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DPHHS describes CHIMES, secure-data gaps and senior long-term care system replacement needs
Summary
DPHHS staff said parts of CHIMES and other legacy software use an unsupported "community edition" interface component that is end of life, causing insecure file-transfers and integration problems; senior long-term care providers and area agencies on aging reported frequent data loss and manual Excel workarounds.
DPHHS technology staff and program managers described several legacy systems that are showing operational and security problems and asked the committee to consider House Bill 10 funding requests to replace or modernize those platforms.
Secure data connections and CHIMES: DPHHS chief technology officers said an older community-edition integration component used by CHIMES and other internal systems no longer supports modern transport protocols; the obsolete component requires insecure workarounds for file transfers between CHIMES and newer systems. "The software we're using is called community edition ... we're many, many versions back," said Allen Wintersteen, DPHHS chief technology officer. He said the vendor no longer supports that edition and that continuing to use it raises security and interoperability risk.
Senior long-term care (Aging Services): Lindsey Carter, administrator for senior and long-term care services, told the committee the legacy system used by her division serves roughly 170 external end users including area agencies on aging and subcontractors. Carter said the system is unreliable, produces inconsistent counts (for example, meals delivered), and forces staff and providers to export large data sets to Excel and manually reconcile them. "Data goes missing. People spend a good deal of time trying to reconcile ... we get these very large Excel spreadsheets that we have to spend a lot of time manipulating manually," Carter said. She said providers and subcontractors have asked for a replacement so they can plan more efficiently with limited Older Americans Act funds.
What was proposed: DPHHS said the senior long-term care system replacement is not federally mandated but would improve reliability, reporting and provider access to operational data. For CHIMES-related secure-data work, the department said upgrades would reduce operational fragility and close security gaps where older integration components cannot use modern transport protocols.
Ending
The committee asked DPHHS for more precise cost-benefit information and a timeline showing what would happen if funding were delayed; DPHHS said it would provide additional documentation.
