Buying a CWIS? Ask the right questions.

I lead the child welfare practice at Accenture. I joined the firm after 25 years in government where I spent a career in child welfare practice. Most recently I was the Director of the child welfare agency in my beloved hometown of Baltimore, a city whose metropolitan population is about 2.5 million people.

When I took the job, it was easily the worst organization of its kind in the country. Literally everything that could be going wrong in child welfare was going wrong.

I took the place on a journey to modernization, much like the one many child welfare agencies are embarking on today. For us, this was not tech for the sake of updated tech. It was updated tech for the sake of solving pressing problems and getting child welfare to do what we imagined it could do if it had the right resources.

Over my ten years there, we produced marked performance improvement. We reduced the number of children in foster care by 72 percent. We reduced the number of children in group homes by 89 percent. We paid all our bills on time and, by the time we were done, 70 percent of the children who came into foster care went home to their own parents in the first 12 months without returning to the front door of child protection.

Armed with this proof point I came to Accenture. Here I designed, from a business perspective, a CWIS solution we call the Accenture Care Insight Solution, or ACIS. I brought to this work a lifetime of practice in the field and a big appetite for all that is possible when we get child welfare right. Embedded in it are all the sensibilities of the work I lead in Baltimore.

Now I work with states across the country as they consider options modernization. When states are shopping for a CWIS solution, they have the benefit of seeing a lot of options that are on the market. One challenge can be that, after a while, all solutions start to look the same. Here are some ways to discern differences:

Customization

Every vendor promises to customize their solution for you – as well they should. Child welfare agencies should expect to get what they want out of a CWIS solution. The important question to ask is not whether, but how? How will the vendor go about customization?

At Accenture, we customize our CWIS solution through configuration. This is the rough equivalent of going to an app store, pulling down an app that will solve a problem you are facing and customizing it for you. Configuration is faster, more efficient and more reliable than alternatives. It preserves your scarce dollars, meaning you get more of what you want out of your solution. It also sets you on a path to consume updates in technology, including advancements that will come ever more frequently in the coming months and years.

Other vendors customize their solution by writing code. Writing code is slower and more expensive than configuration and it will render you perpetually dependent on the vendor who wrote the code. It also makes it much harder to make changes in the future when a new policy or rule presents itself.

One good way to learn how a vendor customizes their solution is to ask them directly. An even better choice would be to require that they customize a feature or function of their solution live and in your presence.

Proof

Many vendors will insist they have a proven solution. That may well be true, but before you blow by that claim, it’s worth your time to ask, “What, specifically, did you prove?”

At Accenture we implemented our CWIS solution in Wyoming. It is the only delivery, from any vendor, that was produced on scope, on schedule and within budget. In simpler terms: Wyoming got what they wanted, when they wanted it and at the cost agreed to which we had agreed.

Other vendors will make big promises on the front end and then tussle with you on scope, take you to the cleaners with change orders and persistently delay your go-live dates.

One good way to learn about these differences is to ask your federal partner directly. What has been proven in CWIS deliveries? Which projects have had significant cost increases or delays?

Another is to ask your vendors to provide you a sandbox. In addition to live demos, you should expect to test drive every solution before you buy it. This is the very best way you can tell the difference between smoke and mirrors and solutions that work.

Data Management

One significant challenge in the transition to CWIS is data migration. Your vendor must be able to bring all relevant child welfare history into your new environment.? This is a critical step in any delivery and may be the single greatest factor in getting your new technology to work at scale.

Accenture migrated 30 years of data before go-live in Wyoming. The adjective used to describe this activity? “Flawless”.

Other vendors, particularly smaller more boutique firms, can show you a compelling user experience. When they get to the challenge of data migration they falter. This results in delays or, worse, contract disputes that put you right back where you started when you drafted your first CWIS RFP.

One good way to learn about each vendors success in data migration is to talk to other states who have already begun implementing their solutions, and to ask them directly about their confidence in their vendors ability to migrate their data.

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If you are in the market for a CWIS solution, I hope you enter boldly and with high expectations for what you can achieve. Your vendor should meet you there.

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Molly Tierney is a Managing Director who leads the firm’s child welfare practice. Learn more at www.Accenture.com/ACIS

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