From Procurement to Practice: Rethinking CWIS Implementation Strategies

Several years ago, the Administration for Children and Families announced the long-awaited availability of federal dollars to replace decades old technology in child welfare. Two things quickly ensued. First, states ramped up procurement processes to purchase new technology. Simultaneously, firms like the one where I work designed CWIS solutions to bring to market.

We’ve learned a lot since then. Procurements are long and arduous processes, often taking 18 months or more from drafting an RFP to executing a contract. Implementations take even longer. Usually they are organized on a two-year schedule from kick-off to go-live, but most have taken far more time than that. That means if a state is lucky they are still 4 years or more away from basic, modern technology that we all use in our personal lives to solve the day's problems.

Thinking about it this way makes it seem sort of absurd. Unpacking why it takes so long is worth our time.

In CWIS implementations, the order of operations is pretty standard. First there are several months of Discovery, during which time the vendor collects all the state’s requirements. The vendor then goes about the business of customizing a solution to meet those requirements. The solution is thoroughly tested and then, finally, at go live it is turned on.

One real challenge to this journey is that we underestimated the magnitude of the change we are asking child welfare to make. In short, the gap between business processes and technology is far wider than we had imagined.

Child welfare SMEs arrive in Discovery sessions with an experience of their technology at work. Generally speaking, their technology is not very helpful to them. It’s more of a pain point and using it is an unsavory activity with which they feel forced to comply. Their business processes, on the other hand, are hard fought things they hold dear. Those processes are the arsenal on which they draw to protect children and support families. New technology is nothing more than a promise that has been made; what the solution actually is and how it will work is on some far-off horizon they cannot see from where they are standing.

Vendors enter discovery with zeal, ready to advance quickly to the new solution. This can leave the SMEs feeling concerned about the impact to practice. SMEs are in a protective stance and can be heard to say, “this is how we do things now.” Vendors interpret those comments as requirements and add them to their list of ‘to-dos’. When the vendor returns for testing, they arrive with a solution that is little more than the old technology moved to a new platform. The users are dismayed because, of course, they already knew the old technology was not a match for their needs. So they become frustrated users of their new CWIS solution, correctly concluding it does not work.

The core of the problem is not in the solution. It’s in the dynamic during Discovery, when the vendor and the SMEs were not actually in the same conversation. The vendor ready to leap into design of a new solution with little sense of the risk that loss of good business processes presents. The SMEs white knuckling the business processes they need to do their jobs well. The missed the chance to anchor the conversation in an understanding of how and why the business processes work and all the new ways in which technology should be child welfare’s co-pilot.

Therein lies the gap.

There is a simple way to fix it: re-order the operations of implementation by moving the Discovery phase to later in the project.

A state could select a vendor with a CWIS compliant proven solution and turn it on as is. No Discovery, no data migration, no integrations. Just turn it on knowing that out-of-the-box you are already getting more functionality than you have now. Get fingers on keyboards and smart phones using the solution for six months and then do Discovery. Now your SMEs have a stronger sense of how new technology will be helpful to their practice and they will know the areas of the solution that need to be customized in order to meet the unique needs of your state. They would be far better advisors to your vendor and the technology would no longer be a mystery to them.

Humans learn experientially. We’d do well to apply that fact to CWIS implementations. Giving the front line an opportunity to experience the solution in real time will re-position them as the leaders we need them to be in the creation of new technology for this unique field. Let’s give them that chance.

?

Molly Tierney is the Child Welfare Lead at Accenture, where she has designed and implemented the Accenture Case Insights Solution, an end-to-end CWIS compliant child welfare case management system and the only solution in the market that has been delivered in scope, on schedule and within budget. You can reach her at [email protected]

?

?