House committee hears update on Vermont Child Development Division’s CDDIS rollout and phase‑2 plan

MONTPELIER, Vt. — State officials updated the House Energy and Digital Infrastructure Committee on Thursday on the Child Development Division Information System (CDDIS), saying the system’s first phase is live and functioning and that leaders are preparing a separate procurement and budget request for a second phase to bring childcare licensing and provider case management onto the platform.

The Child Development Division’s information system “is really a backbone for our childcare functions,” Jan McLaughlin, deputy commissioner at the Department for Children and Families, told the committee. She described CDDIS as central to licensing, the childcare financial assistance program and program quality supports for providers and families.

Committee members were told CDDIS replaced an aging legacy application and has already handled major policy changes. “We went live with our phase 1 on July third of 2022,” Pearl Long, director of operations for the Child Development Division, said. Long said phase 1 covers eligibility determination and direct payments to providers. She described the first release as an MVP — minimum viable product — that the division is continuing to refine.

Why it matters: Officials said the new system enabled implementation of Act 76 of 2023 changes to eligibility and rates and reduced the manual failures that had disrupted provider payments under the older platform. Committee members pressed staff about ongoing workarounds, data interfaces and how the CDDIS build will coordinate with other state systems and future legislative work.

Key details: Long and other presenters said the division still uses the Bright Futures Information System (BFIS) for some licensing and workforce modules and that BFIS is about 25 years old, vendor‑unsupported and prone to breakage. The state has been building CDDIS in phases: phase 1 (eligibility and provider payments) is live on a Salesforce‑based platform contracted to a vendor named Brightsystem; phase 2 is planned to add program licensing and renewal, complaints and compliance management, and provider credentialing and workforce/case management functionality.

Officials gave preliminary budget figures: approximately $5.0 million spent on phase 1 (about $3.0 million of that from state general funds) and a proposed phase‑2 budget of roughly $3.7 million. Long told the committee that the project has used federal grant dollars in prior years (described at the hearing as about $667,000 per year), but that some federal funding availability has changed and the division is continuing to clarify funding streams and the impact on the timeline.

Integration and operations: Committee members asked whether CDDIS talks to the state’s other systems. Long said the system already exchanges data with Vision (the state financial system) and other division and department systems via APIs and nightly feeds, and that planned phase‑2 work will broaden interfaces (for example, family services and abuse/registry checks). Andrew Delaverre, deputy secretary at the Agency of Digital Services (ADS), participated in the discussion and described ADS as project manager and integration partner for the build.

Timeline and procurement: Long said the division expects to post an RFP for phase 2 in March and will open the procurement to multiple vendors; she said the phase 2 procurement may or may not use the same Salesforce platform, and ADS will be highly involved in evaluating proposals. Committee members asked why CDDIS costs appeared modest compared with other state IT projects; presenters said the phase‑1 build was complex and that phase 2 — primarily a case management and licensing build — could be less costly but added that a complete buildout for the whole division could be larger.

Questions and limitations: Members raised operational questions about how case managers avoid duplicate data entry and whether CDDIS will directly integrate with the tax department or federal databases; presenters said tax and federal submissions currently occur via file transfers, not a live two‑way connection, and that some interfaces are batch or nightly APIs. Presenters also emphasized the need for ongoing maintenance funds and the process for change requests when legislation requires rapid system updates.

Next steps: Officials said they will finalize the RFP and return with more precise cost and timeline estimates. Long asked for continued coordination with the legislature on scheduling major policy changes so the division can phase work without disrupting benefits and payments.

Ending: Committee staff said they will follow up with ADS and the Joint Fiscal Office on state IT budgeting practices and on long‑term maintenance funding for CDDIS.