About

The Washington State Department of Social and Health Services is seeking innovative solutions to address fraud and improve access to state benefits for residents and communities of Washington state.

The Business Integrity Challenge invites eligible individuals, teams, organizations, and local, state, and federal government agencies to submit human-centered solutions that make meaningful impact for Washingtonians and those supporting agency service delivery. Proposals should be innovative, accessible, adaptive, and culturally appropriate. They should leverage technology and GenAI as well as human-centered approaches to enable Washingtonians and communities to access programs, benefits, and services while reducing the impact of fraud on their lives.  

DSHS aims to address key themes broadly across all solution categories:

• Increase access to services 
• Improve use of services 
• Enhance transparency and verification of services 
• Deliver services and provide oversight effectively 
• Engage communities and residents 

Solution Categories

DSHS will award one winner for each of the four solution categories. Each winner will receive a contract of up to $250,000 for the development of their solutions over a maximum 12-month project period. DSHS identified four solution categories for this initiative:

• Automated Solutions to improve performance outcomes – Move from a manual review of applications for benefits for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities, and create a solution that automates the process for thousands of applications. 
• Language Services to support benefits access – Create a seamless experience accessing public benefits like food, cash and medical assistance and related workload processes through a language translation solution. 
• Customer-Centric Technology Solutions for Public Benefits – Support enhancement of anomaly detection in food and cash benefits using AI while maintaining a human-centered focus before taking proactive fraud prevention action.   
• Customer-Centric Technology Solutions for Behavioral Health – Create a solution that completes more efficient and targeted data-matching queries to reduce overpayments and fraudulent benefits. 

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Key Principles

DSHS encourages participants to consider the following key principles when developing their application:

• Flexibility  
• Autonomy 
• Lack of dependency 
• Use existing systems 
• Alignment (with evolution of DSHS) 
• Adaptable 
• Integration 
• Configurability 
• User-friendly to workers + also clients/customers 
• Human-centered 
• Security and privacy 
• Accessibility to residents (in state and out of state) 
• Equity and inclusion 

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Evaluation

Once we pass the submission deadline, the Business Integrity Challenge team will conduct an administrative review to check for compliance with the rules and submission requirements.

Submissions that meet the following criteria will also receive points as part of an objective review. Definitions of the three criteria can be found in Section 14 of the Rules.

• Veteran-owned Business: 10 points added to the total Evaluation Panel score and 6 points added to the total Selection Committee score for each participant who certifies that they are a Certified Washington Veteran-Owned Business as defined under RCW 43.60A.190.  
• Washington Small Business: 10 points added to the total Evaluation Panel score and 6 points added to the total Selection Committee score for each participant who certifies that they are a Washington Small Business as defined under RCW 39.26.010.
• Employee Arbitration Clause: 5 points added to the total Evaluation Panel score and 3 points added to the total Selection Committee score for each participant who certifies that they do not require employees to sign Mandatory Individual Arbitration clauses, or Class or Collective Action waivers.

Strong applications for the Business Integrity Challenge will meet the four criteria outlined in the scoring rubric (summarized below). This rubric will be used by the Evaluation Panel to score and comment on their assigned valid submissions. Each valid submission will receive five sets of feedback and scores that have been statistically balanced to ensure fairness for everyone.

ACHIEVABLE. Is there an experienced team with practical plans, timeline, and budget to implement the solution within a realistic timeframe and cost that justifies the level of investment? Does the solution provide sufficient plans to mitigate security and privacy risks, address challenges, and set the solution up for sustained success?

IMPACTFUL. Will the solution meaningfully address fraud and significantly improve access to state benefits for a diverse range of Washington residents? Does the proposal offer an innovative solution that would succeed in a variety of contexts and align with the evolution of DSHS administrations and Washington residents?  

ALIGNED. Can the solution be easily configured, integrated into existing systems, and implemented by the government agency? Is solution aligned to serve as a flexible, adaptable, and autonomous model that lacks dependency and can meet the needs of the State of Washington with minimal ongoing resources?

HUMAN-CENTERED. Does the team present an innovative approach that is human-centered, inclusive, and equitable? Is the solution user-friendly to a diverse range of agency workers and their clients, emphasizing accessibility for residents who are in and out of the state?

Be sure to review the solution category pages, submission requirements, and scoring criteria to understand how you can submit a competitive application.

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Award Selection

Informed by results of the Evaluation Panel, top-scoring proposals will be presented to the Selection Committee responsible for recommending one winner for each of the four solution categories. Each winner will receive a contract of up to $250,000 for proposed solutions that provide the best value in meeting the needs of DSHS in each solution category.

The Selection Committee will use the same scoring rubric as the Evaluation Panel, resulting in an additional set of scores and feedback for each top-scoring participant. Each participant will receive between 0.0 to 5.0 points on each criterion, representing a total possible scoring range between 0 to 20 from each Selection Committee judge.

DSHS Leadership will make final determination of the awards with consideration of scores and feedback from both the Evaluation Panel and Selection Committee, and multiple factors, including qualifications, capabilities, efficiency, experience, reliability, responsibility, integrity, quality of proposed services and deliverables, timeliness, cost and potential impact on the needs of DSHS. We may consider whether the solution:

• encourages diverse contractor participation
• provides competitive pricing, economies and efficiencies
• considers human health and environmental impacts
• appropriately weighs cost and non-cost considerations, and life cycle cost, as applicable
• is implemented by a team with a prior State of Washington or other contracts where they failed to perform satisfactorily

DSHS Leadership Team reserves the right to select winners who offer the best overall value and that is in the best interests of DSHS and the State of Washington. 

In January 2025, participants who submitted applications will be notified of the results and the ASBs are announced. Participants may request a debriefing conference by 5 PM Pacific Time on the third business day following the announcement of awarded contracts on WEBS, and the conference will be held within five business days of this request. A protest may be filed by 5 PM Pacific Time on the fifth business day following the day of the debriefing conference.

Please review the rules, sample contract, FAQ, and timeline for more information, and email us if you have more questions.  

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We look forward to reviewing your innovative idea to address fraud and improve access to state benefits.