Scope: The Department of Digital Modernization (DM), WMATA’s information technology organization, is charged with creating internal capacity to both modernize the existing technical and cybersecurity infrastructure and applications/technology stack. Part of its charter is to build internal capacity to continuously experiment, innovate, and deploy modern, digital capabilities to advance WMATA’s mission. DM seeks to understand if there are vendors that can provide assistance with digital strategies; rapid prototyping of capabilities; and development of the internal capacity required to leverage existing investments in technology and the existing technology stack to build, operate, scale, and transfer integrated end-to-end capabilities and solutions that generate the greatest amount of impact across all pillars of WMATA’s transformation plan.
In particular, WMATA DM is seeking to understand the market for professional services to provide a digital accelerator that will allow WMATA to quickly, agilely, and effectively bring innovative software and system solutions to streamline transit operations, reduce paper processes, improve both the worker and customer experiences, increase quality and reliability and facilitate more effective day-to-day management and decision-making.
DM manages and operates a wide range of systems and capabilities that support everything from rail, bus, and paratransit operations, scheduling and maintenance, to track and facilities maintenance.
WMATA functions also include: WMATA Metro police operations; communications; employee health and safety to customer service and communications; and financial operations and administrative functions.
To support this broad diversity of operations, WMATA has an existing technology stack built upon Microsoft Office and Azure technologies, as well as Oracle Cloud-based technologies. DM has invested in a number of modern application suites to include Adobe, ServiceNow, HASTUS, Maximo and is exploring options for a Customer Relationship Management System, real-time data analytics and planning tools, supply chain management, facilities management as well as an integrated data warehouse and data orchestration capability. DM has spent the last two years putting a secure and stable foundation in place. WMATA is now looking to integrate this set of systems into an integrated digital ecosystem that can be utilized to deliver new digital technology products and innovation quickly, securely and at-scale.
DM seeks to understand if there are vendors capable and experienced in leveraging an organization’s existing investments to accomplish the following:
1)Low cost, rapid prototyping capability to solve emergent and strategic problems such as proactive maintenance;
2)Apply emerging technologies, such as AI, by building experiments around high value use cases without sacrificing security or data privacy;
3)Identify gaps in the ecosystem, along with a make or buy decision-making methodology, to further integrate and solidify the digital ecosystem;
4)Development of a roadmap for an integrated digital ecosystem that can support an organization’s future evolution.
DM has already identified three high value use cases for mobile applications development and AI activation. These will be the testbed for the rapid digital acceleration of a modern product team structure, analogous to commercial Research and Development teams, providing end-to-end solutions: advisory services, prototype development capability and behavioral, human-centered design:
1)Digitization of critical safety handbooks and standard operating procedures to improve search capability to return relevant results;
2)Mobile application to streamline and facilitate work order completion;
3)Digital platform to facilitate bus fleet maintenance and troubleshooting.
Because this is a capability that is core to achieving WMATA’s strategic goals, DM seeks to understand if there are vendors that can facilitate development of in-house WMATA capabilities and capacity to operate an internal research and development function. DM is seeking to understand if there are vendors capable of providing both advisory assistance as well as practical product development and knowledge transfer/training.
Due Date: September 3, 2025, at 2:00 p.m. (Eastern Time)
Contact: Robyn Austin rjaustin@wmata.com
