Sky Solutions

Seamless Transition into Integrated Grants Management 

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Overview

A federal government program office embarked on a large-scale modernization initiative, consolidating grant-making functions from legacy systems into a single integrated grants management platform. This involved transferring tens of thousands of ongoing solicitations, applications, and grants from the old systems to the new one, ensuring the seamless continuation of operations.

Goal

To ensure a smooth transition of ongoing cases to the Integrated Grants Management System.

Challenge

  • The business struggled to agree on which cases and case types should be migrated to the Integrated Grants Management System. Some believed only grantee-accepted grants should be migrated, while others felt that all unresolved cases should be included. The only consensus was that closed-out grants should not be migrated.
  • A thorough understanding of both the old and the new Integrated Grants Management System was essential for proper data migration. This involved mapping tens of thousands of data elements between the systems, transitioning from relational databases to an object-oriented data structure, and ensuring that each case type in the Integrated Grants Management System had the necessary data to function properly. Additionally, processes had to be mapped between the systems to ensure that cases in specific parts of the grant lifecycle were migrated to the correct spot in the Integrated Grants Management System.
  • The final system for data migration was not static. The Integrated Grants Management System remained under development until its launch in October 2020, with new functionalities and data elements being added daily. This made it extremely challenging to keep up with the data migration, as new processes and data elements had to be mapped, and additional development work was required to accommodate these changes.
  • The approach to data migration was frequently challenged by either the business or the lead of the data migration team. Despite showing good progress, there were constant requests to explore other approaches, many of which were known to be less effective.

Solution

To mitigate risk, the Sky Solutions team planned for the worst-case scenario and designed the migration to support all case types from the outset. This proactive strategy ensured readiness when the business ultimately chose to migrate all cases except closed grants. The team maintained continuous engagement with agency Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) to gain a deep understanding of legacy systems, while working closely with Integrated Grants Management System developers to stay aligned with the evolving platform. Regular participation in sprint review demos kept the team current on new functionality.

Detailed process and data-mapping spreadsheets were developed to align legacy systems with the Integrated Grants Management System. Working hand in hand with business stakeholders and SMEs, the team identified and resolved data gaps. They clearly communicated the need to operate from a static system and built the data-migration application on the final deployed version of the Integrated Grants Management System. This approach required pausing development at least one sprint prior to go-live to safely incorporate the latest changes.

Also, the team methodically explained its rationale and demonstrated why alternative options would be ineffective or would delay migration. In several cases, they implemented these alternatives to prove their limitations, reinforcing confidence in the chosen strategy and ensuring a successful data migration.

Technologies/Methodologies

  • Pega 
  • Agile 
  • AWS (Amazon Web Services) 
  • Kafka 

Outcome

Sky Solutions successfully migrated hundreds of thousands of cases and tens of millions of attachments. Despite facing challenges due to missing or incomplete data from the client’s systems, the issues were eventually resolved after the Integrated Grants Management System went live. Many of the migrated cases have since been closed out in the Integrated Grants Management System, while numerous migrated awards remain active in the system.