Digital Service Expert (Procurement and Contracts Strategist) Remote From Anywhere In CO

Full Job Description

Together, we innovate for a stronger Colorado

The work of employees at the Governor's Office of Information Technology (OIT) is challenging and diverse because the needs of agencies, customers and Coloradans constantly evolve.

But our focus never changes: improve the lives of all Coloradans through innovation and collaboration.

We're building one of the nation's leading government IT organizations by reimagining how we support agencies, building first-of-their-kind applications, and creating an inclusive, collaborative culture, together.

Join us in the important work of providing equitable access to services.

Watch this video to learn more about how we're Serving People. Serving Colorado.

Requirements

TERM-LIMITED POSITION: This position is term-limited with an anticipated end date of approximately three years from the date of hire.

This position is eligible for State employee benefits and may be extended as the situation warrants. This video explains the many benefits of working at the State of Colorado on a term-limited basis.

IMPORTANT NOTE: Please review your application to ensure completion. For the most equitable applicant experience, OIT’s hiring team considers only the contents of your application to review your qualifications. Please do not include any attachments (such as resume or cover letter) with your application as these items are not used by OIT’s hiring team.

Digital Service Experts are diverse, experienced, senior technologists who are part of the Colorado Digital Service within the Governor's Office of Information Technology with a proven track record in their skill set of delivering IT products and services.

This team of engineers, product managers, designers, and procurement specialists works alongside public servants, empowering them to incorporate diverse best practices to deliver digital services for Coloradans.

As the Digital Service Expert-Digital Procurement and Contract Strategist, you will primarily support new procurements and future-state contracts for the Colorado Benefits Enrollment and Eligibility Systems (CoBEES), including the Colorado Benefits Management System (CBMS) replacement, the Public Eligibility & Application Kit (PEAK), and products under the Joint Agency Interoperability (JAI) program.

You will work closely with the CBMS and JAI Heads of Product and collaborate with cross-functional digital product experts in product strategy, technical architecture, software engineering, and user experience and design.

You will also coordinate across the Colorado Department of Health Care Policy & Financing (HCPF), Colorado Department of Human Services (CDHS), and Office of Information Technology (OIT) procurement and contracts teams.

CBMS, what is it?

The Colorado Benefits Management System (CBMS) helps manage data intake, eligibility determination, and benefits calculation for applicants who are potentially eligible for public benefits.

It is a highly complex system that supports multiple agencies and programs.

Most notably, this system supports the administration of critical state of Colorado benefits such as Medicaid, Child Health Plan Plus (CHP+), SNAP, WIC, and TANF.

These are programs that help to support our most vulnerable community members.

The principal users of this system are benefit eligibility technicians, who use the tool every day as they work with applicants submitting new or renewal applications for state benefits.

PEAK, what is it?

The Public Eligibility & Application Kit (PEAK) is the public-facing portal that Coloradans can use to apply for and manage their benefits. It provides a single application to access multiple programs and enables people to submit changes and renewals to keep their benefits up to date.

JAI, what is it?

The Joint Agency Interoperability (JAI) program identifies and implements cross-program and cross-departmental software solutions, integrating business processes, technology, and data to ensure system interoperability.

JAI ensures a more consistent, efficient, effective, and unified experience and holistic data view across systems, programs, and counties, which enables us to better deliver services to Coloradans and monitor and improve service delivery.

Example products include a unified workflow management system, an electronic document management system, an analytics and reporting solution, and an identity resolution service.

What will you be doing?

In this role, you will actively help remove barriers from the procurement process without minimizing the quality or protections within the State of Colorado’s vendor technology agreements.

You will serve as a bridge to conversations across stakeholders, fiscal teams, and agency subject matter experts to identify opportunities to creatively apply different procurement methods.

Market research and analysis are a cornerstone of your day-to-day efforts; you will utilize findings by establishing a spectrum of procurement pathways.

You will be highly creative and flexible in your approach to problem-solving, prioritizing the achievement of outcomes in your suggested procurement strategies and resulting contracts.

You will actively engage with project and vendor teams to provide real-time guidance and mediation when necessary.

Negotiation and building strong vendor partnerships is an everyday activity that supports the continual strengthening of the state’s ability to achieve its programmatic goals and mission.

Primary Duties & Responsibilities

Strategic Sourcing

• Lead all phases of crafting a procurement, including research/planning, drafting, execution, vendor negotiations, and contracting. Functions include:

  • Utilize organizational change management principles and practices in working with agency partners and delivering strategies.

  • Influence change through acute business acumen and understanding of organizational dynamics.

  • Conduct market research, including fit analysis and evaluation of current market options, in the determination of strategies around build vs. buy vs. borrow or re-use technology components.

  • Actively collaborate with agency partners in the procurement strategy development and execution that aligns contractor incentives with the product goals.

  • Perform "red-team" reviews of draft solicitations to identify risks like vendor lock-in, weak acceptance criteria, or missing exit provisions before they are released.

  • Be creative in problem-solving, including considering all the tools available to effectively resource a project, such as requests for information, proposals, negotiations, quotes, cooperative buying agreements, open-source technologies, intergovernmental cooperative agreements, and other approaches.

  • Look to modular procurement approaches to reduce risk, break down projects into smaller components, avoid reliance on a single vendor, and promote a healthy multi-vendor ecosystem for state teams.

  • Apply lessons learned from this role into broader procurement best practices at the agency and across state procurement.

  • Manage relationships with agency procurement and contracts teams and coordinate with them to support the execution of procurements.

Active Vendor and Contract Management

Manage full lifecycle activities by administering resulting contracts, and then strategize new/next procurement activities as contracts phase out.

Become an expert in the commodity area or subject matter for the particular programs and agencies they support.

Functions include:Partner with the State Attorney’s office, agency attorneys, and other contracting staff to effectively execute contracts on behalf of the agency.

Directly negotiates statements of work and coordinates negotiation of terms and conditions with vendors and state teams. Advises on longer-term changes to contracts to further state procurement goals.

Work as part of cross-functional product teams and or project management teams that have onboarded vendors sourced from the procurement, ensuring a high-quality collaboration and working relationship. Evaluate how effectively the procurement met the product team's needs.

Address non-performing vendors, facilitate remediation discussions and planning approaches, and where needed manage terminating a contractual relationship through breach and other means.

Operational Management

• Navigate intergovernmental relationships to bring stakeholders together around a common goal of delivering modern, usable solutions to the people of Colorado.

• Coach states to shift from prescriptive Statements of Work (SOWs) toward SOWs focused on measurable results and human-centered outcomes.

• Create criteria to evaluate vendor delivery capability and structure pricing for phased, iterative delivery that aligns with federal milestones.

• Adapt procurement playbooks to fit specific state regulatory environments by creating reusable templates for improved SOW language, evaluation rubrics, and decision frameworks.

• Serve as the interface between the state and outside vendors; develop and manage relationships, iterating contracting scopes and pathways according to product need.

• Collaborate with vendors, state executive leadership teams, managers, community organizations, and state agency staff supporting procurement practice modernization efforts.

• Communicate the value of agile and human-centered methodologies to a wide audience and demonstrate how to apply these methods at the intersection of policy and technology.

• Support team members by helping them clear any challenges they may encounter and focusing their efforts towards creating clear paths to the acquisition of goods and services that align with state policies and agency procedures.

• Work with product managers and program staff to align the budget to activities and costs for contracted services.

• Document and share knowledge, techniques, tools, patterns, and expert advice with colleagues, partners, and the public.

Qualifications

A wide salary range is posted for this position and any job offer is based upon a salary analysis to comply with the Colorado Equal Pay for Equal Work Act. The salary analysis considers relevant experience, education, certifications, and state seniority as compared to others doing substantially similar work. While most salary offers are made within the posted range, occasionally an offer is made below or above the posted range based upon this salary analysis.

This is a skills-based job announcement. The required minimum qualifications and/or education (if substituting for the proven experience, knowledge, and skills), are as follows:

Minimum Qualifications:

At least 5 years of public or private strategic financial operations experience at the execution and leadership level, with a focus on procurement design and strategy, with a strong understanding of modern technology.

Substitutions:

• Additional appropriate education will substitute for the required experience on a year-for-year basis, but cannot completely substitute for these qualifications.

• Training or Certification related to the work assigned to the position will be assigned credit towards substitution for experience and/or education, but cannot completely substitute for these qualifications.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience in government procurement, acquisitions, or contract management, specifically for digital services or complex IT systems.

• Public or private strategic sourcing experience at the execution and leadership level with a focus on procurement design and strategy.

• Track record of owning a procurement, product, or program implementation strategy end-to-end across multiple stakeholders, including navigating competing priorities to keep things moving.

• Experience guiding cross-functional teams and holding delivery accountability through launch.

• Experience conducting market research and analysis, including the collection and evaluation of both quantitative and qualitative characteristics.

• Expertise in multiple areas of the procurement lifecycle (e.g., active contract management, contract development, supply chain financial management, etc.).

• Proven ability to translate policy or statutory requirements into technical and operational specifications.

• Proven ability to establish strong cross-functional relationships across different disciplines and teams.

• Ability to solve complex problems, participate in continuous improvement, and adapt to the ideas of others.

Conditions of Employment:

OIT candidates and employees must comply with any screening procedures in place at state entity locations where they might be required to perform work.

A pre-employment background check will be conducted as part of the selection process.

Positions supporting some agencies such as the Department of Corrections and the Department of Public Safety will also require a pre-employment drug test.

This position may require travel within the specified geographic area, and to locations across the state as needed.

This position may require on-call duties as needed by the position.

Additional Information

If this posting indicates “remote from anywhere in CO” in the title, periodic reporting to the primary state work location designated for the position is required. All remote work must be performed in Colorado.

While candidates from out of state will be considered for this role, the candidate selected for the position must relocate and reside in Colorado on the first day of their new position. A reasonable timeframe for relocation will be established on an individual basis, while considering business needs, and determining a start date.

We know it's important to support each other, and that means having a healthy balance of work and personal time. Visit our benefits to learn more about some of our great offerings that allow us all to have fulfilling lives.

Visit our How to Apply webpage to learn more about our application process and what to expect after you apply.

The State of Colorado strives to create a Colorado for All by building and maintaining workplaces that value and respect all Coloradans through a commitment to equal opportunity and hiring based on merit and fitness.

The State is resolute in non-discriminatory practices in everything we do, including hiring, employment, and advancement opportunities.

The Governor's Office of Information Technology is committed to the full inclusion of all qualified individuals.

As part of this commitment, our agency will assist individuals who have a disability with any reasonable accommodation requests related to employment, including completing the application process, interviewing, completing any pre-employment testing, participating in the employee selection process, and/or to perform essential job functions where the requested accommodation does not impose an undue hardship.

If you have a disability and require reasonable accommodation to ensure you have a positive experience applying or interviewing for this position, please direct your inquiries to our ADA Coordinator at OIT_HR@state.co.us or call (303) 764-7900.

This posting may be used to fill multiple vacancies based upon business need.

The Governor's Office of Information Technology does NOT offer sponsored Visas for employment purposes.