CGI's Implemented SACWIS Successfully Supports Unique Geographic and Cultural Needs

“Through the implementation of a best-in-class child welfare information system, Alaska is able to standardize practices, enforce accountability, and achieve operational efficiencies. We now have greater access to reliable information in the least amount of time, ensuring that we deliver high-quality services to families, children, and the community. CGI has been a committed and knowledgeable partner in helping us reach this goal.”

Marci Kennai, Deputy Commissioner for the Office of Children's Services

The mission of the Alaska Office of Children's Services (OCS) is to efficiently deliver responsive and accountable services sensitive to the special needs of the children in its charge. OCS must successfully protect the safety of children throughout Alaska; place children in stable, permanent homes; and help vulnerable families maintain and resume the care of their children.

The Challenge
OCS sought a best-in-class SACWIS solution to help the agency effectively achieve this mission, while responding to the agency's unique geographic and cultural requirements. With 231 federally recognized tribes and native Alaskan communities, the state faces complex case management issues to ensure that children in its custody continue to participate in their cultural traditions.

In addition, OCS wanted an automated system that could accommodate its logistical challenges, so staff could effectively make contact with and monitor clients throughout its vast territory–from cities to extreme remote locations.

To meet these objectives, OCS looked for a partner with experience in delivering successful and technically robust SACWIS solutions in other states.

The Strategy
In March 2003, Alaska partnered with CGI to build the Online Resource for the Children of Alaska (ORCA). The vision was to develop a web-based SACWIS solution that would connect its geographically dispersed staff, giving them access to the tools and resources needed to effectively care for the children in their charge.

For the first phase of the project, the ORCA general system design was created to reflect the principles that the application be easy to use, readily accessible, and alleviate redundant processes. CGI worked closely with staff representatives to validate the state's functional and technical requirements. The system, for example, had to identify hundreds of cultural groups and apply the appropriate law for how tribal children and families should be supported. The state also needed upgrades to network and communications infrastructures to adequately support the goals driving the system's development.

Next, the project team collaborated on the detailed design of the system, adapting CGI's baseline SACWIS solution to incorporate Alaska's requirements, policies, case practices, and program rules. Within sixteen months, the third phase of the project–development of the case management portion of the system–was completed. During this stage, CGI leveraged the resources of the onsite team in Juneau with an offsite development team in Madison, Wisconsin–the site of another SACWIS implementation–to provide OCS with cost-effective resources that could flex as staffing needs dictated, while delivering best practices gained from another implementation.

Throughout the project, CGI deployed subject matter experts to sites across the state to provide onsite support services. In addition, caseworkers were brought into Juneau to test the system and to serve as an extension of the support staff. These activities culminated with the final stage of the project: ORCA's implementation. This was managed in two phases. The case management part of the system went online first, while the financials component came five months later. This was a done to ensure that any possible programmatic or data conversion issues were resolved in advance.

The Technology

• ORCA is built upon the CGI baseline SACWIS solution.
• Business features are delivered based upon three standards-based system architecture components: a presentation layer, an application layer, and a data layer.
• The use of open standards enables platform independence, high scalability, high security, and multivendor support.
• Designed and built to be reusable, each component conforms to a set of design parameters and business rules that promote consistency across the entire application software.
• The system architecture contains a high degree of modularity; individual features or functions were customized to meet Alaska's specific needs without systemwide impact.

The Results
ORCA consolidates seven legacy databases into a single, integrated system, achieving operational efficiencies for the state's processing services, while automating virtually every aspect of casework and reporting. For caseworkers, that translates into reduced paperwork and access to detailed, up-to-date client and provider data to support good casework decision-making. This has resulted in significant time savings–some activities that used to take days, now take minutes.

Agency managers use ORCA data to track OCS's commitment to quality and accountability, ensuring that standardized practices and time frames are met and that children and families receive the attention they need, when they need it.

Already the underlying conviction of ORCA is being realized: to focus on child safety and permanence and to deliver timely, culturally competent child-focused and family-centered services. The system provides 450+ social workers–spread across more than 30 geographically dispersed locations–with the ability to instantly access and share information on the more than 10,000 child abuse and neglect cases that are investigated annually.

ORCA allows Alaska's child welfare caseworkers and managers to access case records in real time. In addition, many paper-based processes have been eliminated, reducing delays in payments to foster parents and service providers. With the new system and processes in place, the agency is able to meet goals and performance measures while promoting compliance with state and federal child welfare requirements.

As one of the largest projects ever initiated by the state, Alaska's SACWIS implementation is helping the state accomplish its child welfare mission–to effectively deliver services to families, children, and the community across the largest and most culturally diverse U.S. state.