Technology provides 6 Million Dollar Benefits for Social Services

For some smaller agencies or rural areas this may have been due to a lack of network infrastructure or availability of internet, particularly for some tribal social services agencies, but this is changing. A more pervasive reason for the slower adoption of technology in social service operations may be the personal nature of the work done by social services workers. While technology can administer some assessments and perhaps recommend services, it takes a qualified social worker to factor in other life situations, history and personality in order to determine and facilitate successful services.

Social services does use technology for communication through phone and email, what else is there it may be asked. The real power of using technology for social services is when it is used for Enterprise Information Management. What is Enterprise Information Management for social services?

-          Enterprise – Your organization, operations, interactions with your clients and communities

-          Information – Your staff, clients, contacts, cases, services and outside organizations

-          Management – this is perhaps the most important aspect of this idea, technology should not just be used for storage and data warehousing. A warehouse is a place you keep thing that are not being used, we want useful and used information and it needs to be delivered.

Using technology that provides Enterprise Information Management effectively can yield what we will call 6 million dollar benefits. The television program the 6 Million Dollar Man began with the hero’s body broken but we are told, “We can rebuild him. We have the technology. Better than he was before. Better. Stronger. Faster.” These same benefits can be realized by social service staff and agencies through better organization and case management, stronger collaboration and reporting and faster completion of administrative tasks and paperwork. These benefits leave social workers more time to spend with clients, which is what technology can’t do. Enterprise Information Management like RiteTrack embodies the core components of technology that are required for successful implementation in social services. A system that is intuitive, comprehensive, customizable, and capable of delivering information to the right people at the right time.