Problems with the provincial government鈥檚 social-assistance and child-welfare computer system show one of the risks of putting all your eggs in one digital basket. When a see-all, know-all system goes down, the people who depend on it are helpless or seriously inconvenienced.
After a six-day failure, the province restarted its Integrated Case Management system Wednesday, only to have it crash again a few hours later. Technicians got the system going again, but on Thursday morning, users were experiencing slowdowns.
The first phase of the $182-million computer system was launched in April 2012, linking information on thousands of social assistance and child-welfare clients, including sensitive details on child abuse, custody disputes and welfare payments.
The concept is a good one. People using government services are often involved with more than one ministry, and it can be frustrating, to say the least, to be bounced from one agency to another. It makes sense to have one point of entry for a person who needs different types of assistance. It can also help protect the people it serves, such as by flagging children or spouses who might be at risk of harm.
But the system has been plagued by problems from the start. When it was implemented, front-line workers complained that it was too complicated and buried critical information under a series of hidden tabs.
Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond, sa国际传媒鈥檚 representative for children and youth, has always been critical of the system. In September 2012, she called the system flawed, saying it was plagued by duplicate case files, missing information, privacy breaches and a failure to properly record and display critical data for social workers.
She said a consultant鈥檚 report released in January 2013 confirmed her warnings. The report said previous ministry officials failed to monitor the system鈥檚 development properly and didn鈥檛 push for changes that would have created a system suitable for child-welfare work.
Privacy has also been a constant concern, with those critical of the system saying it provides access to a huge amount of sensitive information. The government has said the system includes safeguards to protect the privacy of clients, but the more information a system contains, the bigger the fence needed to protect that information and the more opportunity for breaches.
Children鈥檚 Minister Stephanie Cadieux has rejected suggestions that the system failures are putting children and youth at risk. She said the ministry has emergency backup systems and social workers can pull the hard copies of files and use the telephone to contact their counterparts in other offices.
鈥淐omputers are a tool,鈥� she said. 鈥淭hey鈥檙e an important tool, but they鈥檙e not the only tool in the toolbox.鈥�
A system that can collect and collate information from a variety of databases is useful, but too often systems are designed to meet the needs of high-level managers, rather than easing the load for front-line workers. Too often, systems require users to adjust what they do to the system鈥檚 design, rather than the other way around. Too often, the servant becomes the master.
It鈥檚 something to keep in mind as the government pushes its sa国际传媒 Services Card. It would be convenient to be able to access all provincial services with one card, but that also makes an array of private information vulnerable to exploitation or error.
The problems with Integrated Case Management are reason to reflect on what happens when the system crashes if all government services are accessed through one portal.
