Deputy County Executive Sylvia Gallegos, Acting CIO Amin Moslehi and Ricardo Romero of the Language Access Unit briefed the Finance and Government Operations Committee on Nov. 6 about the countywide web portal transformation initiative and steps to acquire a translation management system (TMS).

Ricardo Romero described work to incorporate community voice into the TMS procurement: county staff held listening sessions and developed style guides and glossaries for Spanish, Chinese, Vietnamese and Tagalog. Romero said the county recruited participants through the Veterans and Seniors (VAST) center, radio and social media to ensure community representation for translation and style testing.

Acting CIO Amin Moslehi and staff said the migration to a .gov domain and a domain-change requirement for certain services will require changes across many systems and that the county is working with county counsel on potential state reimbursement for the migration. Steve (county counsel) summarized a pending mandate claim to the Commission on State Mandates that, if approved, could yield reimbursement to the county for migration costs.

Staff described a proof‑of‑concept and planned community testing cycles after vendor selection and stressed that the Language Access Unit will remain involved during implementation and retraining of the TMS. Committee members recommended robust outreach for multilingual users and suggested that the county make the launch widely known to affected populations.

The committee received the report by voice vote; staff said additional implementation detail and funding updates will follow as the RFP and vendor selection progress.