could use only the most recent rules.
• Interfaces for non-technical administration of validation rules and measures, allowing process owners to roll out enhancements with limited technical intervention.
• Consistent forms and rule sets, leading to faster administrative turnaround and fewer correction requests sent back to contractors.