Do you have access to a data integrated system or are you stuck in a data silo?
Many states and county governments built child welfare systems on the transactional model that worked for Food Stamps, Medicaid and TANF. Unfortunately children and family programs do not align nicely with transactional processes. Most systems will capture huge amounts of data necessary to meet most of the federal reporting requirements, but after a decade of time and billions of dollars most are not certified by the Federal government.
Two issues become immediately apparent in these systems:
- the lack of useable data by first line workers, supervisors and administrators to drive improvements and best practices
- the lack of information sharing between different agencies/systems, wasted duplication of effort and lack of knowing what is going with other family members
During the current economic pressures in many States, redesigning or re-tooling a SACWIS system may not be feasible. An option that may serve the need at a lower cost and provide greater access for all users is a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA). SOA layers technology design and allows the reuse of existing systems by sharing computer code between systems. They create a layer of extraction and presentation tools for pre-set data elements that allow a user to search across multiple systems and retrieve all the information related to the search criterion presented. It also allows a methodology for updating information that updates all the systems for completeness.
A New Direction...
The chronic under-performance on Federal CFSR’s has created focus and urgency to develop outcomes based on performance tools and more accessible information. This new focus has lead to development of web based COTS software packages for data analysis and reporting tools as part of SACWIS upgrades. They provide the necessary tools for a case worker and manager to have metrics that are current on the statuses of risk factors and the health and safety issues related to children and families.
Mobile Technology Benefits...????
With mobile technology, case workers and managers can stay aware of problems before they become a crisis. Dashboards incorporate the flags, ticklers and recommendations that assist a worker to make intelligent and timely decisions. Outcome measures can be predicted based on service delivery.
Performance goals and outcomes can be measured but need to be done in a real-time mode, not in a 2-5 year lag that happens in many of the SACWIS models currently deployed. Actionable and measurable outcomes are key components of web based systems and arguably need to be utilized fully. Development of dashboards to measure caseload statistics based on business rules and common data dictionary definitions should be incorporated. Training guidelines can be utilized to reinforce goals for new workers and to reinforce policy change.
Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) transforms existing data silos into the data stores. It allows utilization of existing resources, enables a secure single sign-on access to multiple systems, and improves the overall integrity of the data being captured across the spectrum.