This repo has a prototype for a TANF Data Reporting system, where States, Territories, and Tribes can upload TANF data and get it validated and stored in a database.
OFA has partnered with 18F to conduct the initial research, scoping, prototyping, and strategy for the new TDRS. 18F has laid the groundwork for a modern and sustainable software development process and removed as many barriers as possible for the incoming contractor team. This information may highlight important considerations for future development team, and should not constrain vendor’s technical approach submissions.
The current TDRS is so old, fragile, and difficult to access that 18f only leveraged the existing data format that grantees use to submit their data to TDRS and did not develop any direct access to the system. This data format is not extensible, not human-readable, and does not have adequate documentation. However, the data format is standardized and does not immediately require the grantees to change their data generation processes. Both OFA staff and grantees would like a user interface for entering data in the new system, but developing this will require more user research.
This TDRS prototype was built to test assumptions about the primary goal of this project. The prototype allows users to upload data in the TANF data reporting format and view the resulting data. It conducts limited data validation of the submissions. It is a Python/Django app with Login.gov integration, and running in Cloud.gov. The OFA team uses SQL with their existing analysis tools, so 18F developed the prototype with a Postgres SQL database. The contractor may extend, extract useful parts, or replace the prototype application entirely.
The prototype provided an opportunity to develop an application environment. 18F and OFA have been working together to get core technical infrastructure approved and set up so when the contractor joins the team they can immediately begin to contribute code and have it automatically roll out to their development environment.
The application environment is roughly:
This infrastructure should provide OFA and the contractor with a system that will be easy to get up to speed on, manage, and use. The components are:
- Cloud.gov This is a GovCloud-based platform-as-a-service that removes almost all of the infrastructure monitoring and maintenance from the system, is already procured for OFA, and has a FedRAMP Joint Authorization Board Provisional Authority to Operate (JAB P-ATO) on file. FedRAMP is a standardized federal security assessment for cloud services, and the FedRAMP ATO helps agencies by providing confidence in the security of cloud solutions and security assessments. Cloud.gov supports all modern software development frameworks so the contractor team does not need to continue in Python/Django if they prefer another language/framework.
- Login.gov The TDRS application requires strong multi-factor authentication for the states, tribes, and territories and Personal Identity Verification (PIV) authentication for OFA staff. Login.gov can meet both of these requirements and HHS already has an IAA for this service. Login.gov has a FedRAMP ATO on file.
- CircleCI This is a CI/CD system that is commonly used by 18F. CircleCI has an FedRAMP ATO on file. It is used to automate builds, testing, and deploys from GitHub.
This template is meant to be a starting point for the vendors. Code that is
checked into this repo will be automatically be tested by running ./test.sh,
and if it lives on the dev, staging, or prod branches, it will be deployed
to cloud.gov using the ./deploy_cloudgov.sh script. Thus, vendors can
immediately start writing software rather than building infrastructure.
Probably most of this documentation and application code will be gone once the vendor gets up to speed, replaced by the documentation of the vendor's application, it's technology, and it's processes and procedures.
- If you would like to test out how to get the prototype running locally or understand how the environments were set up, then check out Running the TANF Data Reporting Prototype
- Compliance documentation and information about how to approach the ATO process can be found in Compliance.md.
- Operational procedures and workflows can be found in the Workflows documentation. This is an overview of how you should do development using a modified gitops system, how to find logs, update the infrastructure, rotate secrets, etc.