Proof of Concept (PoC) and Rapid Prototyping
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Hands on experience to accelerate innovation and technology adoption
The role of information technology in Texas state agencies continues to grow, driven by digital government adoption and Texans' expectations of on demand access to services.
Business Applications directly support the capabilities underlying an agency’s mission. Agencies may use different development approaches, but find that these are no longer sufficient to meet the increasing demand for agility, speed to market and quality.
In order to accelerate time to market we realized a hands-on experience is critical. We partner with institutions of higher education and industry partners to fast track technology adoption and innovation with learning by doing exercises and rapid prototyping to demonstrate the business value of these new applications with agency leadership and the business units.
Recent Proof of Concept/ Pilot
DIR conducts a minimum 10 poof of concepts or rapid prototyping of emerging technologies every year and reports the results to the legislature with quarterly performance measures.
Some key flagship projects in last three years are listed below:
DIR is in the process of conducting a proof of concept/pilot using public cloud services to stand up a solution to automate the “Ask DIR” functionality on our website. Upon completion of the pilot, we will publish a lessons learned document about how to fast track contact center technology adoption and implementation.
A PoC was successfully completed to automate certain process in the TEX-AN billing process and preparation of disparity reports by DIR's Chief Financial Office. RPA was used to automate the consolidation of files onto a spreadsheet, then performed formatting and calculations. The RPA digital assistant then validated sums against summary data and created a discrepancies report. RPA, in conjunction with OCR, was used to capture information from scanned invoices to generate an invoice report. The report was then used to access Salesforce and create invoice record entries.
DIR, along with Gartner, conducted a proof of concept on Blockchain in 2018. The major outcome of the study is attached here. Blockchain is an emerging technology with benefits in the areas of data storage, security and identity management. Blockchain is a Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) based on peer to peer network architecture for storing transactions that prevent unauthorized modification of the data stored on all network nodes.