Logicalis US to Government CIOs: Digital Enablement is the Key to a More Efficient, Productive Social Services System

NEW YORK, Dec. 20, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- One of the least discussed, yet most significant problems for state and local government today is the management of social worker caseloads. For most cities and counties, social services is one of the largest, most resource-intensive departments with social workers delivering a host of critical services ranging from child welfare and family services to mental health, corrections, addiction and gerontology. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that the typical social worker has an average caseload of more than 12 cases, which means they're dealing with as many as 70 individuals at a time. A 2016 report by the Department of Health and Human Services, however, noted that social workers typically spend only 20 to 35 percent of their time in direct contact with their clients, while 60 to 70 percent of their time is spent on other case-related activities. With a growing number of caseloads to manage, this imbalance of time spells problems for the social workers themselves as well as the government agencies and citizens they serve. The obvious goal is to increase the amount of time these valuable public servants spend in the field while maintaining best practices behind the scenes. According to Logicalis US, an international IT solutions and managed services provider (www.us.logicalis.com), by relying on technology to create a more digitally enabled workplace, a variety of virtual tools and self-service portals can help eliminate inefficiencies, allowing social workers to better serve their constituents and better manage their caseloads.

"There's a huge opportunity for local governments to dramatically improve how they serve the public by digitizing a larger portion of the social worker's job," says Adam Petrovsky GovEd Practice Leader, Logicalis US. "By examining what a government agency does and asking ourselves how we can digitally enable some of those functions, we can help local government CIOs transform their organizations' efficiency and productivity in meaningful and cost-effective ways.  And we can help those CIOs deliver more consequential data to county boards of supervisors which can result in larger monetary distributions to those agencies from the state and federal government."

Four Ways to Virtualize Social Work and Improve Outcomes

While some of the human elements of social work are essential, many of the processes that add inefficiency can be modified or even eliminated with advanced technology solutions.  The idea of the "virtualized social worker" is one that local governments are beginning to embrace.  To help CIOs envision how some of these technologies might work in action, Logicalis' GovEd experts have created a list of four important examples.

1. Self Service Portals: Just as you can renew your own driver's license online today, in this client-focused model, tools for common requests can be established on an online portal or via a mobile application to allow better access to social services once the client is established in the system.  This self-service approach can eliminate tasks that were previously done manually, sometimes submitted in-person with the social worker's help, or via US mail which required data entry when the data was received.  With the right technology in place, weekly reports, required submissions of documents, and even photos can be uploaded and processed digitally by the clients themselves, dramatically reducing the overall behind-the-scenes data entry work that has become a bottleneck for caseworkers nationwide.
2. Teleservices: Almost everyone has a mobile device with a camera or can access a public facility or kiosk close to them that is video-enabled.  By providing collaboration and scheduling tools along with conveniently located public portals or mobile applications, social workers can perform virtual visits with their clients while the application automatically records and documents the visit. Imagine the social worker who holds virtual office visits from 9 a.m. to noon once a week; how many more visits could be worked into that timeframe virtually than if the caseworker had to drive to each individual location.  This kind of digital enablement does not eliminate the need for face-to-face interaction and interventions, of course, but with the right communication and collaboration tools, routine checks can easily be virtualized.  And in many social situations, the more frequent these routine checks, the better the outcome for the case.
3. Contact Center: While most local government social services agencies already use a call center for incoming service requests, the actual services that can be addressed there are minimal.  But, by integrating these call centers with email, databases, applications, the Internet and the cloud, a much more robust modern contact center evolves – one that can provide "virtual social work" on the fly. As systems become fully digitized, call center employees will be able to use these kinds of integrated capabilities to tap into cases, to document interactions in real time, to compare historical information before decisions are made, and even to complete typical requests that previously required a lengthy manual cycle before any action could be taken. In a fully leveraged and digitized contact center, any client that can authenticate themselves adequately can take advantage of real-time social services right on the call.
4. Big Data: As more and more data becomes digitized, the more that data can be gathered, analyzed and used to search for trends.  Not only is this valuable to help the ongoing effort to provide better services to the public, but it also allows for analytical evaluation of "data pointers" which can predict outcomes and even indicate fraudulent activity.  The Department of Public Social Services in Los Angeles, for example, has already put this to the test: Its Data Mining Solution for Child Care Welfare Fraud Detection sorts through childcare case files and identifies situations that may be more likely to involve fraudulent activity.  While the tool does not replace trained investigators, it identifies and prioritizes the cases which need to be reviewed more closely.

Want to Learn More?

• Find out why Logicalis has been a leader in public sector sales and solutions for over two decades: http://ow.ly/T82q306L1qS.
• Learn more about our range of services in the public sector: http://ow.ly/iXxt306L1TC. 
• Read Logicalis' expert GovEd blog posts, then explore our recent GovEd news: http://ow.ly/LjFW306L24j.

About Logicalis

Logicalis is an international multi-skilled solution provider providing digital enablement services to help customers harness digital technology and innovative services to deliver powerful business outcomes.

Our customers cross industries and geographical regions; our focus is to engage in the dynamics of our customers' vertical markets including financial services, TMT (telecommunications, media and technology), education, healthcare, retail, government, manufacturing and professional services, and to apply the skills of our 4,000 employees in modernizing key digital pillars, data center and cloud services, security and network infrastructure, workspace communications and collaboration, data and information strategies, and IT operation modernization.

We are the advocates for our customers for some of the world's leading technology companies including Cisco, HPE, IBM, NetApp, Microsoft, VMware and ServiceNow.

The Logicalis Group has annualized revenues of over $1.5 billion from operations in Europe, North America, Latin America and Asia Pacific. It is a division of Datatec Limited, listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange and the AIM market of the LSE, with revenues of over $6.5 billion.

For more information, visit www.us.logicalis.com.

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Media contacts:
Nickie Peters, Director of Marketing,
Logicalis US
[email protected] 
920-338-7622
www.us.logicalis.com

Karen Franse, Communication Strategy Group for Logicalis US
[email protected] 
866-997-2424
www.gocsg.com

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